GHOSTS
TRUE ENCOUNTERS
WITH WORLD BEYOND
»
GHOSTS
TRUE ENCOUNTERS
WITH WORLD BEYOND
HANS HOLZER
By the author of
Witches and Hans
Holzer’s Travel Guide
to Haunted Houses
Paperbacks
.
Copyright © 1997 by Aspera Ad Astra Inc.
First paperback edition 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means
including information storage and retrieval systems without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc.
151 West 1 9th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by
Workman Publishing Company
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New York, NY 10003
Designed by Martin Lubin Graphic Design
Typesetting by Kryon Graphics, India
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN: 1-57912-401-1
hgfedcba
Holzer, Hans, 1920-
Ghosts/by Hans Holzer.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-57912-401-1
1. Ghosts. 2. Supernatural. I. Title.
GR580.H56 1997
133.1— dc21
96-52613
CIP
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
11
The Nature of Life and Death 13
What Every Would-be Ghost Hunter Should Know 23
Ghosts and the World of the Living 29
What Exactly Is a Ghost? 45
Famous Ghosts 57
1 The Conference House Ghost
2 The Stranger at the Door
3 A Visit with Alexander Hamilton’s Ghost
4 The Fifth Avenue Ghost
5 The Case of the Murdered Financier
6 The Rockland County Ghost
7 A Revolutionary Corollary: Patrick Henry, Nathan Hale, et al.
8 The Vindication of Aaron Burr
9 Assassination of a President: Lincoln, Booth, and the Traitors Within
1 0 A Visit with Woodrow Wilson
1 1 Ring Around the White House
12 The Ill-Fated Kennedys: From Visions to Ghosts
13 Michie Tavern, Jefferson, and the Boys
14 A Visit with the Spirited Jefferson
1 5 Major Andre and the Question of Loyalty
16 Benedict Arnold’s Friend
1 7 The Haverstraw Ferry Case
1 8 “Ship of Destiny”: The U.S.F. Constellation
19 The Truth About Camelot
20 Her Name Was Trouble: The Secret Adventure of Nell Gwyn
2 1 Ghosts Around Vienna
22 The Secret of Mayerling
23 Royalty and Ghosts
24 A Visit with Robert Louis Stevenson
25 Bloody Mary’s Ghost
26 Spectral Mary, Queen of Scots
27 Renvyle
28 Is This You, Jean Harlow?
29 Do the Barrymores Still Live Here?
30 The Latest Adventures of the Late Clifton Webb
31 The Haunted Rocking Chair at Ash Lawn
32 A Visit with Carole Lombard’s Ghost
33 Mrs. Surratt’s Ghost at Fort McNair
Contents
5
CHAPTER SIX This House Is Haunted
233
34 The Bank Street Ghost
35 The Whistling Ghost
36 The Metuchen Ghost
37 A Greenwich Village Ghost
38 The Hauntings at Seven Oaks
39 The Central Park West Ghost
40 The Ghosts at St. Mark’s
4 1 The Clinton Court Ghosts
42 Hungry Lucy
43 The House Ghost of Bergenville
44 The Riverside Ghost
45 Ocean-Born Mary
46 The Ghosts of Stamford Hill
47 The “Spy House” Ghosts of New Jersey
48 The Strange Case of the Colonial Soldier
49 The House on Plant Avenue
50 The Whaley House Ghosts
51 The Ghost at the Altar
52 A Ghost’s Last Refuge
53 The Octagon Ghosts
54 The Octagon Revisited
55 The Integration Ghost
56 The Ardmore Boulevard Ghosts
57 The Ghost WTio Refused to Leave
58 The Haunted Motorcycle Workshop
59 Encountering the Ghostly Monks
60 The Somerset Scent (Pennsylvania)
61 The House of Evil (New York)
62 The Specter in the Hallway (Long Island)
63 The Bayberry Perfume Ghost (Philadelphia)
64 The Headless Grandfather (Georgia)
65 The Old Merchant’s House Ghost (New York City)
66 The House on Fifth Street (New Jersey)
67 Morgan Hall (Long Island)
68 The Guardian of the Adobe (California)
69 The Mynah Bird (Canada)
70 The Terror on the Farm (Connecticut)
71 A California Ghost Story
72 The Ghostly Usher of Minneapolis
73 The Ghostly Adventures of a North Carolina Family
74 Reba’s Ghost
75 Henny from Brooklyn
76 Longleat’s Ghosts
77 The Ghosts at Blanchard
78 The Ghosts of Edinburgh
79 The Ghostly Monk of Monkton
80 Scottish Country Ghosts
8 1 The Ghost on the Kerry Coast
82 Haunted Kilkea Castle, Kildare
Contents
83 The Ghosts at Skryne Castle
84 Ghost Hunting in County Mayo
85 The Ghost at La Tour Malakoff, Paris
86 Haunted Wolfsegg Fortress, Bavaria
87 A Haunted Former Hospital in Zurich
88 The Lady from Long Island
89 The Ghost of the Olympia Theatre
90 The Haunted Rectory
91 The Haunted Seminary
92 The Ghostly Sailor of Alameda
93 The Ghost Clock
94 The Ghost of Gay Street
95 The Ship Chandler’s Ghost
96 The Ghost-Servant Problem at Ringwood Manor
97 The Phantom Admiral
98 The Ghosts in the Basement
99 Miss Boyd of Charles Street, Manhattan
100 The Haunted Ranch at Newbury Park, California
101 The Narrowsburgh Ghost
102 The Ghost in the Pink Bedroom
103 The Poughkeepsie Rectory Ghost
104 The Ghost at West Point
105 The Stenton House, Cincinnati
106 The Ghost at El Centro
107 The Ghostly Stagecoach Inn
108 Mrs. Dickeys Ghostly Companions
109 The “Presence” on the Second-Floor Landing
1 1 0 The Oakton Haunt
1 1 1 The Restless Ghost of the Sea Captain
112 The Confused Ghost of the Trailer Park
113 The Ghost Who Would Not Leave
1 14 The Ghost at Port Clyde
115 A Plymouth Ghost
1 16 The Ghosts at the Morris-Jumel Mansion
CHAPTER SEVEN Haunted Places 541
1 1 7 The Case of the Lost Head
1 1 8 The Woman on the Train (Switzerland)
1 1 9 The Lady of the Garden (California)
1 20 The Ghost Car (Kansas)
1 2 1 The Ghostly Monks of Aetna Springs
1 22 Who Landed First in America?
123 The Haunted Organ at Yale
124 The Ghost on Television
125 The Gray Man of Pawley’s Island (South Carolina)
126 Haunted Westover (Virginia)
127 The Case of the I.R. A. Ghosts
128 The Last Ride
129 The San Francisco Ghost Bride
The Nature of Life and Death
CHAPTER EIGHT Haunted People 593
130 The Strange Death of Valerie K.
131 The Warning Ghost
132 Jacqueline
1 33 The Wurmbrand Curse
134 Dick Turpin, My Love
135 The Restless Dead
136 The Devil in the Flesh (Kansas)
137 The Case of the Buried Miners
138 The Ghostly Lover
139 The Vineland Ghost
1 40 Amityville, America’s Best- Known Haunted House
CHAPTER NINE Stay-Behinds 631
141 When The Dead Stay On
142 Alabama Stay-Behinds
143 Arkansas Stay-Behinds
144 Georgia Stay-Behinds
145 A Tucker Ghost
146 The Howard Mansion Ghost
147 The Stay-Behinds: Not Ready to Go
148 Rose Hall, Home of the "White Witch” of Jamaica
149 There Is Nothing Like a Scottish Ghost
150 The Strange Case of Mrs. C’s Late but Lively Husband
1 5 1 The Ghost of the Little White Flower
1 52 Raynham Hall
153 The Ghost of the Pennsylvania Boatsman
CHAPTER TEN Poltergeists 667
1 54 The Devil in Texas
155 Diary of a Poltergeist
1 56 The Millbrae Poltergeist Case
1 57 The Ghosts of Barbery Lane
158 The Garricks Head Inn, Bath
CHAPTER ELEVEN Ghosts That Aren’t 707
Contacts and Visits by Spirits
When the Dead Reach Out to the Living
Unfinished Business
When the Dead Help the Living
159 Vivien Leigh’s Post-Mortem Photograph
160 How the Dead Teacher Said Good-bye
Bilocation or the Etheric Double of a Living Person
Astral Projections or Out-of-Body Experiences
Psychic Imprints of the Past
161 The Monks of Winchester Cathedral
162 The Secret of Ballinguile
Contents
L 8
CHAPTER TWELVE Psychic Photography — The Visual Proof 741
Communications from Beyond through Photography:
Track Record and Test Conditions
The Mediumship of John Myers
Authentic “Spirit Pictures” Taken at Seances
Spirit Photography at a Camp
Some Unexpected Spirit Faces
Photographing Materializations
The Physician, Catherine the Great, and Polaroid Spirit Photography
Mae Burrows Ghostly Family Picture
A Ghostly Apparition in the Sky
The Parish House Ghosts
BOOKS PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED BY HANS HOLZER 759
Contents
9
Hans Holzer Is the Author of 1 19 books, including Life Beyond, The Directory
of Psychics, America’s Mysterious Places, Windows to the Past, and Witches.
He has written, produced, and hosted a number of television programs, notably
“Ghost in the House,” “Beyond the Five Senses,” and the NBC series “In Search
of. . He has appeared on numerous national television programs and lectured widely.
He has written for national magazines such as Mademoiselle, Penthouse, Longevity,
and columns in national weeklies.
Hans Holzer studied at Vienna University, Austria; Columbia University, New
York; and holds a Ph.D. from the London College of Applied Science. Professor
Holzer taught parapsychology for eight years at the New York Institute of Technology,
is a member of the Authors Guild, Writers Guild of America, Dramatists’
Guild, the New York Academy of Science, and the Archaeological Institute of
America. He is listed in Who’s Who in America and lives in New York City.
Introduction
As we settle more securely into the new millennium, people's interests in the cosmic continue to
grow. Even ordinary Joes and Janes who normally wouldn't be caught dead reading an astrology col-
umn are suddenly wondering what the second millennium will mean for them and this world of
ours.
To begin with, the millennium came and went over a decade ago. Jesus was born not the the
year zero but in 7 B.C., on October 9, to be exact, as I proved quite a while ago after fifteen years of
archeological research. This business of the millennium was strictly hype, a promotion that was
created to make people think something very special would happen in the year 2000. The psycholog-
ical effects of this "millennium,” however, are already upon us — casting a shadow in terms of a
renewed great interest in things paranormal, for instance.
Several new TV talk shows and documentaries dealing with psychic phenomena and the explo-
ration of the frontiers of human consciousness have sprung up, filling the television screens with
tabloid tidbits often lacking in depth and validating research. Fictional forays into worlds beyond are
also currently hugely successful both in film and television, and in books and even Websites.
As a purveyor of genuine information regarding psychic phenomena, I welcome this resurgence
of curiosity in worlds beyond the physical because contemplating these matters tends to make people
think about themselves, their ultimate fate, and the nature of humankind itself.
When it comes to dealing with the hard evidence of life after death, there are three classes of
people — and this may remain the case for a long time to come, considering how resistant humans are
to embracing radically new or different concepts.
There are those who ridicule the idea of anything beyond the grave. This category includes
anybody from hard-line scientists to people who are only comfortable with the familiar, material
world and really do not wish to examine any evidence that might change their minds. The will to
disbelieve is far stronger than the will to believe — though neither leads to proof and hard evidence.
Then there are those who have already accepted the evidence of a continued existence beyond
physical death, including people who have arrived at this conclusion through an examination of hard
evidence, either personal in nature or from scientifically valid sources. They are the group I respect
the most, because they are not blind believers. They rightfully question the evidence, but they have
no problem accepting it when it is valid. Included in this group are the religious -metaphysical folks,
although they require no hard proof to validate their convictions, which emanate from a belief sys-
tem that involves a world beyond this one.
The third group is often thrown offtrack when trying to get at the truth by the folks in the
metaphysical camp. This makes it more difficult for them to arrive at a proper conviction regarding
the psychic. The thing for this third group is to stick to its principles and not become blind
believers.
The vast majority of people belong to the third group. They are aware of the existence of psy-
chical phenomena and the evidence for such phenomena, including case histories and scientific
investigations by open-minded individuals. But they may be skeptical. They hesitate to join the sec-
ond group only because of their own inner resistance to such fundamental changes in their philo-
sophical attitudes toward life and death. For them, therefore, the need to be specific when presenting
evidence or case histories, which must be fully verifiable, is paramount, as is an acceptable explana-
tion for their occurrence.
It is hoped that those in the second group will embrace the position of the last group: that
there are no boundaries around possibilities, provided that the evidence bears it out.
Prof. Hans Holzer, Ph.D.
CHAPTER ONE
The Nature of
Life and Death
WHAT IS MAN? WHY IS MAN? HOW IS MAN?
To fully understand the existence of ghosts, one needs to come to grips with the nature of life — and
death. Ghosts, apparitions, messages from beyond, and psychic experiences involving a loved one or
friend who has passed away all presuppose that the receiver or observer accept the reality of another
dimension into which we all pass at one time or another. A die-hard (if you pardon the pun) commit-
ted to pure material reality, even atheism, will not be comfortable with the subject of this book. But
the subject of ghosts just won’t go away. They have always been with us, under one designation or
another, depending on the time period, culture, or religious orientation of the people to whom the
experiences have occurred.
This is certainly not a matter of belief" in” a reality other than the ordinary three-dimensional
one. It is, to the contrary, an awareness that we all have within us another component that passes on to
the next stage of life fully intact in most cases, and somewhat disturbed in some. For everyone, except
the skeptic, the evidence of this is overwhelming. For the skeptic all of this will always be unaccept-
able, no matter how concrete the grounds for believing. Above all, the nature of life and death requires
a full understanding of the nature of man. One must come to this from an unbiased point of view,
unafraid of the philosophical consequences of making adjustments in one’s attitude toward life and
death.
Although humans have walked on the moon and will soon reach for the stars, we have yet to
learn what we are. After millions of years of existence on this planet, we are still unable to come to
grips with the most important question of all: What is man? Why is man? How is man?
To toss the problem of man into the lap of religion by judging it to be the whim of an omnipo-
tent creator is merely to beg the question. Even if we were to accept uncritically the notion of instanta-
neous creation by a superior force, it would leave unanswered the questions that would immediately
arise from such a notion: Who created the creator?
The Nature of Life and Death
13
To go the other end of the scale and ascribe our exis-
tence to a slow process of natural evolution in which parti-
cles of matter — chemicals — were mixed in certain ways to
form larger pieces of matter and ultimately reached the
stage where life began sounds like a more sensible approach
to the puzzle of our existence. But only on the surface. For
if we were to accept the theory of evolution — and there is
good enough evidence that is valid — we would still be
faced with the very problem religion leaves us: Who
arranged things in this way, so that infinitesimal bits of
matter would join to create life and follow what is obvi-
ously an orderly pattern of development?
Whether we are theistic or atheistic, materialistic or
idealistic, the end result, as I see it, seems to lead to the
same door. That door, however, is closed. Behind it lies the
one big answer man has searched for, consciously or
unconsciously, since the dawn of time.
Is man an animal, derived from the primates, as Dr.
Desmond Morris asserted in The Naked Ape? Is he merely
an accidental development, whereby at one point in time a
large ape became a primitive man?
To this day, this hypothesis is unacceptable to large
segments of the population. The revulsion against such a
hypothesis stems largely from strongly entrenched funda-
mentalist religious feelings rather than from any enlight-
ened understanding that knows better than Darwin. When
religion goes against science, even imperfect science, it is
bound to lose out.
On the other hand, the less violent but much more
effective resistance, by scientists, doctors, and intellectuals,
to the hypothesis that supports man’s spontaneous creation
by a superior being is so widespread today that it has made
heavy inroads in church attendance and forced the religious
denominations to think of new approaches to lure large
segments of the population back into the fold, or at least to
interest them in the nonreligious aspects of the church. But
the professionals and intellectuals are by no means alone in
their rejection of traditional views. A large majority of stu-
dents, on both college and high school levels, are nonbe-
lievers or outright cynics. They don’t always cherish that
position, but they have not found an alternative. At least
they had not until ESP (extrasensory perception) came along
to offer them a glimpse at a kind of immorality that their
scientific training could let them accept.
To the average person, then, the problem of what
man is remains unsolved and as puzzling as ever. But this
is not true of the psychic or esoteric person.
An increasing number of people throughout the
world have at one time or another encountered personal
proof of man’s immortality. To them, their own experi-
ences are sufficient to assure them that we are part of a
greater scheme of things, with some sort of superior law
operating for the benefit of all. They do not always agree
on what form this superior force takes, and they generally
CHAPTER ONE: The Nature of Life and Death
reject the traditional concepts of a personal God, but they
acknowledge the existence of an orderly scheme of things
and the continuance of life as we know it beyond the barri-
ers of death and time.
Many of those who accept in varying degrees spiri-
tual concepts of life after death do so uncritically. They
believe from a personal, emotional point of view. They
merely replace a formal religion with an informal one.
They replace a dogma they find outmoded, and not borne
out by the facts as they know them, with a flexible, seem-
ingly sensible system to which they can relate
enthusiastically.
It seems to me that somewhere in between these
orthodox and heterodox elements lies the answer to the
problem. If we are ever to find the human solution and
know what man is, why he is, and how he is, we must take
into account all the elements, strip them of their fallacies,
and retain the hard-core facts. In correlating the facts we
find, we can then construct an edifice of thought that may
solve the problem and give us the ultimate answers we are
seeking.
What is life? From birth, life is an evolution through
gradual, successive stages of development, that differ in
detail with each and every human being. Materialistic sci-
ence likes to ascribe these unique tendencies to environ-
ment and parental heritage alone. Astrology, a very
respectable craft when properly used, claims that the radia-
tion from the planets, the sun, and the moon influences the
body of the newly born from birth or, according to some
astrological schools, even from the moment of conception.
One should not reject the astrological theory out of hand.
After all, the radiation of man-made atom bombs affected
the children of Hiroshima, and the radiation from the cos-
mos is far greater and of far longer duration. We know
very little about radiation effects as yet.
That man is essentially a dual creature is no longer
denied even by medical science. Psychiatry could not exist
were it not for the acknowledgment that man has a mind,
though the mind is invisible. Esoteric teaching goes even
further: man has a soul, and it is inserted into the body of
the newborn at the moment of birth. Now if the soul joins
the body only at or just before the moment of birth, then a
fetus has no personality, according to this view, and abor-
tion is not a "sin.” Some orthodox religions do not hold
this view and consider even an unborn child a full person.
It is pretty difficult to prove objectively either assertion,
but it is not impossible to prove scientifically and rationally
that man after birth has a nonphysical component, vari-
ously called soul, psyche, psi, or personality.
What is death, then? The ceasing of bodily functions
due to illness or malfunction of a vital organ reverses the
order of what occurred at birth. Now the two components
of man are separated again and go in different directions.
The body, deprived of its operating force, is nothing more
than a shell and subject to ordinary laws affecting matter.
Under the influence of the atmosphere, it will rapidly
14
decompose and is therefore quickly disposed of in all cul-
tures. It returns to the earth in various forms and con-
tributes its basic chemicals to the soil or water.
The soul, on the other hand, continues its journey
into what the late Dr. Joseph Rhine of Duke University
called "the world of mind.” That is, to those who believe
there is a soul, it enters the world of the mind; to those
who reject the very notion of a soul factor, the decompos-
ing body represents all the remains of man at death. It is
this concept that breeds fear of death, fosters nihilistic atti-
tudes toward life while one lives it, and favors the entire
syndrome of expressions such as “death is the end,” “fear
the cemetery,” and “funerals are solemn occasions.”
Death takes on different powers in different cultures.
To primitive man it was a vengeful god who took loved
ones away when they were still needed.
To the devout Christian of the Middle Ages, death
was the punishment one had to fear all one’s life, for after
death came the reckoning.
West Africans and their distant cousins, the Haitians,
worship death in a cult called the “Papa Nebo” cult.
Spanish and Irish Catholics celebrate the occasions of
death with elaborate festivities, because they wish to help
the departed receive a good reception in the afterlife.
Only in the East does death play a benign role. In
the spiritually advanced beliefs of the Chinese, the Indians,
and the ancient Egyptians, death was the beginning, not
the end. Death marked the gate to a higher consciousness,
and it is because of this philosophy that the dreary aspects
of funerals as we know them in the West are totally absent
from eastern rites. They mark their funerals, of course, but
not with the sense of finality and sadness that pervade the
western concept. Perhaps this benigness has some connec-
tion with the strong belief in a hereafter that the people of
the East hold, as opposed to the Western world, which
offers, aside from a minority of fundamentalists to whom
the Bible has spelled out everything without further need
of clarification, faith in an afterlife but has no real convic-
tion that it exists.
There is scarcely a religion that does not accept the
continuance of life beyond death in one form or another.
There are some forms of “reform” Judaism and some
extremely liberal Christian denominations that stress the
morality aspects of their religions rather than basic belief in
a soul and its survival after death in a vaguely defined
heaven or hell. Communism in its pure Marxist form,
which is of course a kind of religion, goes out of its way to
denounce the soul concept.
Not a single religious faith tries to rationalize its
tenets of immortality in scientifically valid terms. Orthodox
Catholicism rejects the inquiry itself as unwanted or at the
very least proper only for those inside the professional hier-
archy of the church. Some Protestant denominations, espe-
cially fundamentalists, find solace in biblical passages that
they interpret as speaking out against any traffic with death
or inquiry into areas dealing with psychic phenomena. The
vast majority of faiths, however, neither encourage nor for-
bid the search for objective proof that what the church
preaches on faith may have a basis in objective fact.
It is clear that one step begets another. If we accept the
reality of the soul, we must also ask ourselves, where does
the soul go after death? Thus interest concerning the nature
of man quite easily extends to a curiosity about the world
that the soul inhabits once it leaves its former abode.
Again, religion has given us descriptions galore of the
afterlife, many embroidered in human fashion with ele-
ments of man-made justice but possessing very little
factuality.
Inquiring persons will have to wait until they them-
selves get to the nonphysical world, or they will have to
use one of several channels to find out what the nonphysi-
cal world is like.
When experience is firsthand, one has only one’s own
status or state of being to consider; waiting for or taking
the ultimate step in order to find out about the next world
is certainly a direct approach.
Desire to communicate with the dead is as old as
humanity itself. As soon as primitive man realized that
death could separate him from a loved one and that he
could not prevent that person’s departure, he thought of
the next best thing: once gone, how could he communicate
with the dead person? Could he bring him back? Would he
join him eventually?
These are the original elements, along with certain
observed forces in nature, that have contributed to the
structure of early religions.
But primitive man had little or no understanding of
nature around him and therefore personified all forces he
could not understand or emulate. Death became a person
of great and sinister power who ruled in a kingdom of
darkness somewhere far away. To communicate with a
departed loved one, one would have to have Death’s per-
mission or would have to outsmart him. Getting Death’s
permission to see a loved one was rare (e.g., the story of
Orpheus and Eurydice).
Outsmarting Death was even more difficult. Every-
man never succeeded, nor did the wealthy Persian mer-
chant who ran away to Samara only to find Death there
waiting for him. In these examples Death was waiting for
the man himself, and it was not a question of getting past
him into his kingdom to see the departed one. But it shows
how all -knowing the personified Death of primitive and
ancient man was.
The West African form of contact with the dead,
which the people of Haiti still practice to this day, is
speaking through the water; again it is a question of either
avoiding the voodoo gods or bribing them. Communication
with the dead is never easy in primitive society.
In the East, where ancestor worship is part of the
religious morality, communication is possible through the
The Nature of Life and Death
15
established channel of the priest, but the occasion has to
warrant it. Here too we have unquestioned adherence to
the orders given to the living by their forebears, as a matter
of respect. As we dig deeper into the religious concepts of
eastern origin, we find such a constant interplay between
the living and the dead that one understands why some
Asians are not afraid to die or do not take the kind of pre-
cautions western people would take under similar circum-
stances. Death to them is not a stranger or a punishment or
a fearful avenger of sins committed in the flesh.
In modern times, only spiritualism has approached
the subject of the dead with a degree of rationalism,
although it tends to build its edifice of believability occa-
sionally on very shaky ground. The proof of survival of the
human personality is certainly not wanting, yet spiritualism
ignores the elements in man that are mortal but nonphysi-
cal, and gives credit to the dead for everything that tran-
scends the five senses. But research on ESP has shown that
some of these experiences need not be due to the spirit
intervention, although they may not be explicable in terms
of orthodox science. We do have ESP in our incarnate state
and rarely use the wondrous faculties of our minds to the
fullest.
Nevertheless, the majority of spiritualist beliefs are
capable of verification. I have worked with some of the best
spiritualist mediums to learn about trafficking with the
“other world.” For the heart of spiritualist belief is commu-
nication with the dead. If it exists, then obviously spiritual-
ism has a very good claim to be a first-class religion, if not
more. If the claim is fraudulent, then spiritualism would be
as cruel a fraud as ever existed, deceiving man’s deepest
emotions.
Assuming that the dead exist and live on in a world
beyond our physical world, it would be of the greatest
interest to learn the nature of the secondary world and the
laws that govern it. It would be important to understand
“the art of dying,” as the medieval esoterics called it, and
come to a better understanding also the nature of this tran-
sition called death.
Having accepted the existence of a nonphysical world
populated by the dead, we next should examine the contin-
uing contacts between the two worlds and the two-way
nature of these communications: those initiated by the liv-
ing, and those undertaken by the dead.
Observation of so-called spontaneous phenomena will
be just as important as induced experiments or attempts at
contact. In all this we must keep a weather eye open for
deceit, misinterpretation, or self-delusion. So long as there
is a human faculty involved in this inquiry, we must allow
for our weaknesses and limitations. By accepting safe-
guards, we do not close our minds to the astonishing facts
that may be revealed just because those facts seem contrary
to current thinking. If we proceed with caution, we may
CHAPTER ONE: The Nature of Life and Death
contribute something that will give beleaguered humankind
new hope, new values, and new directions.
RETURN FROM THE DEAD
Nothing could be more convincing than the testimony of
those people who have actually been to that other world
and returned "to tell the tale.” This material substantiates
much of the phenomena that has made itself known to
many in personal encounters, and also with the help of
competent psychics and mediums.
While evidence of communication with the dead will
provide the bulk of the evidential material that supports
the conditions and decrees existing in that other world, we
have also a number of testimonies from people who have
entered the next world but not stayed in it. The cases
involve people who were temporarily separated from their
physical reality — without, however, being cut off from it
permanently — and catapulted into the state we call death.
These are mainly accident victims who recovered and those
who underwent surgery and during the state of anesthesia
became separated from their physical bodies and were able
to observe from a new vantage point what was happening
to them. Also, some people have traveled to the next world
in a kind of dream state and observed conditions there that
they remembered upon returning to the full state of wake-
fulness.
I hesitate to call these cases dreams since, as I have
already pointed out in another work on the psychic side of
dreams, the dream state covers a multitude of conditions,
some of which at least are not actual dreams but states of
limited consciousness and receptivity to external inputs.
Out-of-body experiences, formerly known as astral projec-
tions, are also frequently classed with dreams, while in fact
they are a form of projection in which the individual is
traveling outside the physical body.
The case I am about to present are, to the best of my
knowledge, true experiences by average, ordinary individu-
als. I have always shied away from accepting material from
anyone undergoing psychiatric treatment, not because I
necessarily discount such testimony, but because some of
my readers might.
As Dr. Raymond Moody noted in his work, there is
a definite pattern to these near misses, so to speak, the
experiences of people who have gone over and then
returned. What they relate about conditions on the "other
side of life” is frequently similar to what other people have
said about these conditions, yet the witnesses have no way
of knowing each other’s experiences, have never met, and
have not read a common source from which they could
draw such material if they were inclined to deceive the
investigator, which they certainly are not. In fact, many of
these testimonies are reluctantly given, out of fear of
ridicule or perhaps because the individuals themselves are
not sure of what to make of it. Far from the fanatical fer-
vor of a religious purveyor, those whose cases have been
16
brought to my attention do not wish to convince anyone of
anything but merely want to report what has occurred in
their lives. In publishing these reports, I am making the
information available to those who might have had similar
experiences and have wondered about them.
I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the cases I
am reporting in the following pages do not fall into the cat-
egory of what many doctors like to call hallucinations,
mental aberrations, or fantasies. The clarity of the experi-
ences, the full remembrance of them afterward, the many
parallels between individual experiences reported by people
in widely scattered areas, and finally the physical condition
of the percipients at the time of the experience all weigh
heavily against the dismissal of such experiences as being
of hallucinatory origin.
Mrs. Virginia S., a resident in one of the western
states, had in the past held various responsible jobs in
management and business. On March 13, 1960, she under-
went surgery for, as she put it, repair to her muscles. Dur-
ing the operation, she lost so much blood she was declared
clinically dead. Nevertheless, the surgeons worked fever-
ishly to bring her back, and she recovered. This is what
Mrs. S. experienced during the period when the medical
team was unable to detect any sign of life in her:
“I was climbing a rock wall and was standing straight
in the air. Nothing else was around it; it seemed flat. At
the top of this wall was another stone railing about two feet
high. I grabbed for the edge to pull myself over the wall,
and my father, who is deceased, appeared and looked down
at me. He said, ‘You cannot come up yet; go back, you
have something left to do.’ I looked down and started to go
down and the next thing I heard were the words ‘She’s
coming back.'”
Mrs. j. L. H., a resident in her middle thirties living
in British Columbia, had an amazing experience on her
way back from the funeral of her stepfather, George H. She
was driving with a friend, Clarence G., and there was a
serious accident. Clarence was killed instantly, and Mrs. H.
was seriously hurt. “I don’t remember anything except see-
ing car lights coming at me, for I had been sleeping,” Mrs.
H. explained. “I first remember seeing my stepdad,
George, step forward out of a cloudy mist and touch me on
my left shoulder. He said, ‘Go back, June, it’s not time
yet.’ I woke up with the weight of his hand still on my
shoulder.”
The curious thing about this case is that two people
were in the same accident, yet one of them was evidently
marked for death while the other was not. After Mrs. H.
had recovered from her injuries and returned home, she
woke up one night to see a figure at the end of her bed
holding out his hand toward her as if wanting her to come
with him. When she turned her light on, the figure disap-
peared but it always returned when she turned the light
off again. During subsequent appearances, the entity tried
to lift Mrs. H. out of her bed, pulling all the covers off
her, thereafter forcing her to sleep with the lights on. It
would appear that Clarence could not understand why he
was on the other side of life without his friend.
Mrs. Phyllis G., also from Canada, had a most
remarkable experience in March 1949. She had just given
birth to twin boys at her home, and the confinement
seemed normal and natural. By late evening, however, she
began to suffer from a very severe headache. By morning
she was unconscious and was rushed to the hospital with a
cerebral hemorrhage. She was unconscious for three days
during which the doctors did their best to save her life. It
was during this time that she had a most remarkable expe-
rience.
‘‘My husband’s grandmother had died the previous
August, but she came to me during my unconscious state,
dressed in the whitest white robe, and there was light shin-
ing around her. She seemed to me to be in a lovely, quiet
meadow. Her arms were held out to me and she called my
name. ‘Phyllis, come with me.’ I told her this was not pos-
sible as I had my children to take care of. Again she said,
‘Phyllis, come with me, you will love it here.’ Once again,
I told her it wasn’t possible, I said, ‘Gran, I can't. I must
look after my children.’ With this she said, ‘I must take
someone. I will take Jeffrey.' I didn’t object to this, and
Gran just faded away.” Mrs. G. recovered, and her son
Jeffrey, the first of the two twins, wasn’t taken either and
at twenty-eight years old was doing fine. His mother, how-
ever, was plagued by a nagging feeling in the back of her
mind that perhaps his life may not be as long as it ought to
be. During the moments when her grandmother appeared,
Mrs. G. had been considered clinically dead.
There are many cases on record in which a person
begins to become part of another dimension even when
there is still hope for recovery, but at a time when the ties
between consciousness and body are already beginning to
loosen. An interesting case was reported to me by Mrs. J.
P. of California. While still a teenager, Mrs. P. had been
very ill with influenza but was just beginning to recover
when she had a most unusual experience.
One morning her father and mother came into her
bedroom to see how she was feeling. “After a few minutes
I asked them if they could hear the beautiful music. I still
remember that my father looked at my mother and said,
‘She’s delirious.’ I vehemently denied that. Soon they left.
As I glanced out my second-floor bedroom window
towards the wooded hills I love, I saw a sight that literally
took my breath away. There, superimposed on the trees,
was a beautiful cathedral -type structure from which that
beautiful music was emanating. Then I seemed to be look-
ing down on the people. Everyone was singing, but it was
the background music that thrilled my soul. Someone
dressed in white was leading the singing. The interior of
the church seemed strange to me. It was only in later years,
after I had attended services at an Episcopal church and
also at a Catholic church, that I realized the front of the
The Nature of Life and Death
17
church I had seen was more in the Catholic style, with the
beautiful altar. The vision faded. Two years later, when I
was ill again, the scene and music returned.”
On January 5, 1964, Mr. R. J. I. of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, was rushed to the hospital with a bleeding
ulcer. On admittance he received a shot and became
unconscious. Attempts were immediately made to stop the
bleeding, and finally he was operated on. During the oper-
ation, Mr. I. lost fifteen pints of blood, suffered convulsions,
and had a temperature of 106 degrees. He was as close to
death as one could come and was given the last rites of his
church. However, during the period of his unconsciousness
he had a remarkable experience. "On the day my doctor
told my wife I had only an hour to live, I saw, while
unconscious, a man with black hair and a white robe with a
gold belt come from behind the altar, look at me, and
shake his head. I was taken to a long hall, and purple robes
were laid out for me. There were many candles lit in this
hall.”
Many cases of this kind occur when the subject is
being prepared for surgery or undergoing surgery; some-
times the anesthetic allows disassociation to occur more
easily. This is not to say that people necessarily hallucinate
under the influence of anesthetic drugs or due to the lack
of blood or from any other physical cause. If death is the
dissolution of the link between physical body and etheric
body, it stands to reason that any loosening of this link is
likely to allow the etheric body to move away from its
physical shell, although still tied to it either by an invisible
silver cord or by some form of invisible tie that we do not
as yet fully understand. Otherwise those who have returned
from the great beyond would not have done so.
Mrs. J. M., a resident of Canada, was expecting her
fourth child in October 1956.
"Something went wrong, and when I had a contrac-
tion I went unconscious. My doctor was called, and I
remember him telling me he couldn’t give any anesthetic as
he might have to operate. Then I passed out, but I could
still hear him talking and myself talking back to him. Then
I couldn’t hear him any longer, and I found myself on the
banks of a river with green grass and white buildings on
the other side. I knew if I could get across I’d never be
tired again, but there was no bridge and the water was very
rough. I looked back and I saw myself lying there, back in
the hospital, with nurses and doctors around me, and Dr.
M. had his hand on the back of my neck and he was call-
ing me, and he looked so worried that I knew I had to go
back. I had the baby, and then I was back in the room and
the doctor explained to my husband what happened. I
asked him why he had his hand on my neck, and he
replied that it was the only place on my body where he
could find a pulse and for over a minute he couldn’t even
feel one there. Was this the time when I was standing on
the riverbank?”
CHAPTER ONE: The Nature of Life and Death
Deborah B. is a young lady living in California with
a long record of psychic experiences. At times, when she’s
intensely involved in an emotional situation, she undergoes
what we parapsychologists call a disassociation of personal-
ity. For a moment, she is able to look into another dimen-
sion, partake of visionary experiences not seen or felt by
others in her vicinity. One such incident occurred to Debo-
rah during a theater arts class at school. She looked up
from her script and saw “a man standing there in a flowing
white robe, staring at me, with golden or blond hair down
to his shoulders; a misty fog surrounded him. I couldn’t
make out his face, but I knew he was staring at me. During
this time I had a very peaceful and secure feeling. He then
faded away.”
Later that year, after an emotional dispute between
Deborah and her mother, another visionary experience took
place. "I saw a woman dressed in a long, blue flowing robe,
with a white shawl or veil over her head, beckoning to a
group of three or four women dressed in rose-colored robes
and white veils. The lady in blue was on the steps of a
church or temple with very large pillars. Then it faded
out.”
One might argue that Deborah’s imagination was cre-
ating visionary scenes within her, if it weren’t for the fact
that what she describes has been described by others, espe-
cially people who have found themselves on the threshold
of death and have returned. The beckoning figure in the
flowing robe has been reported by many, sometimes identi-
fied as Jesus, sometimes simply as master. The identifica-
tion of the figure depends, of course, on the religious or
metaphysical attitude of the subject, but the feeling caused
by his appearance seems to be universally the same: a sense
of peace and complete contentment.
Mrs. C. B. of Connecticut has had a heart problem
for over 25 years. The condition is under control so long as
she takes the tablets prescribed for her by her physician.
Whenever her blood pressure passes the two hundred
mark, she reaches for them. When her pulse rate does not
respond to the medication, she asks to be taken to the hos-
pital for further treatment. There drugs are injected into
her intravenously, a procedure that is unpleasant and that
she tries to avoid at all costs. But she has lived with this
condition for a long time and knows what she must do to
survive. On one occasion she had been reading in bed and
was still awake around five o’clock in the morning. Her
heart had been acting up again for an hour or so. She even
applied pressure to various pressure points she knew about,
in the hope that her home remedies would slow down her
pulse rate, but to no avail. Since she did not wish to
awaken her husband, she was waiting to see whether the
condition would abate itself. At that moment Mrs. B. had
a most remarkable experience.
"Into my window flew, or glided, a woman. She was
large, beautiful, and clothed in a multicolored garment with
either arms or wings close to her sides. She stopped and
hovered at the foot of my bed to the right and simply
18
stayed there. I was so shocked, and yet I knew that I was
seeing her as a physical being. She turned neither to the
right nor to the left but remained absolutely stone-faced
and said not a word. Then I seemed to become aware of
four cherubs playing around and in front of her. Yet I
sensed somehow that these were seen with my mind’s eye
rather than with the material eyes. I don’t know how to
explain from any reasonable standpoint what I said or did;
I only knew what happened. I thought, ‘This is the angel
of death. My time has come.’ I said audibly, ‘If you are
from God, I will go with you.’ As I reached out my hand
to her, she simply vanished in midair. Needless to say, the
cherubs vanished too. I was stunned, but my heart beat
had returned to normal.”
Mrs. L. L. of Michigan dreamed in July 1968 that
she and her husband had been killed in an automobile acci-
dent. In November of that year, the feeling that death was
all around her became stronger. Around the middle of the
month, the feeling was so overwhelming she telephoned her
husband, who was then on a hunting trip, and informed
him of her death fears. She discussed her apprehensions
with a neighbor, but nothing helped allay her uneasiness.
On December 17, Mrs. L. had still another dream, again
about imminent death. In this dream she knew that her
husband would die and that she could not save him, no
matter what she did. Two days later, Mrs. L. and her hus-
band were indeed in an automobile accident. He was killed,
and Mrs. L. nearly died. According to the attending physi-
cian, Dr. S., she should have been a dead woman, consid-
ering her injuries. But during the stay in the hospital, when
she had been given up and was visited by her sister, she
spoke freely about a place she was seeing and the dead rel-
atives she was in contact with at the time. Although she
was unconscious, she knew that her husband was dead, but
she also knew that her time had not come, that she had a
purpose to achieve in life and therefore could not stay on
the "plane” on which she temporarily was. The sister, who
did not understand any of this, asked whether Mrs. L. had
seen God and whether she had visited heaven. The uncon-
scious subject replied that she had not seen God nor was
she in heaven, but on a certain plane of existence. The sis-
ter thought that all this was nonsense and that her dying
sister was delirious, and left.
Mrs. L. herself remembers quite clearly how life
returned to her after her visit to the other plane. “I felt life
coming to my body, from the tip of my toes to the tip of
my head. I knew I couldn’t die. Something came back into
my body; I think it was my soul. I was at complete peace
about everything and could not grieve about the death of
my husband. I had complete forgiveness for the man who
hit us; I felt no bitterness toward him at all.”
Do some people get an advance glimpse of their own
demise? It would be easy to dismiss some of the precogni-
tive or seemingly precognitive dreams as anxiety -caused,
perhaps due to the dreamer’s fantasies. However, many of
these dreams parallel each other and differ from ordinary
anxiety dreams in their intensity and the fact that they are
remembered so very clearly upon awakening.
A good case in point is a vivid dream reported to me
by Mrs. Peggy C., who lives in a New York suburb. The
reason for her contacting me was the fact that she had
developed a heart condition and was wondering whether a
dream she had had twenty years before was an indication
that her life was nearing its end. In the dream that had so
unnerved her through the years, she was walking past a
theater where she met a dead brother-in-law. "I said to
him, ‘Hi, Charlie, what are you doing here?’ He just
smiled, and then in my dream it dawned on me that the
dead come for the living. I said to him ‘Did you come for
me?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said to him, 'Did I die?’ He said,
‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I wasn’t sick. Was it my heart?’ He nodded,
and I said, ‘I’m scared.’ He said, ‘There is nothing to be
scared of, just hold onto me.’ I put my arms around him,
and we sailed through the air of darkness. It was not a
frightening feeling but a pleasant sensation. I could see the
buildings beneath us. Then we came to a room where a
woman was sitting at a desk. In the room were my brother-
in-law, an old lady, and a mailman. She called me to her
desk. I said, ‘Do we have to work here too?’ She said, ‘We
are all assigned to duties. What is your name?’ I was chris-
tened Bernadine, but my mother never used the name. I
was called Peggy. I told her ‘Peggy.’ She said, ‘No, your
name is Bernadine.’ Then, my brother-in-law took me by
the arms and we were going upstairs when I awakened. I
saw my husband standing over me with his eyes wide
open, but I could not move. I was thinking to myself,
‘Please shake me, I’m alive,’ but I could not move or talk.
After a few minutes, my body jerked in bed, and I opened
my eyes and began to cry.” The question is, did Mrs. C.
have a near-death experience and return from it, or was her
dream truly precognitive, indicative perhaps of things yet
to come?
Doctor Karlis Osis published his findings concerning
many deathbed experiences, wherein the dying recognize
dead relatives in the room who have seemingly come to
help them across the threshold into the next world. A lady
in South Carolina, Mrs. M. C., reported one particularly
interesting case to me. She herself has a fair degree of
mediumship, which is a factor in the present case. “I stood
behind my mother as she lay dying at the age of some sev-
enty years. She had suffered a cerebral stroke, and was
unable to speak. Her attendants claimed they had had no
communication with her for over a week. As I let my mind
go into her, she spoke clearly and flawlessly, ‘If only you
could see how beautiful and perfect it all is,’ she said, then
called out to her dead father, saying ‘Papa, Papa.’ I then
spoke directly to her and asked her, did she see Papa? She
answered as if she had come home, so to speak. ‘Yes, I see
Papa.’ She passed over onto the other side shortly, in a
matter of days. It was as if her father had indeed come
The Nature of Life and Death
19
after her, as if we saw him, and she spoke to me clearly,
with paralyzed mouth and throat muscles.”
Sometimes the dead want the living to know how
wonderful their newfound world is. Whether this is out of
a need to make up for ignorance in one’s earth life, where
such knowledge is either outside one’s ken or ignored, or
whether this is in order to acquaint the surviving relative
with what lies ahead, cases involving such excursions into
the next world tend to confirm the near-death experiences
of those who have gone into it on their own, propelled by
accidents or unusual states of consciousness. One of the
most remarkable reports of this kind came to me through
the kindness of two sisters living in England. Mrs. Doreen
B., a senior nursing administrator, had witnessed death on
numerous occasions. Here is her report.
“In May 1968 my dear mother died. I had nursed
her at home, during which time we had become extremely
close. My mother was a quiet, shy woman who always
wished to remain in the background. Her last weeks were
ones of agony; she had terminal cancer with growths in
many parts of her body. Towards the end of her life I had
to heavily sedate her to alleviate the pain, and after saying
good-bye to my daughter on the morning of the seventh of
May, she lapsed into semiconsciousness and finally died in
a coma, approximately 2:15 A.M. on the eighth of May
1968. A few nights after her death I was gently awakened.
I opened my eyes and saw Mother.
“Before I relate what happened, I should like to say
that I dream vividly every night, and this fact made me
more aware that I was not dreaming. I had not taken any
drinks or drugs, although of course my mind and emotions
revolved around my mother. After Mother woke me, I
arose from my bed; my hand instinctively reached out for
my dressing gown, but I do not remember putting it on.
Mother said that she would take me to where she was. I
reacted by saying that I would get the car out, but she said
that I would not need it. We traveled quickly, I do not
know how, but I was aware that we were in the Durking
Leatherhead area and entering another dimension.
“The first thing I saw was a large archway. I knew I
had seen it before, although it means nothing to me now.
Inside the entrance a beautiful sight met my eyes. There
was glorious parkland, with shrubbery and flowers of many
colors. We traveled across the parkland and came to a low-
built white building. It seemed to have the appearance of a
convalescent home. There was a veranda, but no windows
or doors as we know them. Inside everything was white,
and Mother showed me a bed that she said was hers. I was
aware of other people, but they were only shadowy white
figures. Mother was very worried about some of them and
told me that they did not know that they were dead. How-
ever, I was aware that one of a group of three was a man.
“Mother had always been very frugal in dress, possi-
bly due to her hardships in earlier years. Therefore her
CHAPTER ONE: The Nature of Life and Death
wardrobe was small but neat, and she spent very little on
clothing if she could alter and mend. Because of this I was
surprised when she said she wished that she had more
clothes. In life Mother was the kindest of women, never
saying or thinking ill of anyone. Therefore I found it hard
to understand her resentment of a woman in a long, flow-
ing robe who appeared on a bridge in the grounds. The
bridge looked beautiful, but Mother never took me near it.
I now had to return, but to my question, 'Are you happy?’
I was extremely distressed to know that she did not want
to leave her family. Before Mother left me she said a gentle
‘Good-bye dear.’ It was said with a quiet finality, and I
knew that I would never see her again.
"It was only afterward when I related it to my sister
that I realized that Mother had been much more youthful
than when she died and that her back, which in life had
been rounded, was straight. Also I realized that we had not
spoken through our lips but as if by thought, except when
she said, ‘Good-bye, dear.’ It is now three-and-a-half years
since this happening, and I have had no further experience.
I now realize that I must have seen Mother during her
transition period, when she was still earthbound, possibly
from the effects of the drugs I administered under medical
supervision, and when her tie to her family, particularly
her grandchild, was still very strong.”
Don Mcl., a professional astrologer living in Rich-
land, Washington, has no particular interest in psychic
phenomena, is in his early seventies, and worked most of
his life as a security patrolman. His last employment was at
an atomic plant in Washington state. After retirement, he
took up astrology full-time. Nevertheless, he had a remark-
able experience that convinced him of the reality of afterlife
existence.
“On November 15, 1971, at about 6:30 A.M., I was
beginning to awaken when I clearly saw the face of my
cousin beside and near the foot of my bed. He said, ‘Don,
I have died.’ Then his face disappeared, but the voice was
definitely his own distinctive voice. As far as I knew at that
time, he was alive and well. The thought of telling my wife
made me feel uncomfortable, so I did not tell her of the
incident. At 1 1:00 A.M. , about four- and- a-half hours after
my psychic experience, the mail arrived. In it was a letter
from my cousin’s widow, informing us that he had a heart
failure and was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospi-
tal. She stated that his death occurred at 9:30 P.M.,
November 8, 1971, at Ventura, California. My home,
where my psychic experience took place, is at least a thou-
sand miles from Ventura, California. The incident is the
only psychic experience I’ve ever had.”
William W. lives and works in Washington, D.C.
Because of some remarkable psychic incidents in his life, he
began to wonder about the survival of human personality.
One evening he had a dream in which he saw himself
walking up a flight of stairs where he was met by a woman
whom he immediately recognized as his elderly great-aunt.
She had died in 1936. “However she was dressed in a long
20
gray dress of about the turn-of-the-century style, her hair
was black, and she looked vibrantly young. I asked her in
the dream where the others were, and she referred me to a
large room at the top of the stairs. The surroundings were
not familiar. I entered the room and was amazed to see
about fifteen people in various types of dress, both male
and female and all looking like mature adults, some about
the age of thirty. I was able to recognize nearly all of these
people although most I had seen when they were quite old.
All appeared jovial and happy. I awakened from the dream
with the feeling that somebody had been trying to tell me
something.”
There are repeated reports indicating that the dead
revert to their best years, which lie around the age of thirty
in most cases, because they are able to project a thought-
form of themselves as they wish. On the other hand, where
apparitions of the dead are intended to prove survival of an
individual, they usually appear as they looked prior to
death, frequently wearing the clothes they wore at the time
of their passing.
Not all temporary separations of the body and etheric
self include a visit to the next world. Sometimes the liber-
ated self merely hangs around to observe what is being
done with the body. Mrs. Elaine L. of Washington state
reported an experience that happened to her at the age of
sixteen. "I had suffered several days from an infected back
tooth, and since my face was badly swollen, our dentist
refused to remove the tooth until the swelling subsided.
When it did, and shortly after the novocaine was adminis-
trated, I found myself floating close to an open window. I
saw my body in the dental chair and the dentist working
feverishly. Our landlady, Mrs. E., who had brought me to
the dentist, stood close by, shaking me and looking quite
flabbergasted and unbelieving. My feeling at the time was
of complete peace and freedom. There was no pain, no
anxiety, not even an interest in what was happening close
to that chair.
“Soon I was back to the pain and remember as I left
the office that I felt a little resentful. The dentist phoned
frequently during the next few days for assurance that I
was alright.”
According to one report, a Trappist monk who had
suffered a cardiac arrest for a period of ten minutes
remembered a visit to a world far different from that which
his religion had taught him. Brother G. spoke of seeing
fluffy white clouds and experiencing a sense of great joy.
As a result of his amazing experience, the monk now helps
people on the terminal list of a local hospital face death
more adequately. He can tell them that there nothing to
fear.
A New Jersey physician, Dr. Joseph G., admitted
publicly that he had "died” after a severe attack of pneu-
monia in 1934 and could actually see himself lying on the
deathbed. At the time, worrying how his mother would feel
if he died, he heard a voice tell him that it was entirely up
to him whether wanted to stay on the physical plane or go
across. Because of his own experience, Dr. G. later paid
serious attention to the accounts of several patients who
had similar experiences.
The number of cases involving near-death
experiences — reports from people who were clinically dead
for varying lengths of time and who then recovered and
remembered what they experienced while unconscious — is
considerable. If we assume that universal law covers all
contingencies, there should be no exceptions to it. Why
then are some people allowed to glimpse what lies ahead
for them in the next dimension without actually entering
that dimension at the time of the experience? After investi-
gating large numbers of such cases, I can only surmise that
there are two reasons. First of all, there must be a degree
of self-determination involved, allowing the subject to go
forward to the next dimension or return to the body. As a
matter of fact, in many cases, though not in all, the person
is being given that choice and elects to return to earth. Sec-
ondly, by the dissemination of these witnesses’ reports
among those in the physical world, knowledge is put at our
disposal, or rather at the disposal of those who wish to lis-
ten. It is a little like a congressional leak — short of an offi-
cial announcement, but much more than a mere rumor. In
the final analysis, those who are ready to understand the
nature of life will derive benefits from this information, and
those who are not ready, will not.
The Nature of Life and Death
21
7
i
*
CHAPTER TWO
What Every
Would-be
Ghost Hunter
Should Know
EVER SINCE I WROTE my first book, entitled Ghost Hunter, in 1965, that epithet has stuck to
me like glue even when it was clearly not politic, such as when I started to teach parapsychol-
ogy at the New York Institute of Technology and received a professorship. As more and more
of my true ghost stories appeared in my books, a new vogue — amateur ghost hunting — sprang up.
Some of these ghost hunters were genuinely interested in research, but many were strictly looking for a
thrill or just curious. Foolish assumptions accompany every fad, as well as some dangers. Often a lack
of understanding of the aspects of ghost hunting, of what the phenomena mean, is harmless; on the
more serious side, this lack of knowledge can cause problems at times, especially when the possibility
exists of making contact with a negative person for whom death has changed very little.
However, readers should keep in mind when looking at these pages the need to forget a popular
notion about ghosts: that they are always dangerous, fearful, and hurt people. Nothing could be fur-
ther from the truth. Nor are ghosts figments of the imagination, or the product of motion picture writ-
ers. Ghostly experiences are neither supernatural nor unnatural; they fit into the general pattern of the
universe we live in, although the majority of conventional scientists don’t yet understand what exactly
ghosts are. Some do, however — those who have studied parapsychology have come to understand that
human life does continue beyond what we commonly call death. Once in a while, there are extraordi-
nary circumstances surrounding a death, and these exceptional circumstances create what we popularly
call ghosts and haunted houses.
Ever since the dawn of humankind, people have believed in ghosts. The fear of the unknown, the
certainty that there was something somewhere out there, bigger than life, beyond its pale, and more
powerful than anything walking the earth, has persisted throughout the ages, and had its origins in
primitive man’s thinking. To him, there were good and evil forces at work in nature, which were ruled
over by supernatural beings, and were to some
degree capable of being influenced by the attitudes
and prayers of humans. Fear of death was, of What Every Would-be
Ghost Hunter Should Know
23
course, one of the strongest human emotions. It still is.
Although some belief in survival after physical death has
existed from the beginning of time, no one has ever cher-
ished the notion of leaving this earth.
Then what are ghosts — if indeed there are such
things? To the materialist and the professional skeptic —
that is to say, people who do not wish their belief that
death is the end of life as we know it to be disturbed — the
notion of ghosts is unacceptable. No matter how much evi-
dence is presented to support the reality of the phenomena,
these people will argue against it and ascribe it to any of
several "natural” causes. Delusion or hallucination must be
the explanation, or perhaps a mirage, if not outright trick-
ery. Entire professional groups that deal in the manufactur-
ing of illusions have taken it upon themselves to label
anything that defies their ability to reproduce it artificially
through trickery or manipulation as false or nonexistent.
Especially among photographers and magicians, the notion
that ghosts exist has never been popular. But authentic
reports of psychic phenomena along ghostly lines keep
coming into reputable report centers such as societies for
psychic research, or to parapsychologists like myself.
Granted, a certain number of these reports may be
inaccurate due to self-delusion or other errors of fact. Still
an impressive number of cases remains that cannot be
explained by any other means than that of extrasensory
perception.
According to psychic research, a ghost appears to be
a surviving emotional memory of someone who has died
traumatically, and usually tragically, but is unaware of his
or her death. A few ghosts may realize that they are dead
but may be confused as to where they are, or why they do
not feel quite the way they used to feel. When death
occurs unexpectedly or unacceptably, or when a person has
lived in a place for a very long time, acquiring certain rou-
tine habits and becoming very attached to the premises,
sudden, unexpected death may come as a shock. Unwilling
to part with the physical world, such human personalities
continue to stay on in the very spot where their tragedy or
their emotional attachment had existed prior to physical
death.
Ghosts do not travel; they do not follow people
home; nor do they appear at more than one place. Never-
theless, there are reliable reports of apparitions of the dead
having indeed traveled and appeared to several people in
various locations. These, however, are not ghosts in the
sense that I understand the term. They are free spirits, or
discarnate entities, who are inhabiting what Dr. Joseph B.
Rhine of Duke University has called the “world of the
mind.” They may be attracted for emotional reasons to one
place or another at a given moment in order to communi-
cate with someone on the earth plane. But a true ghost is
unable to make such moves freely. Ghosts by their very
CHAPTER TWO: What Every Would-be
Ghost Hunter Should Know
nature are not unlike psychotics in the flesh; they are quite
unable to fully understand their own predicament. They
are kept in place, both in time and space, by their emo-
tional ties to the spot. Nothing can pry them loose from it
so long as they are reliving over and over again in their
minds the events leading to their unhappy deaths.
Sometimes this is difficult for the ghost, as he may be
too strongly attached to feelings of guilt or revenge to “let
go.” But eventually a combination of informative remarks
by the parapsychologist and suggestions to call upon the
deceased person’s family will pry him loose and send him
out into the free world of the spirit.
Ghosts have never harmed anyone except through
fear found within the witness, of his own doing and
because of his own ignorance as to what ghosts represent.
The few cases where ghosts have attacked people of flesh
and blood, such as the ghostly abbot of Trondheim, are
simply a matter of mistaken identity, where extreme vio-
lence at the time of death has left a strong residue of mem-
ory in the individual ghost. By and large, it is entirely safe
to be a ghost hunter or to become a witness to phenomena
of this kind.
In his chapter on ghosts, in Man, Myth, and Magic,
Douglas Hill presents alternate hypotheses one by one and
examines them. Having done so, he states, "None of these
explanations is wholly satisfactory, for none seems applica-
ble to the whole range of ghost lore.” Try as man might,
ghosts can’t be explained away, nor will they disappear.
They continue to appear frequently all over the world, to
young and old, rich and poor, in old houses and in new
houses, on airports and in streets, and wherever tragedy
strikes man. For ghosts are indeed nothing more or nothing
less than a human being trapped by special circumstances
in this world while already being of the next. Or, to put it
another way, a human being whose spirit is unable to leave
the earthy surroundings because of unfinished business or
emotional entanglements.
It is important not to be influenced by popular rendi-
tions of ghostly phenomena. This holds true with most
movies, with the lone exception of the recent picture Ghost,
which was quite accurate. Television, where distortions and
outright inventions abound, is especially troublesome. The
so-called “reality” shows such as "Sightings” and some of
its imitators like to present as much visual evidence of
ghosts as they can — all within a span of seven minutes, the
obligatory length for a story in such programs.
To capture the attention of an eager audience, these
shows present “authorities” as allegedly renowned parapsy-
chologists who chase after supposed ghosts with all sorts of
technical equipment, from Geiger counters to oscilloscopes
to plain flashlights. No professional investigator who has
had academic training uses any of this stuff, but the pro-
grams don’t really care.
Another difficult aspect of the quest for ghosts is that
not everything that appears to fit the category does indeed
belong in it.
24
Phenomena, encounters, and experiences are either
visual, auditory, or olfactory — they are manufactured
through sight, sound, or smell. In addition, there are pol-
tergeist phenomena, which are nothing more than products
of the phase of a haunting when the entity is capable of
producing physical effects, such as the movement of
objects.
Even an experienced investigator can’t always tell to
which class of phenomena an event belongs — only after
further investigation over an extended period of time is an
explanation forthcoming.
All three types of the phenomena (except for polter-
geists) can be caused by the following:
1 . A bona fide ghost — that is, a person who has
passed out of the physical body but remains in the etheric
body (aura, soul) at or near the place of the passing due to
emotional ties or trauma. Such entities are people in trou-
ble, who are seeking to understand their predicament and
are usually not aware of their own passing.
The proof that the ghost is “real” lies in the behavior
of the phenomena. If different witnesses have seen or heard
different things, or at different times of the day, then we
are dealing with a ghost.
In the mind of the casual observer, of course, ghosts
and spirits are the same thing. Not so to the trained para-
psychologist: ghosts are similar to psychotic human beings,
incapable of reasoning for themselves or taking much
action. Spirits, on the other hand, are the surviving person-
alities of all of us who pass through the door of death in a
relatively normal fashion. A spirit is capable of continuing
a full existence in the next dimension, and can think, rea-
son, feel, and act, while his unfortunate colleague, the
ghost, can do none of these things. All he can do is repeat
the final moments of his passing, the unfinished business,
as it were, over and over again until it becomes an obses-
sion. In this benighted state, ghosts are incapable of much
action and therefore are almost always harmless. In the
handful of cases where ghosts seem to have caused people
suffering, a relationship existed between the person and the
ghost. Someone slept in a bed in which someone else had
been murdered and was mistaken by the murderer for the
same individual, or the murderer returned to the scene of
his crime and was attacked by the person he had killed.
But by and large, ghosts do not attack people, and there is
no danger in observing them or having contact with them,
if one is able to.
The majority of ghostly manifestations draw upon
energy from the living in order to penetrate our three-
dimensional world. Other manifestations are subjective,
especially when the receiver is psychic. In this case, the
psychic person hears or sees the departed individual in his
mind’s eye only, while others cannot so observe the ghost.
Where an objective manifestation takes place, and
everyone present is capable of hearing or seeing it, energy
drawn from the living is used by the entity to cause certain
phenomena, such as an apparition, a voice phenomenon, or
perhaps the movement of objects, the sound of footsteps,
or doors opening by themselves, and other signs of a pres-
ence. When the manifestations become physical in nature
and are capable of being observed by several individuals or
recorded by machines, they are called poltergeist phenom-
ena, or noisy phenomena. Not every ghostly manifestation
leads to that stage, but many do. Frequently, the presence
in the household of young children or of mentally handi-
capped older people lends itself to physical manifestations
of this kind, since the unused or untapped sexual energies
are free to be used for that purpose.
Ghosts — that is, individuals unaware of their own
passing or incapable of accepting the transition because of
unfinished business — will make themselves known to living
people at infrequent intervals. There is no sure way of
knowing when or why some individuals make a post-
mortem appearance and others do not. It seems to depend
on the intensity of feeling, the residue of unresolved prob-
lems, that they have within their system at the time of
death. Consequently, not everyone dying a violent death
becomes a ghost; far from it. If this were so, our battle-
fields and such horror-laden places as concentration camps
or prisons would indeed be swarming with ghosts, but they
are not. It depends on the individual attitude of the person
at the time of death, whether he or she accepts the passing
and proceeds to the next stage of existence, or whether he
or she is incapable of realizing that a change is taking place
and consequently clings to the familiar physical environ-
ment, the earth sphere.
A common misconception concerning ghosts is that
they appear only at midnight, or, at any rate, only at night;
or that they eventually fade away as time goes on. To
begin with, ghosts are split-off parts of a personality and
are incapable of realizing the difference between day and
night. They are always in residence, so to speak, and can
be contacted by properly equipped mediums at all times.
They may put in an appearance only at certain hours of
the day or night, depending upon the atmosphere; for the
fewer physical disturbances there are, the easier it is for
them to communicate themselves to the outer world. They
are dimly aware that there is something out there that is
different from themselves, but their diminished reality does
not permit them to grasp the situation fully. Consequently,
a quiet moment, such as is more likely to be found at night
than in the daytime, is the period when the majority of
sightings are reported.
Some manifestations occur on the exact moment of
the anniversary, because it is then that the memory of the
unhappy event is strongest. But that does not mean that
the ghost is absent at other times — merely less capable of
manifesting itself. Since ghosts are not only expressions of
human personality left behind in the physical atmosphere
What Every Would-be
Ghost Hunter Should Know
25
but are, in terms of physical science, electromagnetic fields
uniquely impressed by the personality and memories of the
departed one, they represent a certain energy imprint in the
atmosphere and, as such, cannot simply fade into nothing-
ness. Albert Einstein demonstrated that energy never dissi-
pates, it only transmutes into other forms. Thus ghosts do
not fade away over the centuries; they are, in effect, present
for all eternity unless someone makes contact with them
through a trance medium and brings reality to them, allow-
ing them to understand their predicament and thus free
themselves from their self-imposed prison. The moment
the mirror of truth is held up to a ghost, and he or she
realizes that the problems that seem insoluble are no longer
important, he or she will be able to leave.
Frequently, rescuers have to explain that the only
way a ghost can leave is by calling out to someone close to
her in life — a loved one or a friend who will then come and
take her away with them into the next stage of existence,
where she should have gone long before. This is called the
rescue circle and is a rather delicate operation requiring the
services of a trained psychical researcher and a good trance
medium. Amateurs are warned not to attempt it, especially
not alone.
2. No more than 10-1 5% of all sightings or other
phenomena are “real” ghosts. The larger portion of all
sightings or sound phenomena is caused by a replaying of a
past emotional event, one that has somehow been left
behind, impressed into the atmosphere of the place or
house. Any sensitive person — and that means a large seg-
ment of the population — can re -experience such events to
varying degrees. To them these replays may seem no dif-
ferent from true ghostly phenomena, except that they occur
exactly in the same place and at the same time of day to all
those who witness them.
These phenomena are called psychic impressions, and
they are in a way like photographs of past events, usually
those with high emotional connotations.
3. There are cases in which sightings or sounds of
this kind are caused by the living who are far away, not in
time but geographically. “Phantoms of the living” is one
name given the phenomenon, which is essentially tele-
pathic. Usually these apparitions or sounds occur when it
is urgent that a person reach someone who is at a distance,
such as in family crises, emergencies, or on occasion,
between lovers or people who are romantically linked.
These projections of the inner body are involuntary,
and cannot be controlled. A variant of these phenomena,
however, deliberate projections, which occur when a person
puts all her emotional strength into reaching someone who
is far away. Instances of this are quite rare, however.
CHAPTER TWO: What Every Would-be
Ghost Hunter Should Know
4. Finally, we should keep in mind that though
apparitions may appear to be identical, whether as earth-
bound spirits called ghosts, or free spirits in full possession
of all mental and emotional faculties and memories — just
visiting, so to speak, to convey a message — ghosts and spir-
its are not the same.
Compare a ghostly apparition or a spirit visit to a
precious stone: a diamond and a zircon look practically the
same, but they are totally different in their value. Spirits
are people like you and I who have passed on to the next
world without too much difficulty or too many problems;
they are not bound to anything left behind in the physical
world. They do, however, have ties and emotional interests
in the family or friends they left behind, and they might
need to let people in this world know that they are all right
"over there,” or they may have some business in the living
world that needs to be taken care of in an orderly fashion.
Ghosts, too, may have unfinished business, but are gener-
ally unable to convey their requests clearly.
Spirits, people who have died and are living in their
duplicate "inner body,” the etheric body or aura, are differ-
ent from physical living people in respect to certain limita-
tions and the time element, but spirits are simply people
who have passed on to the next world with their memories
and interests intact.
The only thing these four categories of phenomena
have indeed in common is their density: they seem three-
dimensional and quite solid most of the time (though not
always), but try to touch one, and your hand will go right
through.
Only materializations are truly three-dimensional and
physical, and they do occur when there is enough energy
present to "clothe” the etheric body with an albumin sub-
stance called ectoplasm or teleplasm, drawn from the
glands of the medium and/or assistants (known as sitters)
during a seance, and sometimes even spontaneously site
where something very powerfully traumatic has occurred
in the past.
Such materializations look and even feel like physical
bodies, but touching them may dissolve them or hurt the
principal medium, as does bright light. In any event, the
ectoplasm must be returned whence it came to avoid shock
and illness.
The temptation to reproduce that rarest of all psychic
phenomena, the full materialization, is of course always
present, but also easy to spot. When I unmasked a group
of such fakers as part of an investigation into one of the
Spiritualist camps in Pennsylvania, I presented the evidence
on television in a program I helped produce and appeared
in with Mike Wallace, who remarked, “You mean these are
only ghostly actors?” to which I replied spontaneously,
“No, just ghastly actors, because I caught them in the act.”
Seances, which are nothing fancier than a group of
people getting together for a “sitting” in the hope that a
departed spirit might be able to communicate through her
26
or his principal medium or one of the sitters, have fallen
out of favor these days. But if someone asks you to a
seance promising you that someone on the other side of life
will be contacted, or “called” — beware. The folks on the
other side are the ones who decide that they want contact
with us, not the other way around.
Ouija Boards, crystal balls, and tarot cards are all
useful in helping a psychic focus his or her natural gift, but
they have no powers of their own. Using a board can bring
trouble if those using it are potential deep-trance mediums,
because an unscrupulous person on the other side might
want to come in and take over the players, which would
result in possession.
Communication with ghosts or spirits does sometimes
occur, however, when one of the persons operating the
board is psychic enough to supply the energy for a com-
munication to take place. But the majority of what comes
through a Ouija board is just stuff from the sitter’s own
unconscious mind, and often it is just gibberish.
A word about the dreams of ghosts or departed loved
ones. We are either awake or asleep. In my view, however,
if we are asleep we are “adream,” for we dream all the time
even if we don’t always remember it or are not aware of it.
Some psychic experiences involving ghosts and spirits
occur during sleep in the form of quasi-dreams. These are
not really bona fide dreams. It is just that in the sleep-
dream state, when our conscious mind is at rest, the com-
municator finds it easier to “get through” to us than when
we are fully awake and our conscious mind and rational
attitude make it harder for the communicator’s emanations
to penetrate our consciousness.
Many who have had such dream visitations think that
they “just dreamt” the whole thing, and the medical estab-
lishment encourages this by and large, classifying such
events as quasi -fantasies or nightmares, as the case may be.
But in reality, they are nothing of the kind. These dreams
are just as real and as meaningful in their purpose as are
encounters with ghosts or spirits when one is fully awake,
either at night or in plain daylight.
In the dream state, visitors do not cast objective
shadows, as they often do in the waking condition, but
they are actual people, existing in etheric bodies, who are
making contact with our own etheric bodies. The message,
if any, is often much clearer than it is with ordinary
dreams.
We should pay attention to such incursions from the
world next door, and the people who continue their exis-
tence therein, whether the event occurs while one is awake
or asleep. Most important of all, do not fear either ghosts
or spirits. They will not harm you — only your own fear
can do that. And fear is only the absence of information.
By reading these lines, you are taking an important step
toward the understanding of what ghosts and spirits really
are.
The cases in this book are taken from my files, which
are bulging with interesting experiences of ordinary people
in all walks of life, and from all corners of the globe. The
majority of the witnesses knew nothing about ghosts, nor
did they seek out such phenomena. When they experienced
the happenings described in these pages, they were taken
by surprise; sometimes shocked, sometimes worried. They
came to me for advice because they could not obtain satis-
factory counsel from ordinary sources such as psycholo-
gists, psychiatrists, or ministers.
Small wonder, for such professionals are rarely
equipped to deal with phenomena involving parapsychol-
ogy. Perhaps in years to come they will be able to do so,
but not now. In all the cases, I advised the individuals not
to be afraid of what might transpire in their presence, to
take the phenomenon as part of human existence and to
deal with it in a friendly, quiet way. The worst reaction is
to become panicky in the presence of a ghost, since it will
not help the ghost and will cause the observer unnecessary
anxiety. Never forget that those who are “hung up”
between two phases of existence are in trouble and not
troublemakers, and a compassionate gesture toward them
may very well relieve their anxieties.
The people whose cases I tell of in these pages seek
no publicity or notoriety; they have come to terms with the
hauntings to which they were witness. In some cases, a
haunting has changed a person’s outlook on life by show-
ing him the reality of another world next door. In other
cases, what was once fear has turned into a better under-
standing of the nature of humans; still other instances have
permitted witnesses to the phenomena a better understand-
ing of the situation of departed loved ones, and a reassuring
feeling that they will meet again in a short time on the
other side of the curtain.
Remember that any of the phenomena described here
could have happened to you, that there is nothing supernat-
ural about any of this, and that in years to come you will
deal with apparitions as ordinary events, part and parcel of
human experience.
Lastly, I would suggest to my readers that they do
not get into arguments about the existence or nonexistence
of ghosts and haunted houses. Everyone must find their
own explanations for what they experience, and belief has
nothing to do with it.
Indeed, one of the most troubling aspects of today’s
world is this matter of beliefs. The power of one’s beliefs is
a frightening thing. People often believe in things and
events whether they have actually happened or not.
Because of beliefs people are murdered, wars are fought,
crimes are committed. Disbelief, too, contributes its share
of tragedies.
Beliefs — and disbeliefs — are emotional in nature, not
rational. The reasoning behind certain beliefs may sound
rational, but it may be completely untrue, exaggerated,
taken out of context, or distorted.
What Every Would-be
Ghost Hunter Should Know
27
Once belief or disbelief by one person becomes pub-
lic knowledge and spreads to large numbers of people,
some very serious problems arise: love and compassion go
out the window, and emotionally tinged beliefs (or disbe-
liefs) take over, inevitably leading to action, and usually to
some kind of violence — physical, material, emotional, or
moral.
In this world of spiritual uncertainty, an ever-
increasing contingent of people of all ages and backgrounds
want a better, safer world free of fanaticism, a world where
discussion and mutual tolerance takes the place of violent
confrontation.
It is sad but true that religion, far from pacifying the
destructive emotions, frequently contributes to them, and
sometimes is found at the very heart of the problem itself.
For religion today has drifted so far from spirituality that it
no longer represents the link to the deity that it originally
stood for, when the world was young and smaller.
When people kill one another because their alleged
paths to the deity differ, they may need a signpost indicat-
ing where to turn to regain what has been patently lost. I
think this signpost is the evidence for humankind's survival
of physical death, as shown in these pages, the eternal link
between those who have gone on into the next phase of life
and those who have been left behind, at least temporarily.
Belief is uncritical acceptance of something you can-
not prove one way or another. But the evidence for ghosts
and hauntings is so overwhelming, so large and so well
documented, that arguing over the existence of the evi-
dence would be a foolish thing indeed.
It is not a matter for speculation and in need of fur-
ther proofs: those who look for evidence of the afterlife can
easily find it, not only in these pages but also in many
other works and in the records of groups investigating psy-
chic phenomena through scientific research.
Once we realize how the “system” works, and that
we pass on to another stage of existence, our perspective on
life is bound to change. I consider it part of my work and
mission to contribute knowledge to this end, to clarify the
confusion, the doubts, the negativity so common in people
today, and to replace these unfortunate attitudes with a
wider expectation of an ongoing existence where everything
one does in one lifetime counts toward the next phase, and
toward the return to another lifetime in the physical world.
Those who fear the proof of the continued existence
beyond the dissolution of the physical, outer body and
would rather not know about it are short-changing them-
selves, for surely they will eventually discover the truth
about the situation first-hand anyway.
And while there may be various explanations for
what people experience in haunted houses, no explanation
will ever be sufficient to negate the experiences themselves.
If you are one of the many who enter a haunted house and
have a genuine experience in it, be assured that you are a
perfectly normal human being, who uses a natural gift that
is neither harmful nor dangerous and may in the long run
be informative and even useful.
CHAPTER TWO: What Every Would-be
Ghost Hunter Should Know
28
CHAPTER THREE
Ghosts and the
World of the Living
I HASTEN TO STATE that those who are in the next dimension, the world of the spirit, are indeed
“alive” — in some ways more so than we who inhabit the three-dimensional, physical world with its
limitations and problems.
This book is about ghosts in relation to us, however, for it is the living in this world who come in
contact with the dead. Since ghosts don’t necessarily seek us out, ghosts just are because of the cir-
cumstances of their deaths.
For us to be able to see or hear a ghost requires a gift known as psychic ability or ESP — extra-
sensory perception. Professor Joseph Banks Rhine of Duke University thinks of ESP as an extra sense.
Some have referred to it as “the sixth sense,” although I rather think the gift of ESP is merely an
extension of the ordinary senses beyond their usual limitations.
If you don’t have ESP, you’re not likely to encounter a ghost or connect with the spirit of a loved
one. Take heart, however: ESP is very common, in varying degrees, and about half of all people are
capable of it. It is, in my view, a normal gift that has in many instances been neglected or suppressed
for various reasons, chiefly ignorance or fear.
Psychic ability is being recognized and used today worldwide in many practical applications. Sci-
entific research, business, and criminal investigations have utilized this medium to extend the range of
ordinary research.
The problems of acknowledging this extra faculty are many. Prior to the nineteenth century, any-
thing bordering on the occult was considered religious heresy and had to be suppressed or at least kept
quiet. In the nineteenth century, with social and economic revolution came an overbearing insistence
on things material, and science was made a new god. This god of tangible evidence leaped into our
present century invigorated by new technological discoveries and improvements. Central to all this is
the belief that only what is available to the ordinary five senses is real, and that everything else is not
merely questionable but outright fantasy. Fantasy
itself is not long for this world, as it does not seem
Ghosts and the World of the Living
29
to fill any useful purpose in the realm of computers and
computerized humans.
Laboring under these difficult conditions, Dr. Rhine
developed a new scientific approach to the phenomena of
the sixth sense some thirty years ago when he brought
together and formalized many diffused research approaches
in his laboratory at Duke University. But pure materialism
dies hard — in fact, dies not at all. Even while Rhine was
offering proof for the “psi factor” in human personality —
fancy talk for the sixth sense — he was attacked by expo-
nents of the physical sciences as being a dreamer or worse.
Nevertheless, Rhine continued his work and others came to
his aid, and new organizations came into being to investi-
gate and, if possible, explain the workings of extrasensory
perception.
To define the extra sense is simple enough. When
knowledge of events or facts is gained without recourse to
the normal five senses — sight, hearing, smell, touch, and
taste — or when this knowledge is obtained with apparent
disregard to the limitations of time and space, we speak of
extrasensory perception.
It is essential, of course, that the person experiencing
the sixth-sense phenomena has had no access to knowledge,
either conscious or unconscious, of the facts or events, and
that her impressions are subsequently corroborated by wit-
nesses or otherwise proved correct by the usual methods of
exact science.
It is also desirable, at least from an experimental
point of view, that a person having an extrasensory dealing
with events in the so-called future should make this
impression known at once to impartial witnesses so that it
can be verified later when the event does transpire. This, of
course, is rarely possible because of the very nature of this
sixth sense: it cannot be turned on at will, but functions
best during emergencies, when a genuine need for it exists.
When ordinary communications fail, something within
men and women reaches out and removes the barriers of
time and space to allow for communication beyond the five
senses.
There is no doubt in my mind that extrasensory phe-
nomena are governed by emotional impulses and therefore
present problems far different from those of the physical
sciences. Despite the successful experiments with cards and
dice conducted for years at the Duke University parapsy-
chology laboratory, an ESP experience is not capable of
exact duplication at will.
Parapsychology, that is, the science investigating the
phenomena of this kind, has frequently been attacked on
these grounds. And yet normal psychology, which also
deals with human emotions, does not require an exact
duplication of phenomena under laboratory conditions. Of
course, psychology and psychiatry themselves were under
attack in the past, and have found a comfortable niche of
CHAPTER THREE: Ghosts and the
World of the Living
respectability only recently. It is human nature to attack all
that is new and revolutionary, because man tends to hold
onto his old gods. Fifty years from now, parapsychology
will no doubt be one of the older sciences, and hence
accepted.
It is just as scientific to collect data from “sponta-
neous phenomena,” that is, in the field, as it is to produce
them in a laboratory. In fact, some of the natural sciences
could not exist if it were not for in situ observation. Try
and reconstruct an earthquake in the lab, or a collision of
galaxies, or the birth of a new island in the ocean.
The crux, of course, is the presence of competent
observers and the frequency with which similar, but unre-
lated, events occur. For example, if a hundred cases involv-
ing a poltergeist, or noisy ghost, are reported in widely
scattered areas, involving witnesses who could not possibly
know of each other, could have communicated with each
other, or have had access to the same information about the
event, it is proper scientific procedure to accept these
reports as genuine and to draw certain conclusions from
them.
Extrasensory perception research does not rely
entirely on spontaneous cases in the field, but without them
it would be meaningless. The laboratory experiments are an
important adjunct, particularly when we deal with the
less complicated elements of ESP, such as telepathy, intu-
ition beyond chance, and psychic concentration — but they
cannot replace the tremendous impact of genuine precogni-
tion (the ability to foresee events before they occur) and
other one-time events in human experience.
The nature of ESP is spontaneous and unexpected.
You don't know when you will have an experience, you
can’t make it happen, and you can’t foretell when and how
it will happen. Conditions beyond your knowledge make
the experience possible, and you have no control over it.
The sole exception is the art of proper thinking — the train-
ing toward a wider use of your own ESP powers — which we
will discuss later.
The ESP experience can take the form of a hunch, an
uncanny feeling, or an intuitive impression. Or it can be
stronger and more definite, such as a flash, an image or
auditory signal, a warning voice, or a vision, depending on
who you are and your inborn talents as a receiver.
The first impulse with all but the trained and knowl-
edgeable is to suppress the "message” or to explain it away,
sometimes taking grotesque paths in order to avoid admit-
ting the possibility of having had an extrasensory experi-
ence. Frequently, such negative attitudes toward what is a
natural part of human personality can lead to tragedy, or,
at the very least, to annoyance; for the ESP impulse is never
in vain. It may be a warning of disaster or only an advance
notice to look out for good opportunities ahead, but it
always has significance, even though you may miss the
meaning or choose to ignore the content. I call this sub-
stance of the ESP message cognizance, since it represents
30
instant knowledge without logical factors or components
indicating time and effort spent in obtaining it.
The strange thing about ESP is that it is really far
more than an extra, sixth sense, equal in status to the other
five. It is actually a supersense that operates through the
other five to get its messages across.
Thus a sixth-sense experience many come through
the sense of sight as a vision, a flash, or an impression; the
sense of hearing as a voice or a sound effect duplicating an
event to be; the sense of smell as strange scents indicating
climates other than the present one or smells associated
with certain people or places; the sense of touch — a hand
on the shoulder, the furtive kiss, or fingering by unseen
hands; and the sense of taste — stimulation of the palate not
caused by actual food or drink.
Of these, the senses of smell and taste are rarely used
for ESP communication, while by far the majority of cases
involve either sight or sound or both. This must be so
because these two senses have the prime function of
informing the conscious mind of the world around us.
What has struck me, after investigating extrasensory
phenomena for some twenty-odd years, is the thought that
we are not really dealing with an additional dimension as
such, an additional sense like touch or smell, but a sense
that is nonphysical — the psychic, which, in order to make
itself known, must manifest itself through the physical
senses. Rather than an extra sense, we really have here an
extension of the normal five senses into an area where logi-
cal thinking is absent and other laws govern. We can com-
pare it to the part of the spectrum that is invisible to the
naked eye. We make full use of infrared and ultraviolet and
nobody doubts the existence of these "colors,” which are
merely extensions of ordinary red and violet.
Thus it is with extrasensory perception, and yet we
are at once at war with the physical sciences, which want
us to accept only that which is readily accessible to the five
senses, preferably in laboratories. Until radio waves were
discovered, such an idea was held to be fantastic under
modern science, and yet today we use radio to contact dis-
tant heavenly bodies.
It all adds up to this: Our normal human perception,
even with instruments extending it a little, is far from com-
plete. To assert that there is no more around us than the
little we can measure is preposterous. It is also dangerous,
for in teaching this doctrine to our children, we prevent
them from allowing their potential psychic abilities to
develop unhampered. In a field where thought is a force to
be reckoned with, false thinking can be destructive.
Sometimes a well-meaning but otherwise unfamiliar
reporter will ask me, "How does science feel about ESP?”
That is a little like asking how mathematics teachers feel
about Albert Einstein. ESP is part of science. Some scien-
tists in other fields may have doubts about its validity or
its potentials, just as scientists in one area frequently doubt
scientists in other areas. For example, some chemists doubt
what some medical science say about the efficiency of
certain drugs, or some underwater explorers differ with the
opinions expressed by space explorers, and the beliefs of
some medical doctors differ greatly from what other med-
ical doctors believe. A definition of science is in order.
Contrary to what some people think, science is not knowl-
edge or even comparable to the idea of knowledge; science
is merely the process of gathering knowledge by reliable
and recognized means. These means, however, may change
as time goes on, and the means considered reliable in the
past may fail the test in the future, while, conversely, new
methods not used in the past may come into prominence
and be found useful. To consider the edifice of science an
immovable object, a wall against which one may safely lean
with confidence in the knowledge that nearly everything
worth knowing is already known, is a most unrealistic con-
cept. Just as a living thing changes from day to day, so
does science and that which makes up scientific evidence.
* * *
There are, however, forces within science representing
the conservative or establishment point of view. These
forces are vested in certain powerful individuals who are
not so much unconvinced of the reality of controversial
phenomena and the advisability of including these phe-
nomena in the scientific process as they are unwilling to
change their established concept of science. They are, in
short, unwilling to learn new and startling facts, many of
which conflict with that which they have learned in the
past, that which forms the very basis and foundation of
their scientific beliefs. Science derives from scire, meaning
“to know.” Scientia, the Latin noun upon which our Eng-
lish term “science” is based, is best translated as “the abili-
ty to know,” or perhaps, “understanding.” Knowledge as
an absolute is another matter. I doubt very much that
absolute knowledge is possible even within the confines of
human comprehension. What we are dealing with in sci-
ence is a method of reaching toward it, not attaining it. In
the end, the veil of secrecy will hide the ultimate truth
from us, very likely because we are incapable of grasping it
due to insufficient spiritual awareness. This insufficiency
expresses itself, among other ways, through a determined
reliance upon terminology and frames of reference derived
from materialistic concepts that have little bearing upon
the higher strata of information. Every form of research
requires its own set of tools and its own criteria. Applying
the purely materialistic empiric concepts of evidence to
nonmaterialistic areas is not likely to yield satisfactory
results. An entirely different set of criteria must be estab-
lished first before we can hope to grasp the significance of
those nonmaterial concepts and forces around us that have
been with us since the beginning of time. These are both
within us and without us. They form the innermost layer of
human consciousness as well as the outer reaches of the
existing universe.
Ghosts and the World of the Living
31
* * *
By and large, the average scientist who is not directly
concerned with the field of ESP and parapsychology does
not venture into it, either pro or con. He is usually too
much concerned with his own field and with the insuffi-
ciencies found in his own bailiwick. Occasionally, people in
areas that are peripheral to ESP and parapsychology will
venture into it, partly because they are attracted by it and
sense a growing importance in the study of those areas that
have so long been neglected by most scientists, and partly
because they feel that in attacking the findings of parapsy-
chology they are in some psychologically understandable
way validating their own failures. When Professor Joseph
B. Rhine first started measuring what he called the “psi”
factor in man, critics were quick to point out the hazards of
a system relying so heavily on contrived, artificial condi-
tions and statistics. Whatever Professor Rhine was able to
prove in the way of significant data has since been largely
obscured by criticism, some of it valid and some of it not,
and of course by the far greater importance of observing
spontaneous phenomena in the field when and if they
occur. In the beginning, however, Professor Rhine repre-
sented a milestone in scientific thinking. It was the first
time that the area, formerly left solely to the occultist, had
been explored by a trained scientist in the modern sense of
the term. Even then, no one took the field of parapsycholo-
gy very seriously; Rhine and his closest associate, Dr.
Hornell Hart, were considered part of the Department of
Sociology, as there had not as yet been a distinct Depart-
ment of Parapsychology or a degree in that new science.
Even today there is no doctorate in it, and those working
in the field usually must have other credits as well. But the
picture is changing. A few years ago, Dr. Jules Eisenbud of
the University of Colorado at Denver startled the world
with his disclosures of the peculiar talents of a certain Ted
Serios, a Chicago bellhop gifted with psychic photography
talents. This man could project images into a camera or
television tube, some of which were from the so-called
future. Others were from distant places Mr. Serios had
never been to. The experiments were undertaken under the
most rigid test conditions. They were repeated, which was
something the old-line scientists in parapsychology stressed
over and over again. Despite the abundant amount of evi-
dence, produced in the glaring limelight of public attention
and under strictest scientific test conditions, some of Dr.
Eisenbud ’s colleagues at the University of Colorado turned
away from him whenever he asked them to witness the
experiments he was then conducting. So great was the prej-
udice against anything Eisenbud and his associates might
find that might oppose existing concepts that men of sci-
ence couldn’t bear to find out for themselves. They were
afraid they would have to unlearn a great deal. Today,
CHAPTER THREE: Ghosts and the
World of the Living
even orthodox scientists are willing to listen more than they
used to. There is a greater willingness to evaluate the evi-
dence fairly, and without prejudice, on the part of those
who represent the bulk of the scientific establishment. Still,
this is a far cry from establishing an actual institute of para-
psychology, independent of any existing facilities —
something I have been advocating for many years.
Most big corporate decisions are made illogically,
according to John Mihalasky, Associate Professor of Man-
agement Engineering at the Newark College of Engineer-
ing. The professor contends that logical people can
understand a scientific explanation of an illogical process.
“Experiments conducted by Professor Mihalasky demon-
strate a correlation between superior management ability
and an executive’s extrasensory perception, or ESP.”
According to The New York Times of August 31, 1969,
“research in ESP had been conducted at the college since
1 962 to determine if there was a correlation between man-
agerial talent and ESP. There are tests in extrasensory per-
ception and also in precognition, the ability to foretell
events before they happen. The same precognition tests
may also be of use in selecting a person of superior creative
ability.”
But the business side of the research establishment
was by no means alone in recognizing the validity and
value of ESP. According to an interview in the Los Angeles
Times of August 30, 1970, psychiatrist Dr. George Sjolund
of Baltimore, Maryland, has concluded, “All the evidence
does indicate that ESP exists.” Dr. Sjolund works with peo-
ple suspected of having ESP talents and puts them through
various tests in specially built laboratories. Scientific exper-
iments designed to test for the existence of ESP are rare. Dr.
Sjolund knows of only one other like it in the United States
— in Seattle. Sjolund does ESP work only one day a week.
His main job is acting director of research at Spring Grove
State Hospital.
* * *
According to Evelyn de Wolfe, Los Angeles Times
staff writer, “The phenomenon of ESP remains inconclu-
sive, ephemeral and mystifying but for the first time in the
realm of science, no one is ashamed to say they believe
there is such a thing.” The writer had been talking to Dr.
Thelma S. Moss, assistant professor of medical psychology
at UCLA School of Medicine, who had been conducting
experiments in parapsychology for several years. In a report
dated June 12, 1969, Wolfe also says, “In a weekend sym-
posium on ESP more than six hundred persons in the audi-
ence learned that science is dealing seriously with the
subject of haunted houses, clairvoyance, telepathy, and
psychokinesis and is attempting to harness the unconscious
mind.”
* * *
It is not surprising that some more liberally inclined
and enlightened scientists are coming around to thinking
32
that there is something to ESP after all. Back in 1957, Life
magazine editorialized on "A Crisis in Science”:
New enigmas in physics revive quests in meta-
physics. From the present chaos of science's conceptual
universe two facts might strike the layman as significant.
One is that the old-fashioned materialism is now even
more old-fashioned. Its basic assumption — that the only
’reality’ is that which occupies space and has a mass — is
irrelevant to an age that has proved that matter is inter-
changeable with energy. The second conclusion is that
old-fashioned metaphysics, so far from being irrelevant
to an age of science, is science’s indispensable complement
for a full view of life.
Physicists acknowledge as much; a current Martin
advertisement says that their rocket men’s shop-talk
includes ’the physics (and metaphysics) of their work.’
Metaphysical speculation is becoming fashionable again.
Set free of materialism, metaphysics could well become
man’s chief preoccupation of the next century and may
even yield a world-wide consensus on the nature of life
and the universe.
* * *
By 1971, this prophetic view of Life magazine took
on new dimensions of reality. According to the Los Angeles
Times of February 11, 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar D.
Mitchell attempted to send mental messages to a Chicago
engineer whose hobby was extrasensory perception. Using
ESP cards, which he had taken aboard with him to transfer
messages to Chicago psychic Olaf Olsen, Mitchell managed
to prove beyond any doubt that telepathy works even from
the outer reaches of space. The Mitchell-Olsen experiment
has since become part of the history of parapsychology.
Not only did it add significantly to the knowledge of how
telepathy really works, it made a change in the life of the
astronaut, Mitchell. According to an UPI dispatch dated
September 27, 1971, Mitchell became convinced that life
existed away from earth and more than likely in our own
galaxy. But he doubted that physical space travel held all
the answers. ‘‘If the phenomenon of astral projection has
any validity, it might be perfectly valid to use it in inter-
galactic travel”; Mitchell indicated that he was paying
additional attention to ESP for future use. Since that time,
of course, Mr. Mitchell has become an active experimenter
in ESP.
* * *
A few years ago I appeared at the University of
Bridgeport (Connecticut). I was lecturing on scientific evi-
dence of the existence of ghosts. My lecture included some
slides taken under test conditions and attracted some 1,200
students and faculty members. As a result of this particular
demonstration, I met Robert Jeffries, Professor of Mechan-
ical Engineering at the university and an avid parapsychol-
ogist. During the years of our friendship Professor Jeffries
and I have tried very hard to set up an independent insti-
tute of parapsychology. We had thought that Bob Jeffries,
who had been at one time president of his own data-
processing company, would be particularly acceptable to
the business community. But the executives he saw were
not the least bit interested in giving any money to such a
project. They failed to see the practical implications of
studying ESP. Perhaps they were merely not in tune with
the trend, even among the business executives.
In an article dated October 23, 1969, The Wall Street
Journal headline was "Strange Doings. Americans Show
Burst of Interest in Witches, Other Occult Matters.” The
piece, purporting to be a survey of the occult scene and
written by Stephen J. Sansweet, presents the usual hodge-
podge of information and misinformation, lumping witches
and werewolves together with parapsychologists and
researchers. He quotes Mortimer R. Feinberg, a psychology
professor at City University of New York, as saying, “The
closer we get to a controlled, totally predictable society, the
more man becomes fearful of the consequences.” Sansweet
then goes on to say that occult supplies, books, and even
such peripheral things as jewelry are being gobbled up by
an interested public, a sure sign that the occult is “in.”
Although the “survey” is on the level of a Sunday supple-
ment piece and really quite worthless, it does indicate the
seriousness with which the business community regards the
occult field, appearing, as it did, on the front page of The
Wall Street Journal.
More realistic and respectable is an article in the
magazine Nation's Business of April 1971 entitled "Dollars
May Flow from the Sixth Sense. Is There a Link between
Business Success and Extrasensory Perception?”
We think the role of precognition deserves special
consideration in sales forecasting. Wittingly or unwit-
tingly, it is probably already used there. Much more
research needs to be done on the presence and use of
precognition among executives but the evidence we have
obtained indicates that such research will be well worth-
while.
As far back as 1955 the Anderson Laboratories of
Brookline, Massachusetts, were in the business of forecast-
ing the future. Its president, Frank Anderson, stated,
"Anderson Laboratories is in a position to furnish weekly
charts showing what, in all probability, the stock market
will do in each coming week.” Anderson's concept, or, as
he calls it, the Anderson Law, involves predictions based
upon the study of many things, from the moon tides to
human behavior to elements of parapsychology. He had
done this type of work for at least twenty-five years prior
to setting up the laboratories. Most of his predictions are
based upon calculated trends and deal in finances and poli-
tics. Anderson claimed that his accuracy rate was 86 per-
cent accurate with airplane accidents because they come in
cycles, 92.6 percent accurate in the case of major fires, 84
percent accurate with automobile accidents, and that his
Ghosts and the World of the Living
33
evaluations could be used for many business purposes,
from advertising campaigns to executive changes to new
product launchings and even to the planning of entertain-
ment. In politics, Anderson proposed to help chart, ahead
of time, the possible outcome of political campaigns. He
even dealt with hunting and fishing forecasts, and since the
latter two occupations are particularly dear to the heart of
the business community, it would appear that Anderson
had it wrapped up in one neat little package.
* * *
Professor R. A. McConnell, Department of Bio-
physics and Microbiology, University of Pittsburgh, Penn-
sylvania, wrote in an article published by the American
Psychologist in May 1968 that in discussing ESP before psy-
chology students, it was not unusual to speak of the
credulity of the public. He felt it more necessary, however,
to examine the credibility of scientists, including both those
for ESP and those against it. Referring to an article on ESP
by the British researcher G. R. Price, published by Science
in 1955, Professor McConnell points to Price’s contention
that proof of ESP is conclusive only if one is to accept the
good faith and sanity of the experimenters, but that ESP
can easily be explained away if one assumes that the exper-
imenters, working in collaboration with their witnesses,
have intentionally faked the results. McConnell goes on to
point out that this unsubstantiated suggestion of fraud by
Price, a chemist by profession, was being published on the
first page of the most influential scientific journal in
America.
A lot of time has passed since 1955: the American
Association for the Advancement of Science has recently
voted the Parapsychology Association a member. The lat-
ter, one of several bodies of scientific investigators in the
field of parapsychology, had sought entrance into the asso-
ciation for many years but had been barred by the alleged
prejudices of those in control. The Parapsychology Associ-
ation itself, due to a fine irony, had also barred some rep-
utable researchers from membership in its own ranks for
the very same reasons. But the dam burst, and parapsy-
chology became an accepted subject within the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. The
researchers were also invited to join. My own New York
Committee for the Investigation of Paranormal Occur-
rences, founded in 1962 under the sponsorship of Eileen
Garrett, president of the Parapsychology Foundation, Inc.,
is also a member of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science.
In his article, Professor McConnell points out the fal-
libility of certain textbooks considered to be bulwarks of
scientific knowledge. He reminds his audience that until
the year 1800 the highest scientific authorities thought that
there were no such things as meteorites. Then the leaders
CHAPTER THREE: Ghosts and the
World of the Living
of science found out that meteorites came from outer space,
and the textbooks were rewritten accordingly. What dis-
turbs Professor McConnell is that the revised textbooks did
not mention that there had been an argument about the
matter. He wonders how many arguments are still going on
in science and how many serious mistakes are in the text-
books we use for study. In his opinion, we ought to believe
only one half of the ideas expressed in the works on biolog-
ical sciences, although he is not sure which half. In his
view, ESP belongs in psychology, one of the biological sci-
ences. He feels that when it comes to ESP, so-called author-
ities are in error. McConnell points out that most
psychology textbooks omit the subject entirely as unworthy
of serious consideration. But in his opinion, the books are
wrong, for ESP is a real psychological phenomenon. He also
shows that the majority of those doing serious research in
ESP are not psychologists, and deduces from this and the
usual textbook treatment of the subject as well as from his
own sources that psychologists are simply not interested
in ESP.
* * *
L. C. Kling, M.D., is a psychiatrist living in Stras-
bourg, France. He writes in German and has published
occasional papers dealing with his profession. Most psychi-
atrists and psychoanalysts who base their work upon the
findings of Sigmund Freud, balk at the idea that Dr. Freud
had any interest in psychic phenomena or ESP. But the fact
is — and Dr. Kling points this out in an article published in
1966 — that Freud had many encounters with paranormal
phenomena. When he was sixty-five years old he wrote to
American researcher Herewood Carrington: "If I had to
start my life over again I would rather be a parapsycholo-
gist than a psychoanalyst.” And toward the end of his life
he confessed to his biographer E. Jones that he would not
hesitate to bring upon himself the hostility of the profes-
sional world in order to champion an unpopular point of
view. What made him say this was a particularly convinc-
ing case of telepathy that he had come across.
* * *
In June of 1966 the German physicist Dr. Werner
Schiebeler gave a lecture concerning his findings on the
subject of physical research methods applicable to parapsy-
chology. The occasion was the conference on parapsychol-
ogy held at the city of Constance in Germany. Dr.
Schiebeler, who is as well versed in atomic physics as he is
in parapsychology, suggested that memory banks from
deceased entities could be established independently of
physical brain matter. “If during seances entities, phan-
toms, or spirits of the deceased appear that have been iden-
tified beyond a shadow of a doubt to be the people they
pretend to be, they must be regarded as something more
than images of the dead. Otherwise we would have to con-
sider people in the physical life whom we have not seen for
some time and encounter again today as merely copies of a
34
former existence.” Dr. Schiebeler goes on to say that in his
opinion parapsychology has furnished definite proof for the
continuance of life beyond physical death.
This detailed and very important paper was presented
in written form to the eminent German parapsychologist
Dr. Hans Bender, head of the Institute of Borderline Sci-
ences at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Since it con-
tained strong evidence of a survivalist nature, and since Dr.
Bender has declared himself categorically opposed to the
concept of personal survival after death, the paper remains
unanswered, and Dr. Schiebeler was unable to get any
response from the institute.
* * *
Despite the fact that several leading universities are
doing around-the-clock research on ESP, there are still those
who wish it weren’t so. Dr. Walter Alvarez writes in the
Los Angeles Times of January 23, 1 972, "In a recent issue of
the medical journal M.D., there was an interesting article
on a subject that interests many physicians and patients.
Do mediums really make contact with a dead person at a
seance?” He then goes on to quote an accusation of fraudu-
lence against the famous Fox sisters, who first brought
spirit rappings to public attention in 1848. “Curiously, a
number of very able persons have accepted the reality of
spiritualism and some have been very much interested in
what goes on in seances,” Dr. Alvarez reports. Carefully,
he points out the few and better -known cases of alleged
fraud among world-famous mediums, such as Eusepia Pal-
ladino, omitting the fact that the Italian medium had been
highly authentic to the very end and that fakery had never
been conclusively proven in her case. There isn’t a single
word about Professor Rhine or any research in the field of
parapsychology in this article.
Perhaps not on the same level, but certainly with
even greater popular appeal, is a “Dear Abby” reply
printed by the same Los Angeles Times in November 5,
1969, concerning an inquiry from a reader on how to find a
reputable medium to help her get in touch with her dead
husband. To this “Dear Abby" replied, “Many have
claimed they can communicate with the dead, but so far no
one has been able to prove it.”
* * *
Perhaps one can forgive such uninformed people for
their negative attitude toward psychic phenomena if one
looks at some of the less desirable practices that have been
multiplying in the field lately. Take, for instance, the pub-
lisher of Penthouse magazine, an English competitor to our
own Playboy. A prize of £25,000 was to be paid to anyone
producing paranormal phenomena under test conditions. A
panel consisting of Sir George Joy, Society for Psychical
Research, Professor H. H. Price, Canon John Pearce -
Higgins, and leading psychical researcher Mrs. Kathleen
Goldney resigned in protest when they took a good look at
the pages of the magazine and discovered that it was more
concerned with bodies than with spirits.
The Psychic Register International, of Phoenix, Ari-
zona, proclaims its willingness to list everyone in the field
so that they may present to the world a Who’s Who in the
Psychic World. A parapsychology guidance institute in St.
Petersburg, Florida, advised me that it is preparing a bibli-
ography of technical books in the field of parapsychology.
The Institute of Psychic Studies of Parkersburg, West
Virginia, claimed that “for the first time in the United
States a college of psychic studies entirely dedicated to
parapsychology offering a two-year course leading to a doc-
torate in psychic sciences is being opened and will be cen-
trally located in West Virginia.” The list of courses of
study sounded very impressive and included three credits
for the mind (study of the brain), background of parapsy-
chology (three credits), and such fascinating things as
magic in speech (three credits), explaining superstitions
attributed to magic; and the secrets of prestidigitation. The
list of courses was heavily studded with grammatical errors
and misspellings. Psychic Dimensions Incorporated of New
York City, according to an article in The New York Times,
no less, on December 4, 1970, “has got it all together," the
“all” meaning individual astrologists, graphologists, occa-
sional palmists, psychometrists, and those astute in the
reading of tarot cards. According to Lisa Hammel, writer
of the article, the founder of the booking a*gency, William J.
Danielle, has “about 150 metaphysical personalities
under his wing and is ready to book for a variety of occa-
sions.” The master of this enterprise explains, “I had to
create an entertainment situation because people will not
listen to facts.” Mr. Danielle originally started with a
memorable event called “Breakfast with a Witch” starring
none other than Witch Hazel, a pretty young waitress from
New Jersey who has established her claim to witchcraft on
various public occasions.
* * *
“Six leading authorities on mental telepathy, psychic
experiences and metaphysics will conduct a panel discus-
sion on extrasensory perception,” said the New York Daily
News on January 24, 1971 . The meeting was being held
under the auspices of the Society for the Study of Parapsy-
chology and Metaphysics. As if that name were not
impressive enough, there is even a subdivision entitled the
National Committee for the Study of Metaphysical Sci-
ences. It turned out that the experts were indeed authorities
in their respective fields. They included Dr. Gertrude
Schmeidler of City College, New York, and well-known
psychic Ron Warmoth. A colleague of mine, Raymond
Van Over of Hofstra University, was also aboard.
Although I heard nothing further of the Society for the
Study of Parapsychology and Metaphysics, it seemed like a
reputable organization, or rather attempt at an organization.
Ghosts and the World of the Living
35
Until then about the only reputable organization known to
most individuals interested in the study of ESP was, and is,
of course, the American Society for Psychical Research
located at 5 West Seventy-third Street in New York City.
But the society, originally founded by Dr. J. Hislop, has
become rather conservative. It rarely publishes any contro-
versial findings any more. Its magazine is extremely techni-
cal and likely to discourage the beginning student.
Fortunately, however, it also publishes the ASPR Newsletter,
which is somewhat more democratic and popularly styled.
The society still ignores parapsychologists who do not con-
form to their standards, especially people like myself, who
frequently appear on television and make definite state-
ments on psychic matters that the society would rather
leave in balance. Many of the legacies that help support the
American Society for Psychical Research were given in the
hope that the society might establish some definite proof
for survival of human personality after death and for
answers to other important scientific questions. If
researchers such as I proclaim such matters to be already
proven, there would seem to be little left for the society to
prove in the future. But individual leaders of the society
are more outspoken in their views. Dr. Gardner Murphy,
long-time president of the society and formerly connected
with the Menninger Foundation, observed, “If there was
one tenth of the evidence in any other field of science than
there is in parapsychology, it would be accepted beyond
question.” Dr. Lawrence L. Le Shan, Ph.D., writer and
investigator, says:
Parapsychology is far more than it appears to be on
first glance. In the most profound sense it is the study
of the basic nature of man — There is more to man,
more to him and his relationship with the cosmos than
we have accepted. Further, this ’more’ is of a different
kind and order from the parts we know about. We have
the data and they are strong and clear but they could
not exist if man were only what we have believed him to
be. If he were only flesh and bone, if he worked on the
same type of principles as a machine, if he were really as
separated from other men as we have thought, it would
be impossible for him to do the things we know he
sometimes does. The ’impossible facts’ of ESP tell us of
a part of man long hidden in the mists of legend, art,
dream, myth and mysticism, which our explorers of
reality in the last ninety years have demonstrated to be
scientifically valid, to be real.
* * *
While the bickering between those accepting the real-
ity of ESP phenomena and those categorically rejecting it
was still occurring in the United States, the Russians came
up with a startling coup: They went into the field whole-
sale. At this time there are at least eight major universities in
Eastern Europe with full-time, full-staffed research centers
CHAPTER THREE: Ghosts and the
World of the Living
in parapsychology. What is more, there are no restrictions
placed upon those working in this field, and they are
free to publish anything they like. This came as rather a
shock to the American scientific establishment. In her
review of the amazing book by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn
Schroeder, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, Dr.
Thelma Moss said, “If the validity of their statements is
proved, then the American scientist is faced with the mag-
nificent irony that in 1970 Soviet materialistic science has
pulled off a coup in the field of occult phenomena equal to
that of Sputnik rising into space in 1957.”
It would appear that the Russians are years ahead of
us in applying techniques of ESP to practical use. Allegedly,
they have learned to use hypnosis at a distance, they have
shown us photographs of experiments in psychokinesis, the
moving of objects by mental powers alone, and even in
Kirilian photography, which shows the life-force fields
around living things. Nat Freedland, reviewing the book
for the Los Angeles Times, said:
Scientists in Eastern Europe have been succeeding
with astonishingly far-reaching parapsychology experi-
ments for years. The scope of what countries like Rus-
sia, Czechoslovakia, and even little Bulgaria have
accomplished in controlled scientific psychokinesis (PSI)
experiments makes the western brand of ESP look
namby-pamby indeed. Instead of piddling around end-
lessly with decks of cards and dice like Dr. J. B. Rhine
of Duke University, Soviet scientists put one telepathi-
cally talented experimenter in Moscow and another in
Siberia twelve hundred miles away.”
Shortly afterward, the newspapers were filled with
articles dealing with the Russians and their telepaths or
experimenters. Word had it that in Russia there was a
woman who was possessed of bioplasmic energy and who
could move objects by mental concentration. This woman,
Nina Kulagina, was photographed doing just that. William
Rice, science writer for the Daily News, asked his readers,
“Do you have ESP? It’s hard to prove, but hard to deny.”
The piece itself is the usual hodgepodge of information and
conjecture, but it shows how much the interest in ESP had
grown in the United States. Of course, in going behind the
Iron Curtain to explore the realms of parapsychology,
Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder did not exactly tread
on virgin territory. Those active in the field of parapsychol-
ogy in the United States had long been familiar with the
work of Professor L. Vasiliev. The Russian scientist’s
books are standard fare in this field. Dr. I. M. Kogan,
chairman of the Investigation Commission of Russian Sci-
entists dealing with ESP, is quoted as saying that he
believes “many people have the ability to receive and trans-
mit telepathic information, but the faculty is undeveloped.”
* * *
And what was being done on the American side dur-
ing the time the Russians were developing their parapsy-
36
chology laboratories and their teams of observers? Mae
West gave a magnificent party at her palatial estate in Hol-
lywood during which her favorite psychic, “Dr.” Richard
Ireland, the psychic from Phoenix, performed what the
guests referred to as amazing feats. Make no mistake about
it, Mae West is serious about her interest in parapsycholo-
gy. She even lectured on the subject some time ago at a
university. But predicting the future for invited guests and
charming them at the same time is a far cry from setting
up a sober institute for parapsychology where the subject
can be dealt with objectively and around the clock.
On a more practical level, controversial Dutchman
Peter Hurkos, who fell off a ladder and discovered his tele-
phatic abilities some years back, was called in to help the
police to find clues when the Tate murder was in the head-
lines. Hurkos did describe one of the raiders as bearded
and felt that there were overtones of witchcraft in the
assault. About that time, also, Bishop James Pike told the
world in headline-making news conferences that he had
spoken to his dead son through various mediums. “There
is enough scientific evidence to give plausible affirmation
that the human personality survives the grave. It is the
most plausible explanation of the phenomena that
occurred,” Bishop Pike is quoted.
Over in Britain, Rosemary Brown was getting mes-
sages from dead composers, including such kingpins as
Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, and Debussy. Her sym-
phonies, attributed to her ESP capabilities, have even been
recorded. When I first heard about the amazing Miss
Brown, I was inclined to dismiss the matter unless some
private, as yet unpublished, information about the personal
lives of the dead composers was also brought out by the
medium. Apparently, this is what happened in the course
of time and continued investigations. I have never met
Miss Brown, but one of the investigators sent to Britain to
look into the case was a man whom I knew well, Stewart
Robb, who had the advantage of being both a parapsychol-
ogist and a music expert. It is his opinion that the Rose-
mary Brown phenomenon is indeed genuine, but Miss
Brown is by no means the only musical medium. Accord-
ing to the National Enquirer, British medium Leslie Flint,
together with two friends, Sydney Woods and Mrs. Betty
Greene, claimed to have captured on tape the voices of
more than two hundred famous personalities, including
Frederic Chopin and Oscar Wilde.
A RIFT EMERGES
Gradually, however, the cleavage between an occult, or
mystical, emotionally tinged form of inquiry into psychic
phenomena, and the purely scientific, clinically oriented
way becomes more apparent. That is not to say that both
methods will not eventually merge into one single quest for
truth.
Only by using all avenues of approach to a problem
can we truly accomplish its solution. However, it seems to
me that at a time when so many people are becoming
acquainted with the occult and parapsychology in general,
that it is very necessary that one make a clear distinction
between a tea-room reader and a professor of parapsychol-
ogy, between a person who has studied psychical phenome-
na for twenty -five years and has all the necessary
academic credits and a Johnny-come-lately who has crept
out of the woodwork of opportunism to start his own
“research” center or society.
Those who sincerely seek information in this field
should question the credentials of those who give answers;
well-known names are always preferable to names one has
never heard before. Researchers with academic credentials
or affiliations are more likely to be trusted than those who
offer merely paper doctorates fresh from the printing press.
Lastly, psychic readers purporting to be great prophets
must be examined at face value — on the basis of their
accomplishments in each individual case, not upon their
self-proclaimed reputation. With all that in mind and with
due caution, it is still heartwarming to find so many sincere
and serious people dedicating themselves more and more to
the field parapsychology and making scientific inquiry into
what seems to me one of the most fascinating areas of
human endeavor. Ever since the late Sir Oliver Lodge pro-
claimed, “Psychic research is the most important field in
the world today, by far the most important,” I have felt
quite the same way.
PSYCHIC PHOTOGRAPHY
At Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, a dedi-
cated group of researchers with no funds to speak of has
been trying to delve into the mystery of psychic photogra-
phy. Following in the footsteps of Dr. Jules Eisenbud of
the University of Colorado, and my own work Psychic Pho-
tography— Threshold of a New Science?, this group, under
the aegis of the Department of Physics at the university, is
attempting to "produce psychic photographs with some
regularity under many kinds of situations.” The group feels
that since Ted Serios discovered his ability in this field by
accident, others might have similar abilities. “Only when
we have found a good subject can the real work of investi-
gating the nature of psychic photography begin,” they
explain. The fact that people associated with a department
of physics at a major American university even speak of
investigating psychic photography scientifically is so much
of a novelty, considering the slurs heaped upon this subject
for so many years by the majority of establishment scien-
tists, that one can only hope that a new age of unbiased
science is indeed dawning upon us.
Ghosts and the World of the Living
37
MIND CONTROL & THE ALPHA STATE
Stanley Korn of Maryland has a degree in physics and has
done graduate work in mathematics, statistics, and psychol-
ogy; he works in the Navy as an operations research ana-
lyst. Through newspaper advertisements he discovered the
Silva Mind Control Course and took it, becoming
acquainted with Silva’s approach, including the awareness
of the alpha state of brain- wave activity, which is associ-
ated with increased problem-solving ability and, of course,
ESP. "What induced me to take the course was the rather
astonishing claim made by the lecturer that everyone taking
the course would be able to function psychically to his own
satisfaction or get his money back. This I had to see,” Mr.
Korn explained. Describing the Silva Method, which incor-
porates some of the elements of diagnosis developed by the
late Edgar Cayce but combines it with newer techniques
and what, for want of a better term, we call traveling clair-
voyance, Mr. Korn learned that psychic activities are not
necessarily limited to diagnosing health cases, but can also
be employed in psychometry, the location of missing
objects and persons, even the location of malfunctions in
automobiles. "After seeing convincing evidence for the
existence of psi, and experiencing the phenomenon myself,
I naturally wanted to know the underlying principles gov-
erning its operation. To date, I have been unable to
account for the psychic transmission of information by any
of the known forms of energy, such as radio waves. The
phenomena can be demonstrated at will, making controlled
experiments feasible.”
THE APPARATUS
But the mind-control approach is by no means the only
new thing in the search for awareness and full use of ESP
powers in man. People working in the field of physics are
used to apparatus, to test equipment, to physical tools.
Some of these people have become interested in the mar-
ginal areas of parapsychology and ESP research, and hope to
contribute some new mechanical gadget to the field.
According to the magazine Purchasing Week, new devices
utilizing infrared light to pinpoint the location of an other-
wise unseen intruder by the heat radiating from his body
have been developed. On August 17, 1970, Time magazine,
in its science section headlines, “Thermography: Coloring
with Heat.” The magazine explained that
[I]nfrared detectors are providing stunning images that
were once totally invisible to the naked eye. The new
medium is called color thermography, the technique of
translating heat rays into color. Unlike ordinary color
photographs, which depend on reflected visible light,
thermograms or heat pictures respond only to the tem-
perature of the subject. Thus the thermographic camera
CHAPTER THREE: Ghosts and the
World of the Living
can work with equal facility in the dark or light. The
camera’s extraordinary capability is built around a char-
acteristic of all objects, living or inanimate. Because their
atoms are constantly in motion, they give off some
degree of heat or infrared radiation. If the temperature
rises high enough, the radiation may become visible to
the human eye, as in the red glow of a blast furnace.
Ordinarily, the heat emissions remain locked in the
invisible range of infrared light.
It is clear that such equipment can be of great help in
examining so-called haunted houses, psychically active
areas, or psychometric objects; in other words, it can be
called upon to step in where the naked eye cannot help, or
where ordinary photography discloses nothing unusual.
The magazine Electronics World of April 1970, in an article
by L. George Lawrence entitled “Electronics and Parapsy-
chology,” says,
One of the most intriguing things to emerge in that area
is the now famous Backster Effect. Since living plants
seem to react bioelectrically to thought images directed
to their over-all well-being, New Jersey cytologist Dr.
H. Miller thinks that the phenomenon is based upon a
type of cellular consciousness. These and related considera-
tions lead to the idea that psi is but a part of a so-called
paranormal matrix — a unique communications grid
that binds all life together. Its phenomena apparently
work on a multi-input basis which operates beyond the
known physical laws.
Lanston Monotype Company of Philadelphia, Penn-
sylvania, manufactures photomechanical apparatus and has
done some work in the ESP field. The company attempted
to develop testing equipment of use to parapsychologists.
Superior Vending Company of Brockton, Massachusetts,
through its design engineer, R. K. Golka, offered me a look
into the matter of a newly developed image intensifier tube
developed for possible use in a portable television camera
capable of picking up the fine imprints left behind in the
atmosphere of haunted areas. “The basic function of this
tube is to intensify and pick up weak images picked up by
the television camera. These are images that would other-
wise not be seen or that would go unnoticed,” the engineer
explained. Two years later, Mr. Golka, who had by then
set up his own company of electronic consultants, sug-
gested experiments with spontaneous ionization. “If energy
put into the atmosphere could be coupled properly with the
surrounding medium, air, then huge amounts of ionization
could result. If there were a combination of frequency and
wave length that would remove many of the electron shells
of the common elements of our atmosphere, that too would
be of great scientific value. Of course, the electrons would
fall back at random so there would be shells producing
white light or fluorescence. This may be similar to the
flashes of light seen by people in a so-called haunted house.
In any event, if this could be done by the output of very
small energies such as those coming from the human brain
38
of microvolt and microamp range, it would be quite signif-
icant.” Mr. Golka responded to my suggestion that ioniza-
tion of the air accompanied many of the psychic
phenomena where visual manifestations had been observed.
I have held that a change occurs in the atmosphere when
psychic energies are present, and that the change includes
ionization of the surrounding air or ether. “Some of the
things you have mentioned over the years seem to fit into
this puzzle. I don't know if science has all the pieces yet,
but I feel we have a good handful to work with,” Mr.
Golka concluded in his suggestions to me. Since that time
some progress has been made in the exploration of percep-
tion by plants, and the influence of human emotions on the
growth of plants. Those seeking scientific data on these
experiments may wish to examine Cleve Backster’s report
"Evidence of a Primary Perception in Plant Life” in the
International Journal of Parapsychology, Volume X, 1968.
Backster maintains a research foundation at 165 West
Forty -sixth Street in New York City.
* * *
Dr. Harry E. Stockman is head of Sercolab in Arling-
ton, Massachusetts, specializing in apparatus in the fields
of physics, electronics, and the medical profession. The
company issues regular catalogues of their various devices,
which range from simple classroom equipment to highly
sophisticated research apparatus. The company, located at
P.O. Box 78, Arlington, Massachusetts, has been in busi-
ness for over twenty years. One prospectus of their labora-
tory states:
In the case of mind-over-matter parapsychology psy-
chokinetic apparatus, our guarantee applies only in that
the apparatus will operate as stated in the hands of an
accomplished sensitive. Sercolab would not gamble its
scientific reputation for the good reason that mind-over-
matter is a proven scientific fact. It is so today thanks to
the amazing breakthrough by Georgia State University;
this breakthrough does not merely consist of the stun-
ning performance of some students to be able to move a
magnetic needle at a distance. The breakthrough is far
greater than that. It consists of Georgia State University
having devised a systematic teaching technique, enabling
some students in the class to operate a magnetic needle
by psychokinesis force.
Obviously, science and ESP are merely casual
acquaintances at the present time. Many members of the
family are still looking askance at this new member of the
community. They wish it would simply go away and not
bother them. But parapsychology, the study of ESP, is here
to stay. ESP research may be contrary to many established
scientific laws and its methodology differs greatly from
established practices. But it is a valid force; it exists in
every sense of the term; and it must be studied fully in
order to make science an honest field in the coming age.
Anything less will lead scientific inquiry back to medieval
thinking, back into the narrow channels of prejudice and
severely limited fields of study. In the future, only a thor-
ough re-examination of the scientific position on ESP in
general will yield greater knowledge on the subject.
The notion still persists among large segments of the
population that ESP is a subject suitable only for very spe-
cial people: the weird fringe, some far-out scientists per-
haps, or those young people who are "into” the occult.
Under no circumstances is it something respectable average
citizens get involved with. An interest in ESP simply does
not stand up alongside such interests as music, sports, or
the arts. Anyone professing an interest in ESP is automati-
cally classified as an oddball. This attitude is more pro-
nounced in small towns than it is in sophisticated cities like
New York, but until recently, at least, the notion that ESP
might be a subject for average people on a broad basis was
alien to the public mind.
During that last few years, however, this attitude has
shifted remarkably. More and more, people discussing the
subject of extrasensory perception are welcomed in social
circles as unusual people; and they become centers of
attraction. Especially among the young, bringing up the
subject of ESP almost guarantees one immediate friends.
True, eyebrows are still raised among older people, espe-
cially business people or those in government, when ESP is
mentioned as a serious subject matter. Occasionally one
still hears the comment “You don’t really believe in that
stuff?” Occasionally, too, people will give you an argument
trying to prove that it is still all a fraud and has “long been
proved to be without substance.” It is remarkable how
some of those avid scoffers quote "authoritative” sources,
which they never identify by name or place. Even Professor
Rhine is frequently pictured as a man who tried to prove
the reality of ESP and failed miserably.
Of course, we must realize that people believe what
they want to believe. If a person is uncomfortable with a
concept, reasons for disbelief will be found even if they are
dragged in out of left field. A well-known way of dismiss-
ing evidence for ESP is to quote only the sources that
espouse a negative point of view. Several authors who
thrive on writing "debunking books,” undoubtedly the
result of the current popularity of the occult subjects, make
it their business to select bibliographies of source material
that contain only the sort of proof they want in light of
their own prejudiced purpose. A balanced bibliography
would, of course, yield different results and would thwart
their efforts to debunk the subject of ESP. Sometimes peo-
ple in official positions will deny the existence of factual
material so as not to be confronted with the evidence, if
that evidence tends to create a public image different from
the one they wish to project.
A good case in point is an incident that occurred on
the Chicago television broadcast emceed by columnist Irv-
ing Kupcinet. Among the guests appearing with me was
Colonel “Shorty” Powers of NASA. I had just remarked that
Ghosts and the World of the Living
39
tests had been conducted among astronauts to determine
whether they were capable of telepathy once the reaches of
outer space had been entered, in case radio communications
should prove to be inadequate. Colonel Powers rose indig-
nantly, denouncing my statement as false, saying, in effect,
that no tests had been undertaken among astronauts and
that such a program lacked a basis of fact. Fortunately,
however, I had upon me a letter on official NASA sta-
tionery, signed by Dr. M. Koneci, who was at the time
head of that very project.
* * *
The kinds of people who are interested in ESP include
some very strange bedfellows: on the one hand, there are
increasing numbers of scientists delving into the area with
newly designed tools and new methods; on the other hand,
there are lay people in various fields who find ESP a fasci-
nating subject and do not hesitate to admit their interest,
nor do they disguise their belief that it works. Scientists
have had to swallow their pride and discard many cher-
ished theories about life. Those who have been able to do
so, adjusting to the ever-changing pattern of what consti-
tutes scientific proof, have found their studies in ESP the
most rewarding. The late heart specialist Dr. Alexis Carrel
became interested in psychic phenomena, according to
Monroe Fry in an article on ESP that appeared in Esquire
magazine, during his famous experiment that established
the immortality of individual cells in a fragment of chicken
heart.
After he had been working on the problem for years
somebody asked him about his conclusions. "The work
of a scientist is to observe facts,” he said, "what I have
observed are facts troublesome to science. But they are
facts.” Science still knows very little about the human
mind, but researchers are now certain that the mind is
much more powerful and complicated than they have
ever thought it was.
* * *
People accept theories, philosophies, or beliefs largely
on the basis of who supports them, not necessarily on the
facts alone. If a highly regarded individual supports a new
belief, people are likely to follow him. Thus it was some-
thing of a shock to learn, several years after his passing,
that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had frequently sat in
seances during which his late mother, Sarah Delano, had
appeared to him and given him advice in matters of state.
It has quite definitely been established that King George V
of England also attended seances. To this day, the English
royal family is partial to psychical research, although very
little of this is ever published. Less secret is the case of
Canada’s late Prime Minister William Mackenzie King.
According to Life magazine, which devoted several pages to
CHAPTER THREE: Ghosts and the
World of the Living
King, he “was an ardent spiritualist who used mediums,
the ouija board and a crystal ball for guidance in his pri-
vate life.” It is debatable whether this marks King as a
spiritualist or whether he was merely exercising his natural
gift of ESP and an interest in psychical research.
* * *
I myself receive continual testimony that ESP is a fasci-
nating subject to people who would not have thought of
it so a few years ago. Carlton R. Adams, Rear Admiral,
U.S. Navy retired, having read one of my books, contacted
me to discuss my views on reincarnation. John D. Grayson,
associate professor of linguistics at Sir George Williams
University, Montreal, Canada, said, “If I lived in New
York, I should like nothing better than to enroll in your
eight-lecture course on parapsychology.” Gerald S. O’Mor-
row has a doctorate in education and is at Indiana State
University: "I belong to a small development group which
meets weekly and has been doing such for the last two
years.” A lady initialed S. D. writes from California, “I
have been successful in working a ouija board for eight
years on a serious basis and have tried automatic writing
with a small but significant amount of success. I have a
great desire to develop my latent powers but until now I
haven’t known who to go to that I could trust.” The lady’s
profession is that of a police matron with a local police
department.
A. P. gives a remarkable account of ESP experiences
over the past twenty years. His talents include both visual
and auditory phenomena. In reporting his incidents to me,
he asked for an appraisal of his abilities with ESP. By pro-
fession A. P. is a physician, a native of Cuba.
S. B. Barris contacted me for an appraisal of his ESP
development in light of a number of incidents in which he
found himself capable of foretelling the result of a race,
whether or not a customer would conclude the sale he was
hoping for, and several incidents of clairvoyance. Mr. Bar-
ris, in addition to being a salesman in mutual funds, is an
active member of the United States Army Reserves with
the rank of Major.
Stanley R. Dean, M.D., clinical professor of psychia-
try at the University of Florida, is a member of the Ameri-
can Psychiatric Association Task Force on transcultural
psychiatry and the recent coordinator of a symposium at
which a number of parapsychologists spoke.
Curiously enough, the number of people who will
accept the existence of ESP is much larger than the number
of people who believe in spirit survival or the more
advanced forms of occult beliefs. ESP has the aura of the
scientific about it, while, to the average mind at least, sub-
jects including spirit survival, ghosts, reincarnation, and
such seemingly require facets of human acceptance other
than those that are purely scientific. This, at least, is a
widely held conviction. At the basis of this distinction lies
the unquestionable fact that there is a very pronounced dif-
ference between ESP and the more advanced forms of occult
40
scientific belief. For ESP to work, one need not accept sur-
vival of human personality beyond bodily death. ESP
between the living is as valid as ESP between the living and
the so-called dead. Telepathy works whether one partner is
in the great beyond or not. In fact, a large segment of the
reported phenomena involving clairvoyance can probably
be explained on the basis of simple ESP and need not
involve the intercession of spirits at all. It has always been
debatable whether a medium obtains information about a
client from a spirit source standing by, as it were, in the
wings, or whether the medium obtains this information
from his own unconscious mind, drawing upon extraordi-
nary powers dormant within it. Since the results are the
main concern of the client, it is generally of little impor-
tance whence the information originates. It is, of course,
comforting to think that ESP is merely an extension of the
ordinary five senses as we know them, and can be accepted
without the need for overhauling one’s greater philosophy
of life. The same cannot be said about the acceptance of
spirit communication, reincarnation, and other occult phe-
nomena. Accepting them as realities requires a profound
alteration of the way average people look at life. With ESP,
a scientifically oriented person need only extend the limits
of believability a little, comparing the ESP faculty to radio
waves and himself to a receiving instrument.
So widespread is the interest in ESP research and so
many are the published cases indicating its reality that the
number of out-and-out debunkers has shrunk considerably
during the past years. Some years ago, H. H. Pierce, a
chemist, seriously challenged the findings of Dr. Joseph
Rhine on the grounds that his statistics were false, if not
fraudulent, and that the material proved nothing. No scien-
tist of similar stature has come forth in recent years to
challenge the acceptance of ESP; to the contrary, more and
more universities are devoting entire departments or special
projects to inquiry into the field of ESP. The little debunk-
ing that goes on still is done by inept amateurs trying to
hang on to the coattails of the current occult vogue.
It is only natural to assume that extrasensory percep-
tion has great practical value in crime detection. Though
some law enforcement agencies have used it and are using
it in increasing instances, this does not mean that the
courts will openly admit evidence obtained by psychic
means. However, a psychic may help the authorities solve a
crime by leading them to a criminal or to the missing per-
son. It is then up to the police or other agency to establish
the facts by conventional means that will stand up in a
court of law. Without guidance from the psychic, however,
the authorities might still be in the dark.
One of the best-known psychic persons to help the
police and the FBI was the late Florence Sternfels, the great
psychometrist. Her other talent, however, was police work.
She would pick up a trail from such meager clues as an
object belonging to the missing person, or even merely by
being asked whatever happened to so-and-so. Of course,
she had no access to any information about the case, nor
was she ever told afterwards how the case ended. The
police like to come to psychics for help, but once they have
gotten what they’ve come for, they are reluctant to keep
the psychic informed of the progress they have made
because of the leads provided. They are even more reluc-
tant to admit that a psychic has helped them. This can
take on preposterous proportions.
The Dutch psychic Peter Hurkos, whose help was
sought by the Boston police in the case of the Boston
Strangler, was indeed able to describe in great detail what
the killer looked like.
Hurkos came to Boston to help the authorities but
soon found himself in the middle of a power play between
the Boston police and the Massachusetts Attorney General.
The police had close ties to Boston’s Democratic machine,
and the Attorney General was a Republican. Hurkos, even
worse, was a foreigner.
When the newspapers splashed the psychic’s success-
ful tracing of the killer all over the front pages, something
within the police department snapped. Hurkos, sure he had
picked the right suspect, returned to New York, his job
done. The following morning he was arrested on the charge
of having impersonated an FBI man several months before.
He had allegedly said as much to a gas station attendant
and shown him some credentials. This happened when the
gas station man noticed some rifles in Hurkos ’s car. The
“credentials” were honorary police cards which many grate-
ful police chiefs had given the psychic for his aid. Hurkos,
whose English was fragmentary — for that matter, his
Dutch might not be good, since he was only a house
painter before he turned psychic — said something to the
effect that he worked with the FBI, which was perfectly
true. To a foreigner, the difference between such a state-
ment and an assertion of being an FBI man is negligible
and perhaps even unimportant.
Those in the know realized that Hurkos was being
framed, and some papers said so immediately. Then the
Attorney General’s office picked up another suspect, who
practically matched the first one in appearance, weight,
height. Which man did the killing? But Hurkos had done
his job well. He had pointed out the places where victims
had been found and he had described the killer. And what
did it bring him for his troubles, beyond a modest fee of
$1,000? Only trouble and embarrassment.
Florence Sternfels was more fortunate in her police
contacts. One of her best cases concerns the FBI. During
the early part of World War II, she strongly felt that the
Iona Island powder depot would be blown up by saboteurs.
She had trouble getting to the right person, of course, but
eventually she succeeded, and the detonation was headed
off just in the nick of time. During the ten years I knew
and sometimes worked with her, Sternfels was consulted in
dozens of cases of mysterious disappearances and missing
persons. In one instance, she was flown to Colorado to help
Ghosts and the World of the Living
41
local law officers track down a murderer. Never frightened,
she saw the captured man a day or two later. Incidentally,
she never charged a penny for this work with the
authorities.
The well-known Dutch clairvoyant Gerard Croiset
has worked with the police in Holland on a number of
cases of murder or disappearance. In the United States,
Croiset attempted to solve the almost legendary disappear-
ance of Judge Crater with the help of his biographer, Jack
Harrison Pollack. Although Croiset succeeded in adding
new material, Pollack was not able to actually find the
bones in the spot indicated by Croiset through the use of
clairvoyance. However, Croiset was of considerable help in
the case of three murdered civil rights workers. He sup-
plied, again through Jack Pollack, a number of clues and
pieces of information as to where the bodies would be
found, who the murderers were, and how the crime had
been committed, at a time when the question of whether
they were even dead or not had not yet been resolved!
Croiset sees in pictures rather than words or sen-
tences. He need not be present at the scene of a crime to
get impressions, but holding an object belonging to the
person whose fate he is to fathom helps him.
What do the police think of this kind of help?
Officially, they do not like to say they use it, but
unofficially, why that’s another matter. When I worked on
the Serge Rubinstein case a year after the financier’s
murder — when it was as much a mystery as it is, at least
officially, today — I naturally turned over to the New York
police every scrap of information I obtained. The medium
in this case was Mrs. Ethel Meyers, and the evidence was
indeed remarkable. Rubinstein’s mother was present during
the trance session, and readily identified the voice coming
from the entranced psychic’s lips as that of her murdered
son. Moreover, certain peculiar turns of language were used
that were characteristic of the deceased. None of this was
known to the medium or to myself at the time.
As we sat in the very spot where the tragic event had
taken place, the restless spirit of Serge Rubinstein
requested revenge, of course, and named names and cir-
cumstances of his demise. In subsequent sittings, additional
information was given, safe deposit box numbers were
named, and all sorts of detailed business, obtained; but, for
reasons unknown, the police did not act on this, perhaps
because it hardly stands up in a court of law. The guilty
parties were well known, partly as a result of ordinary
police work, and partly from our memos and transcriptions,
but to make the accusation stick would prove difficult.
Then, after Rubinstein’s mother died, the case slid back
into the gray world of forgotten, unsolved crimes.
* * *
CHAPTER THREE: Ghosts and the
World of the Living
Some police officers, at least, do not hesitate to speak
up, however, and freely admit the importance of ESP in
their work. On October 9, 1964, Lieutenant John J. Cronin
gave an interview to the New York journal- American’s
William McFadden, in which he made his experiences with
ESP known. This is what the reporter wrote:
In the not too distant future, every police department
in the land will have extra-sensory perception con-
sultants, perhaps even extra-sensory perception bureaus,
New York Police Lt. John J. Cronin said today.
For 18 years — longer than any other man in the his-
tory of the department — he headed the Missing Persons
Bureau.
“After I retire, I might write a book on ESP," he
said. “It has provided much information on police cases
that is accurate."
One of the fantastic cases he cited was that of a 10-
year-old Baltimore girl who was missing last July.
A Baltimore police sergeant visited Mrs. Florence
Sternfels of Edgewater, N.J., who calls herself a psy-
chometrist. On her advice, when he got back to Balti-
more he dug in a neighbor’s cellar. The body of the girl
was found two feet under the dirt floor.
Lt. Cronin also noted that Gerard Croiset, the Dutch
clairvoyant, is credited with finding 400 missing
children.
“Right now, ESP is a hit and miss proposition. It’s in
an elementary stage, the stage electricity was in when
Ben Franklin flew his kite," Lt. Cronin said.
“But it does exist. It is a kind of sixth sense that
primitive man possessed but has been lost through the
ages. It’s not supernatural, mind you. And it will be the
method of the future.
“Once it is gotten into scientific shape, it will help
law enforcement agencies solve certain crimes that have
been baffling them. ”
Stressing that ESP will grow in police use, he said:
“In Europe some of the ESP people have been qualified
to give testimony in court. It will come here, too."
More specific and illustrative of the methods used by
psychics in helping solve crimes is a column devoted to a
case in Washington State, written by Michael MacDougall
for the Long Island Press of May 3, 1964, in which he sug-
gests that someone with ESP should be on the staff of every
police department in order to help solve difficult crimes.
MacDougall makes a very strong case for his conviction in
his report on a case that took place a month earlier.
DeMille, the famous mentalist currently touring for
the Associated Executives Clubs, checked into the Chi-
nook Hotel in Yakima, Wash., at 2 P.M. on Friday,
April 3. He was tired, and intended to shower and sleep
before that evening’s lecture. But hardly had he turned
the key in the lock when the phone rang.
It was a woman calling. "My friend has had her wal-
let stolen,” the feminine voice said. “It contained several
articles of sentimental value which she would like to
recover. Can you help her find it?"
42
"Perhaps," said DeMille. "I’ll do my best. But you'll
have to wait until after my speech. Call me about ten-
thirty.”
DeMille hung up, tumbled into bed. But he couldn’t
sleep. The thought of that stolen wallet kept intruding.
Then, just on the edge of unconsciousness, when one is
neither asleep nor awake, he envisioned the crime.
Two teen-age boys, one wearing a red sweater, stole
up behind a woman shopper. One stepped in front,
diverting her attention, while his partner gently unfastened
her handbag, removed the wallet, and scampered
around the corner, to be joined later by his confederate.
DeMille saw more. The boys got into a beat-up
Ford. They drove away, parked briefly in front of a
used car lot. Opening the wallet, they took out a roll of
bills, which were divided evenly. DeMille wasn't sure of
the count but thought it was $46. Then the boys exam-
ined a checkbook. DeMille saw the number 2798301 ,
and the legend: First National Bank of Washington. He
also received an impression that it was some kind of a
meat-packing firm.
Now fully awake, DeMille phoned K. Gordon Smith,
secretary of the Knife and Fork Club, the organization
for which DeMille was speaking that night. The secretary
came up to DeMille’s room, listened to the story,
and advised calling the police.
Soon DeMille had callers. One introduced himself as
Frank Gayman, a reporter for the Yakima Herald. The
other was Sergeant Walt Dutcher, of the Yakima Police.
Again DeMille told his story. Gayman was skeptical but
willing to be convinced. The sergeant was totally disbe-
lieving and openly hostile.
DeMille suggested they call the First National Bank
and find out if a meat-packing company had a checking
account numbered 2798301 . Then it would be easy to
call the company and discover whether or not any
female employee had been robbed.
The report was negative. Account #2798301 was not
a meat-picking company. In fact, the bank had no meat
packers as customers. Fruit packers, yes; meat packers,
no.
Sergeant Dutcher, after threatening DeMille with
arrest for turning in a false crime report, stamped out of
the room. Frank Gayman, still willing to be convinced,
remained. The phone rang again. It was for Gayman;
the bank was calling.
There was an account numbered 2798001 carried by
Club Scout Pack #3. Could this be the one? Immediately,
DeMille knew that it was.
The president of the Knife and Fork Club, one Karl
Steinhilb, volunteered to drive DeMille about the city.
Following the mentalist’s directions, Steinhilb drove to
an outlying section, parked in front of a used car lot.
And sure enough, in the bushes fronting a nearby house
they found the discarded wallet.
The Yakima Police Department was not quite the
same after that.
The cases of cooperation between psychics or psychic
researchers and police departments are becoming more
numerous as time goes on and less prejudice remains
toward the use of such persons in law enforcement.
In July, 1965, the Austin, Texas, police used the ser-
vices of a Dallas psychic in the case of two missing
University of Texas girls, who were much later found
murdered. At the time of the consultation, however, one
week after the girls had disappeared, she predicted that the
girls would be found within twenty-four hours, which they
weren’t, and that three men were involved, which proved
true.
But then the time element is often a risky thing with
predictions. Time is one of the dimensions that is least
capable of being read correctly by many psychics. This of
course may be due to the fact that time is an arbitrary and
perhaps even artificial element introduced by man to make
life more livable; in the nonphysical world, it simply does
not exist. Thus when a psychic looks into the world of the
mind and then tries to interpret the conditions he or she is
impressed with, the time element is often wrong. It is
based mainly on the psychic’s own interpretation, not on a
solid image, as is the case with facts, names, and places
that he or she might describe.
One of the institutes of learning specializing in work
with clairvoyants that cooperate with police authorities is
the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, where Dr. W. H.
C. Tenhaeff is the head of the Parapsychology Institute.
Between 1950 and 1960 alone, the Institute studied over 40
psychics, including 26 men and 21 women, according to
author-researcher Jack Harrison Pollack, who visited the
Institute in 1960 and wrote a glowing report on its activi-
ties.
Pollack wrote a popular book about Croiset, who was
the Institute’s star psychic and who started out as an ordi-
nary grocer until he discovered his unusual gift and put it
to professional use, especially after he met Dr. Tenhaeff in
1964.
But Croiset is only one of the people who was tested
in the Dutch research center. Others are Warner Tholen,
whose specialty is locating missing objects, and Pierre van
Delzen, who can put his hands on a globe and predict con-
ditions in that part of the world.
The University of Utrecht is, in this respect, far
ahead of other places of learning. In the United States, Dr.
Joseph B. Rhine has made a brilliant initial effort, but
today Duke University’s parapsychology laboratory is
doing little to advance research in ESP beyond repeat
experiments and cautious, very cautious, theorizing on the
nature of man. There is practically no field work being
done outside the laboratory, and no American university is
in the position, either financially or in terms of staff, to
work with such brilliant psychics as does Dr. Tenhaeff in
Holland.
For a country that has more per-capita crime than
any other, one would expect that the police would welcome
all the help they could get.
Ghosts and the World of the Living
43
In the following pages you will read about true cases
of hauntings, encounters with ghosts and apparitions of
spirits, all of which have been fully documented and wit-
nessed by responsible people. To experience these phenom-
ena, you need not be a true "medium,” though the line
between merely having ESP or being psychic with full
mediumship, which involves clairvoyance (seeing things),
clairaudience (hearing things), and/or clairsentience
(smelling or feeling things), is rather vague at times. It is
all a matter of degree, and some people partake of more
than one “phase” or form of psychic ability. Regardless of
which sensitivity applies to your situation, they are natural
and need not be feared.
CHAPTER THREE: Ghosts and the
World of the Living
44
CHAPTER FOUR
What Exactly
Is a Ghost?
FROM CLOSED-MINDED SKEPTICS to uninformed would-be believers, from Hollywood horror
movies to Caspar the Ghost, there is a great deal of misinformation and foolish fantasy floating
around as to what ghosts are and, of course, whether they do in fact exist.
I was one of the first people with a background not only in science, but also in investigative jour-
nalism to say to the general public, in books and in the media, Yes, ghosts are for real. Nobody
laughed, because I followed through with evidence and with authentic photographic material taken
under test conditions.
What exactly is a ghost? Something people dream up in their cups or on a sickbed? Something
you read about in juvenile fiction? Far from it. Ghosts — apparitions of “dead” people or sounds asso-
ciated with invisible human beings — are the surviving emotional memories of people who have not
been able to make the transition from their physical state into the world of the spirit — or as Dr.
Joseph Rhine of Duke University has called it, the world of the mind. Their state is one of emotional
shock induced by sudden death or great suffering, and because of it the individuals involved cannot
understand what is happening to them. They are unable to see beyond their own immediate environ-
ment or problem, and so they are forced to continually relive those final moments of agony until
someone breaks through and explains things to them. In this respect they are like psychotics being
helped by the psychoanalyst, except that the patient is not on the couch, but rather in the atmosphere
of destiny. Man’s electromagnetic nature makes this perfectly plausible; that is, since our individual
personality is really nothing more than a personal energy field encased in a denser outer layer called
the physical body, the personality can store emotional stimuli and memories indefinitely without much
dimming, very much like a tape recording that can be played over and over without losing clarity or
volume.
Those who die normally under conditions of adjustment need not go through this agony, and
they seem to pass on rapidly into that next state of
consciousness that may be a “heaven” or a “hell,”
What Exactly Is a Ghost?
_
45
according to what the individual’s mental state at death
might have been. Neither state is an objective place, but is
a subjective state of being. The sum total of similar states
of being may, however, create a quasi-objective state
approaching a condition or “place” along more orthodox
religious lines. My contact with the confused individuals
unable to depart from the earth's sphere, those who are
commonly called “ghosts" or earth-bound spirits, is
through a trance medium who will lend her physical body
temporarily to the entities in difficulty so that they can
speak through the medium and detail their problems, frus-
trations, or unfinished business. Here again, the parallel
with psychoanalysis becomes apparent: in telling their tales
of woe, the restless ones relieve themselves of their pres-
sures and anxieties and thus may free themselves of their
bonds. If fear is the absence of information, as I have
always held, then knowledge is indeed the presence of
understanding. Or view it the other way round, if you pre-
fer. Because of my books, people often call on me to help
them understand problems of this nature. Whenever some-
one has seen a ghost or heard noises of a human kind that
do not seem to go with a body, and feel it might be some-
thing I ought to look into, I usually do.
To be sure, I don’t always find a ghost. But fre-
quently I do find one, and moreover, I find that many of
those who have had the uncanny experiences are them-
selves mediumistic, and are therefore capable of being com-
munications vehicles for the discarnates. Ghosts are more
common than most people realize, and, really quite natural
and harmless. Though, at times, they are sad and shocking,
as all human suffering is, for man is his worst enemy,
whether in the flesh or outside of it. But there is nothing
mystical about the powers of ESP or the ability to experience
ghostly phenomena.
Scoffers like to dismiss all ghostly encounters by cut-
ting the witnesses down to size — their size. The witnesses
are probably mentally unbalanced, they say, or sick people
who hallucinate a lot, or they were tired that day, or it
must have been the reflection from (pick your light source),
or finally, in desperation, they may say yes, something
probably happened to them, but in the telling they blew it
all up so you can’t be sure any more what really happened.
I love the way many people who cannot accept the
possibility of ghosts being real toss out their views on what
happened to strangers. They say, "Probably this or that,”
and from “probably” for them, it is only a short step to
“certainly.” The human mind is as clever at inventing
away as it is at hallucinating. The advantage in being a sci-
entifically trained reporter, as I am, is the ability to dismiss
people’s interpretations and find the facts. I talked of the
Ghosts I’ve Met in a book a few years ago that bore that
title. Even more fascinating are the people I’ve met who
encounter ghosts. Are they sick, unbalanced, crackpots or
other unrealistic individuals whose testimony is worthless?
CHAPTER FOUR: What Exactly Is a Ghost?
Far from it.
Those who fall into that category never get to me in
the first place. They don’t stand up under my methods of
scrutiny. Crackpots, beware! I call a spade a spade, as I
proved when I exposed the fake spiritualist camp practices
in print some years ago.
The people who come across ghostly manifestations
are people like you.
Take the couple from Springfield, Illinois, for
instance. Their names are Gertrude and Russell Meyers
and they were married in 1935. He worked as a stereo typer
on the local newspaper, and she was a high-school teacher.
Both of them were in their late twenties and couldn't care
less about such things as ghosts.
At the time of their marriage, they had rented a five-
room cottage which had stood empty for some time. It had
no particular distinction but a modest price, and was
located in Bloomington where the Meyerses then lived.
Gertrude Meyers came from a farm background and
had studied at Illinois Wesleyan as well as the University
of Chicago. For a while she worked as a newspaperwoman
in Detroit, later taught school, and as a sideline has written
a number of children’s books. Her husband Russell, also of
farm background, attended Illinois State Normal University
at Normal, Illinois, and later took his apprenticeship at the
Bloomington Pantograph.
The house they had rented in Bloomington was
exactly like the house next to it; the current owners had
converted what was formerly one large house into two sepa-
rate units, laying a driveway between them.
In the summer, after they had moved into their
house, they went about the business of settling down to a
routine. Since her husband worked the night shift on the
newspaper, Mrs. Meyers was often left alone in the house.
At first, it did not bother her at all. Sounds from the street
penetrated into the house and gave her a feeling of people
nearby. But when the chill of autumn set in and the win-
dows had to be closed to keep it out, she became aware,
gradually, that she was not really alone.
One particular night early in their occupancy of the
house, she had gone to bed leaving her bedroom door ajar.
It was 10:30 and she was just about ready to go to sleep
when she heard rapid, firm footsteps starting at the front
door, inside the house, and coming through the living
room, the dining room, and finally coming down the hall
leading to her bedroom door.
She leapt out of bed and locked the door. Then she
went back into bed and sat there, wondering with sheer
terror what the intruder would do. But nobody came.
More to calm herself than because she really believed
it, Mrs. Meyers convinced herself that she must have been
mistaken about those footsteps.
It was probably someone in the street. With this
reassuring thought on her mind, she managed to fall
asleep.
46
The next morning, she did not tell her new husband
about the nocturnal event. After all, she did not want him
to think he had married a strange woman!
But the footsteps returned, night after night, always
at the same time and always stopping abruptly at her bed-
room door, which, needless to say, she kept locked.
Rather than facing her husband with the allegation
that they had rented a haunted house, she bravely decided
to face the intruder and find out what this was all about.
One night she deliberately waited for the now familiar
brisk footfalls. The clock struck 10:00, then 10:30. In the
quiet of the night, she could hear her heart pounding in
her chest.
Then the footsteps came, closer and closer, until they
got to her bedroom door. At this moment, Mrs. Meyers
jumped out of bed, snapped on the light, and tore the door
wide open.
There was nobody there, and no retreating footsteps
could be heard.
She tried it again and again, but the invisible intruder
never showed himself once the door was opened.
The winter was bitterly cold, and Russell was in the
habit of building up a fire in the furnace in the basement
when he came home from work at 3:30 A.M. Mrs. Meyers
always heard him come in, but did not get up. One night
he left the basement, came into the bedroom and said,
"Why are you walking around this freezing house in the
middle of the night?”
Of course she had not been out of bed all night, and
told him as much. Then they discovered that he, too, had
heard footsteps, but had thought it was his wife walking
restlessly about the house. Meyers had heard the steps
whenever he was fixing the furnace in the basement, but by
the time he got upstairs they had ceased.
When Mrs. Meyers had to get up early to go to her
classes, her husband would stay in the house sleeping late.
On many days he would hear someone walking about the
house and investigate, only to find himself quite alone.
He would wake up in the middle of the night thinking
his wife and gotten up, and was immediately reassured
that she was sleeping peacefully next to him. Yet there was
someone out there in the empty house!
Since everything was securely locked, and countless
attempts to trap the ghost had failed, the Meyerses
shrugged and learned to live with their peculiar boarder.
Gradually the steps became part of the atmosphere of the
old house, and the terror began to fade into the darkness of
night.
In May of the following year, they decided to work in
the garden and, as they did so, they met their next-door
neighbors for the first time. Since they lived in identical
houses, they had something in common, and conversation
between them and the neighbors — a young man of twenty-
five and his grandmother — sprang up.
Eventually, the discussion got around to the foot-
steps. They, too, kept hearing them, it seemed. After they
had compared notes on their experiences, the Meyerses
asked more questions. They were told that before the
house was divided, it belonged to a single owner who had
committed suicide in the house. No wonder he liked to
walk in both halves of what was once his home!
* * *
You’d never think of Kokomo, Indiana as particularly
haunted ground, but one of the most touching cases I
know of occurred there some time ago. A young woman by
the name of Mary Elizabeth Hamilton was in the habit of
spending many of her summer vacations in her grand-
mother’s house. The house dates back to 1834 and is a
handsome place, meticulously kept up.
Miss Hamilton had never had the slightest interest in
the supernatural, and the events that transpired that sum-
mer, when she spent four weeks at the house, came as a
complete surprise to her. One evening she was walking
down the front staircase when she was met by a lovely
young lady coming up the stairs. Miss Hamilton noticed
that she wore a particularly beautiful evening gown. There
was nothing the least bit ghostly about the woman, and she
passed Miss Hamilton closely, in fact so closely that she
could have touched her had she wanted to.
But she did notice that the gown was of a filmy pink
material, and her hair and eyes were dark brown, and the
latter, full of tears. When the two women met, the girl in
the evening gown smiled at Miss Hamilton and passed by.
Since she knew that there was no other visitor in the
house, and that no one was expected at this time, Miss
Hamilton was puzzled. She turned her head to follow her
up the stairs. The lady in pink reached the top of the stairs
and vanished — into thin air.
As soon as she could, she reported the matter to her
grandmother, who shook her head and would not believe
her account. She would not even discuss it, so Miss Hamil-
ton let the matter drop out of deference to her grand-
mother. But the dress design had been so unusual, she
decided to check it out in a library. She found, to her
amazement, that the lady in pink had worn a dress that
was from the late 1 840s.
In September of the next year, her grandmother
decided to redecorate the house. In this endeavor she used
many old pieces of furniture, some of which had come
from the attic of the house. When Miss Hamilton arrived
and saw the changes, she was suddenly stopped by a por-
trait hung in the hall.
It was a portrait of her lady of the stairs. She was not
wearing the pink gown in this picture but, other than that,
she was the same person.
Miss Hamilton’s curiosity about the whole matter
was again aroused and, since she could not get any cooper-
ation from her grandmother, she turned to her great aunt
What Exactly Is a Ghost?
47
for help. This was particularly fortunate since the aunt was
a specialist in family genealogy.
Finally the lady of the stairs was identified. She
turned out to be a distant cousin of Miss Hamilton’s, and
had once lived in that very house.
She had fallen in love with a ne’er-do-well, and after
he died in a brawl, she threw herself down the stairs to her
death.
Why had the family ghost picked her to appear
before, Miss Hamilton wondered.
Then she realized that she bore a strong facial resem-
blance to the ghost. Moreover, their names were almost
identical — Mary Elizabeth was Miss Hamilton’s, and
Elizabeth Mary, the pink lady's. Both women even had the
same nickname, Libby.
Perhaps the ghost had looked for a little recognition
from her family and, having gotten none from the grand-
mother, had seized upon the opportunity to manifest her-
self to a more amenable relative?
Miss Hamilton is happy that she was able to see the
sad smile on the unfortunate girl’s face, for to her it is
proof that communication, though silent, had taken place
between them across the years.
* * *
Mrs. Jane Eidson is a housewife in suburban Min-
neapolis. She is middle-aged and her five children range in
age from nine to twenty. Her husband Bill travels four days
each week. They live in a cottage-type brick house that is
twenty-eight years old, and they’ve lived there for the past
eight years.
The first time the Eidsons noticed that there was
something odd about their otherwise ordinary-looking
home was after they had been in the house for a short
time. Mrs. Eidson was in the basement sewing, when all of
a sudden she felt that she was not alone and wanted to run
upstairs. She suppressed this strong urge but felt very
uncomfortable. Another evening, her husband was down
there practicing a speech when he also felt the presence of
another. His self-control was not as strong as hers, and he
came upstairs. In discussing their strange feelings with
their next-door neighbor, they discovered that the previous
tenant had also complained about the basement. Their
daughter, Rita, had never wanted to go to the basement by
herself and, when pressed for a reason, finally admitted
that there was a man down there. She described him as
dark-haired and wearing a plaid shirt.
Sometimes he would stand by her bed at night and
she would become frightened, but the moment she thought
of calling her mother, the image disappeared. Another spot
where she felt his presence was the little playhouse at the
other end of their yard.
The following spring, Mrs. Eidson noticed a bouncing
light at the top of the stairs as she was about to go to
CHAPTER FOUR: What Exactly Is a Ghost?
bed in an upstairs room, which she was occupying while
convalescing from surgery.
The light followed her to her room as if it had a
mind of its own!
When she entered her room the light left, but the
room felt icy. She was disturbed by this, but nevertheless
went to bed and soon had forgotten all about it as sleep
came to her. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, she
woke and sat up in bed.
Something had awakened her. At the foot of her bed
she saw a man who was “beige -colored,” as she put it. As
she stared at the apparition it went away, again leaving the
room very chilly.
About that same time, the Eidsons noticed that their
electric appliances were playing tricks on them. There was
the time at 5 A.M. when their washing machine went on by
itself, as did the television set in the basement, which could
only be turned on by plugging it into the wall socket.
When they had gone to bed, the set was off and there was
no one around to plug it in.
Who was so fond of electrical gadgets that they were
turning them on in the small hours of the morning?
Finally Mrs. Eidson found out. In May of 1949, a
young man who was just out of the service had occupied
the house. His hobby had been electrical wiring, it seems,
for he had installed a strand of heavy wires from the base-
ment underground through the yard to the other end of the
property. When he attempted to hook them up to the util-
ity pole belonging to the electric company, he was killed
instantly. It happened near the place where Mrs. Eidson ’s
girl had seen the apparition. Since the wires are still in her
garden, Mrs. Eidson is not at all surprised that the dead
man likes to hang around.
And what better way for an electronics buff to mani-
fest himself as a ghost than by appearing as a bright,
bouncy light? As of this writing, the dead electrician is still
playing tricks in the Eidson home, and Mrs. Eidson is
looking for a new home — one a little less unusual than
their present one.
* * *
Eileen Courtis is forty-seven years old, a native of
London, and a well-balanced individual who now resides
on the West coast but who lived previously in New York
City. Although she has never gone to college, she has a
good grasp of things, an analytical mind, and is not given
to hysterics. When she arrived in New York at age thirty -
four, she decided to look for a quiet hotel and then search
for a job.
The job turned out to be an average office position,
and the hotel she decided upon was the Martha Washing-
ton, which was a hotel for women only on Twenty-Ninth
Street. Eileen was essentially shy and a loner who only
made friends slowly.
She was given a room on the twelfth floor and,
immediately on crossing the threshold, she was struck by a
48
foul odor coming from the room. Her first impulse was to
ask for another room, but she was in no mood to create a
fuss so she stayed.
"I can stand it a night or two,” she thought, but did
not unpack. It turned out that she stayed in that room for
six long months, and yet she never really unpacked.
Now all her life, Eileen had been having various
experiences that involved extrasensory perception, and her
first impression of her new “home” was that someone had
died in it. She examined the walls inch by inch. There was
a spot where a crucifix must have hung for a long time,
judging by the color of the surrounding wall. Evidently it
had been removed when someone moved out. . .perm-
anently.
That first night, after she had gone to bed, her sleep
was interrupted by what sounded like the turning of a
newspaper page. It sounded exactly as if someone were sit-
ting in the chair at the foot of her bed reading a newspaper.
Quickly she switched on the light and she was, of
course, quite alone. Were her nerves playing tricks on her?
It was a strange city, a strange room. She decided to go
back to sleep. Immediately, the rustling started up again,
and then someone began walking across the floor, starting
from the chair and heading toward the door.
Eileen turned on every light in the room and it
stopped. Exhausted, she dozed off again. The next morn-
ing she looked over the room carefully. Perhaps mice had
caused the strange rustling. The strange odor remained, so
she requested that the room be fumigated. The manager
smiled wryly, and nobody came to fumigate her room.
The rustling noise continued, night after night, and Eileen
slept with the lights on for the next three weeks.
Somehow her ESP told her this presence was a strong-
willed, vicious old woman who resented others occupying
what she still considered "her” room. Eileen decided to
fight her. Night after night, she braved it out in the dark,
only to find herself totally exhausted in the morning. Her
appearance at the office gave rise to talk. But she was not
going to give in to a ghost. Side by side, the living and the
dead now occupied the same room without sharing it.
Then one night, something prevented her from going
off to sleep. She lay in bed quietly, waiting.
Suddenly she became aware of two skinny but very
strong arms extended over her head, holding a large downy
pillow as though to suffocate her!
It took every ounce of her strength to force the pillow
off her face.
Next morning, she tried to pass it off as a hallucina-
tion. But was it? She was quite sure that she had not been
asleep.
But still she did not move out, and one evening when
she arrived home from the office with a friend, she felt a
sudden pain in her back, as if she had been stabbed. Dur-
ing the night, she awoke to find herself in a state of utter
paralysis. She could not move her limbs or head. Finally,
after a long time, she managed to work her way to the tele-
phone receiver and call for a doctor. Nobody came. But her
control started to come back and she called her friend, who
rushed over only to find Eileen in a state of shock.
During the next few days she had a thorough exami-
nation by the company physician which included the taking
of X-rays to determine if there was anything physically
wrong with her that could have caused this condition. She
was given a clean bill of health and her strength had by
then returned, so she decided to quit while she was ahead.
She went to Florida for an extended rest, but eventu-
ally came back to New York and the hotel. This time she
was given another room, where she lived very happily and
without incident for over a year.
One day a neighbor who knew her from the time she
had occupied the room on the twelfth floor saw her in the
lobby and insisted on having a visit with her. Reluctantly,
for she is not fond of socializing, Eileen agreed. The con-
versation covered various topics until suddenly the neigh-
bor came out with “the time you were living in that haunt-
ed room across the hall.”
Since Eileen had never told anyone of her fearsome
experiences there, she was puzzled. The neighbor confessed
that she had meant to warn her while she was occupying
that room, but somehow never had mustered enough
courage. “Warn me of what?” Eileen insisted.
“The woman who had the room just before you
moved in,” the neighbor explained haltingly, “well, she was
found dead in the chair, and the woman who had it before
her also was found dead in the bathtub.”
Eileen swallowed quickly and left. Suddenly she knew
that the pillowcase had not been a hallucination.
* * *
The Buxhoeveden family is one of the oldest noble
families of Europe, related to a number of royal houses and
— since the eighteenth century, when one of the counts
married the daughter of Catherine the Great of Russia —
also to the Russian Imperial family. The family seat was
Lode Castle on the island of Eesel, off the coast of Estonia.
The castle, which is still standing, is a very ancient build-
ing with a round tower set somewhat apart from the main
building. Its Soviet occupants have since turned it into a
museum.
The Buxhoevedens acquired it when Frederick
William Buxhoeveden married Natalie of Russia; it was a
gift from mother-in-law Catherine.
Thus it was handed down from first-born son to
first-born son, until it came to be in the hands of an earlier
Count Anatol Buxhoeveden. The time was the beginning
of this century, and all was right with the world.
Estonia was a Russian province, so it was not out of
the ordinary that Russian regiments should hold war games
in the area. On one occasion, when the maneuvers were in
full swing, the regimental commander requested that his
What Exactly Is a Ghost?
49
officers be put up at the castle. The soldiers were located in
the nearby town, but five of the staff officers came to stay
at Lode Castle. Grandfather Buxhoeveden was the perfect
host, but was unhappy that he could not accommodate all
five in the main house. The fifth man would have to be
satisfied with quarters in the tower. Since the tower had by
then acquired a reputation of being haunted, he asked for a
volunteer to stay in that particular room.
There was a great deal of teasing about the haunted
room before the youngest of the officers volunteered and
left for his quarters.
The room seemed cozy enough, and the young officer
congratulated himself for having chosen so quiet and
pleasant a place to spend the night after a hard day's
maneuvers.
He was tired and got into bed right away. But he was
too tired to fall asleep quickly, so he took a book from one
of the shelves lining the walls, lit the candle on his night
table, and began to read.
As he did so, he suddenly became aware of a greenish
light on the opposite side of the room. As he looked at
the light with astonishment, it changed before his eyes into
the shape of a woman. She seemed solid enough. To his
horror, she came over to his bed, took him by the hand,
and demanded that he follow her. Somehow he could not
resist her commands, even though not a single word was
spoken. He followed her down the stairs into the library of
the castle itself. There she made signs indicating that he
was to remove the carpet. Without questioning her, he
flipped back the rug. She then pointed at a trap door that
was underneath the carpet. He opened the door and fol-
lowed the figure down a flight of stairs until they came to a
big iron door that barred their progress. The figure pointed
to a corner of the floor, and he dug into it. There he found
a key, perhaps ten inches long, and with it he opened the
iron gate. He now found himself in a long corridor that led
to a circular room. From there another corridor led on and
again he followed eagerly, wondering what this was all
about.
This latter corridor suddenly opened onto another
circular room that seemed familiar — he was back in his
own room. The apparition was gone.
What did it all mean? He sat up trying to figure it
out, and when he finally dozed off it was already dawn.
Consequently, he overslept and came down to breakfast
last. His state of excitement immediately drew the attention
of the count and his fellow officers. “You won’t believe
this,” he began and told them what had happened to him.
He was right. Nobody believed him.
But his insistence that he was telling the truth was so
convincing that the count finally agreed, more to humor
him than because he believed him, to follow the young
officer to the library to look for the alleged trap door.
CHAPTER FOUR: What Exactly Is a Ghost?
“But," he added, “I must tell you that on top of that
carpet are some heavy bookshelves filled with books which
have not been moved or touched in over a hundred years.
It is quite impossible for any one man to flip back that
carpet.”
They went to the library, and just as the count had
said, the carpet could not be moved. But Grandfather Bux-
hoeveden decided to follow through anyway and called in
some of his men. Together, ten men were able to move the
shelves and turn the carpet back. Underneath the carpet
was a dust layer an inch thick, but it did not stop the
intrepid young officer from looking for the ring of the trap
door. After a long search for it, he finally located it. A
hush fell over the group when he pulled the trap door
open. There was the secret passage and the iron gate. And
there, next to it, was a rusty iron key. The key fit the lock.
The gate, which had not moved for centuries perhaps,
slowly and painfully swung open, and the little group con-
tinued its exploration of the musty passages. With the offi-
cer leading, the men went through the corridors and came
out in the tower room, just as the officer had done during
the night.
But what did it mean? Everyone knew there were
secret passages — lots of old castles had them as a hedge in
times of war.
The matter gradually faded from memory, and life at
Lode went on. The iron key, however, was preserved and
remained in the Buxhoeveden family until some years ago,
when it was stolen from Count Alexander’s Paris
apartment.
Ten years went by, until, after a small fire in the cas-
tle, Count Buxhoeveden decided to combine the necessary
repairs with the useful installation of central heating, some-
thing old castles always need. The contractor doing the job
brought in twenty men who worked hard to restore and
improve the appointments at Lode. Then one day, the
entire crew vanished — like ghosts. Count Buxhoeveden
reported this to the police, who were already besieged by
the wives and families of the men who had disappeared
without leaving a trace.
Newspapers of the period had a field day with the
case of the vanishing workmen, but the publicity did not
help to bring them back, and the puzzle remained.
Then came the revolution and the Buxhoevedens lost
their ancestral home, Count Alexander and the present
Count Anatol, my brother-in-law, went to live in Switzer-
land. The year was 1923. One day the two men were walk-
ing down a street in Lausanne when a stranger approached
them, calling Count Alexander by name.
“I am the brother of the major domo of your castle,"
the man explained. “I was a plumber on that job of restor-
ing it after the fire."
So much time had passed and so many political
events had changed the map of Europe that the man was
ready at last to lift the veil of secrecy from the case of the
vanishing workmen.
50
This is the story he told: when the men were digging
trenches for the central heating system, they accidentally
came across an iron kettle of the kind used in the Middle
Ages to pour boiling oil or water on the enemies besieging
a castle. Yet this pot was not full of water, but rather of
gold. They had stumbled onto the long-missing Buxhoeve-
den treasure, a hoard reputed to have existed for centuries,
which never had been found. Now, with this stroke of
good fortune, the workmen became larcenous. They opted
for distributing the find among themselves, even though it
meant leaving everything behind — their families, their
homes, their work — and striking out fresh somewhere else.
But the treasure was large enough to make this a pleasure
rather than a problem, and they never missed their wives,
it would seem, finding ample replacements in the gentler
climes of western Europe, where most of them went to live
under assumed names.
At last the apparition that had appeared to the young
officer made sense: it had been an ancestor who wanted to
let her descendants know where the family gold had been
secreted. What a frustration for a ghost to see her efforts
come to naught, and worse yet, to see the fortune squan-
dered by thieves while the legal heirs had to go into exile.
Who knows how things might have tuned out for the Bux-
hoevedens if they had gotten to the treasure in time.
At any rate there is a silver lining to this account:
since there is nothing further to find at Lode Castle, the
ghost does not have to put in appearances under that new
regime. But Russian aristocrats and English lords of the
manor have no corner on uncanny phenomena. Nor are all
of the haunted settings I have encountered romantic or for-
bidding. Certainly there are more genuine ghostly manifes-
tations in the American Midwest and South than anywhere
else in the world. This may be due to the fact that a great
deal of violence occurred there during the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Also, the American public’s atti-
tude toward such phenomena is different from that of
Europeans. In Europe, people are inclined to reserve their
accounts of bona fide ghosts for those people they can
trust. Being ridiculed is not a favorite pastime of most
Europeans.
Americans, by contrast, are more independent. They
couldn’t care less what others think of them in the long
run, so long as their own people believe them. I have
approached individuals in many cases with an assurance of
scientific inquiry and respect for their stories. I am not a
skeptic. I am a searcher for the truth, regardless of what
this truth looks or sounds like.
Some time ago, a well-known TV personality took
issue with me concerning my conviction that ESP and
ghosts are real. Since he was not well informed on the sub-
ject, he should not have ventured forth into an area I know
so well. He proudly proclaimed himself a skeptic.
Irritated, I finally asked him if he knew what being a
skeptic meant. He shook his head.
"The term skeptic," I lectured him patiently, “is
derived from the Greek word skepsis, which was the name
of a small town in Asia Minor in antiquity. It was known
for its lack of knowledge, and people from skepsis were
called skeptics.”
The TV personality didn’t like it at all, but the next
time we met on camera, he was a lot more human and his
humanity finally showed.
* * *
I once received a curious letter from a Mrs. Stewart
living in Chicago, Illinois, in which she explained that she
was living with a ghost and didn’t mind, except that she
had lost two children at birth and this ghost was following
not only her but also her little girl. This she didn’t like, so
could I please come and look into the situation?
I could and did. On July 4, 1 celebrated Indepen-
dence Day by trying to free a hung-up lady ghost on
Chicago’s South Side. The house itself was an old one,
built around the late 1 800s, and not exactly a monument of
architectural beauty. But its functional sturdiness suited its
present purpose — to house a number of young couples and
their children, people who found the house both convenient
and economical.
In its heyday, it had been a wealthy home, complete
with servants and a set of backstairs for the servants to go
up and down on. The three stories are even now connected
by an elaborate buzzer system which hasn’t worked for
years.
I did not wish to discuss the phenomena at the house
with Mrs. Stewart until after Sybil Leek, who was with me,
had had a chance to explore the situation. My good friend
Carl Subak, a stamp dealer, had come along to see how I
worked. He and I had known each other thirty years ago
when we were both students, and because of that he had
overcome his own — ah — skepticism — and decided to
accompany me. Immediately upon arrival, Sybil ascended
the stairs to the second floor as if she knew where to go!
Of course she didn’t; I had not discussed the matter with
her at all. But despite this promising beginning, she drew a
complete blank when we arrived at the upstairs apartment.
“I feel absolutely nothing,” she confided and looked at me
doubtfully. Had I made a mistake? She seemed to ask. On
a hot July day, had we come all the way to the South Side
of Chicago on a wild ghost chase?
We gathered in a bedroom that contained a comfort-
able chair and had windows on both sides that looked out
onto an old-fashioned garden; there was a porch on one
side and a parkway on the other. The furniture, in keeping
with the modest economic circumstances of the owners,
was old and worn, but it was functional and the inhabitants
did not seem to mind.
In a moment, Sybil Leek had slipped into trance. But
instead of a ghost’s personality, the next voice we heard
What Exactly Is a Ghost?
51
was Sybil’s own, although it sounded strange. Sybil was
“out" of her own body, but able to observe the place and
report back to us while still in trance.
The first thing she saw were maps, in a large round
building somehow connected with the house we were in.
"Is there anyone around?” I asked.
“Yes,” Sybil intoned, “James Dugan.”
“What does he do here?”
“Come back to live."
“When was that?”
"1912.”
“Is there anyone with him?”
“There is another man. McCloud.”
“Anyone else?”
“Lots of people.”
“Do they live in this house?”
“Three, four people. . .McCloud. . .maps. .
“All men?”
“No . . . girl . . .Judith . . . maidservant ...”
“Is there an unhappy presence here?”
“Judith. . .she had no one here, no family. . .that man
went away. . .Dugan went away.. .”
“How is she connected with this Dugan?”
"Loved him?”
"Were they married?”
“No. Lovers.”
"Did they have any children?”
There was a momentary silence, then Sybil continued
in a drab, monotonous voice.
"The baby’s dead.”
“Does she know the baby’s dead?”
“She cries. ..baby cries. . .neglected. . .by
Judith... guilty...”
"Does Judith know this?”
“Yes.”
“How old was the baby when it died?”
“A few weeks old.”
Strange, I thought, that Mrs. Stewart had fears for
her own child from this source. She, too, had lost children
at a tender age.
“What happened to the baby?”
“She put it down the steps.”
“What happened to the body then?”
“I don't know.”
“Is Judith still here?”
“She’s here.”
“Where?"
“This room. . .and up and down the steps. She’s
sorry for her baby.”
“Can you talk to her?”
“No. She cannot leave here until she finds — You see
if she could get Dugan — ”
“Where is Dugan?”
"With the maps.”
CHAPTER FOUR: What Exactly Is a Ghost?
“What is Dugan’s work?”
"Has to do with roads.”
“Is he dead?”
“Yes. She wants him here, but he is not here.”
“How did she die?”
"She ran away to the water. . .died by the
water. . .but is here where she lived. . .baby died on the
steps. . .downstairs. . . ”
"What is she doing here, I mean how does she let
people know she is around?”
“She pulls things.. .she cries..."
“And her Christian name?”
“Judith Vincent, I think. Twenty-one. Darkish, not
white. From an island.”
“And the man? Is he white?”
“Yes.”
“Can you see her?”
“Yes.”
"Speak to her?”
“She doesn’t want to, but perhaps. . . ”
"What year does she think this is?”
"1913.”
“Tell her this is the year 1965.”
Sybil informed the spirit in a low voice that this was
1965 and she need not stay here any longer, that Dugan
was dead, too.
“She has to find him,” Sybil explained and I directed
her to explain that she need only call out for her lover in
order to be reunited with him “Over There.”
“She's gone. . . ” Sybil finally said, and breathed
deeply.
A moment later she woke up and looked with aston-
ishment at the strange room, having completely forgotten
how we got here, or where we were.
There was no time for explanations now, as I still
wanted to check out some of this material. The first one to
sit down with me was the owner of the flat, Mrs. Alexan-
der Stewart. A graduate of the University of Iowa, twenty-
five years old, Alexandra Stewart works as a personnel
director. She had witnessed the trance session and seemed
visibly shaken. There was a good reason for this. Mrs.
Stewart, you see, had met the ghost Sybil had described.
The Stewarts had moved into the second-floor apart-
ment in the winter of 1964. The room we were now sitting
in had been hers. Shortly after they moved in, Mrs. Stewart
happened to be glancing up toward the French doors, when
she saw a woman looking at her. The figure was about five
feet three or four, and wore a blue-gray dress with a shawl,
and a hood over her head, so that Mr. Stewart could not
make out the woman’s features. The head seemed strangely
bowed to her, almost as if the woman were doing penance.
I questioned Mrs. Stewart on the woman’s color in
view of Sybil’s description of Judith. But Mrs. Stewart
could not be sure; the woman could have been white or
black. At the time, Mrs. Stewart had assumed it to be a
52
reflection from the mirror, but when she glanced at the
mirror, she did not see the figure in it.
When she turned her attention back to the figure, it
had disappeared. It was toward evening and Mrs. Stewart
was a little tired, yet the figure was very real to her. Her
doubts were completely dispelled when the ghost returned
about a month later. In the meantime she had moved the
dresser that formerly stood in the line of sight farther
down, so that the explanation of the reflection would sim-
ply not hold water. Again the figure appeared at the
French doors. She looked very unhappy to Mrs. Stewart,
who felt herself strangely drawn to the woman, almost as if
she should help her in some way as yet unknown.
But the visual visitations were not all that disturbed
the Stewarts. Soon they were hearing strange noises, too.
Above all, there was the crying of a baby, which seemed to
come from the second-floor rear bedroom. It could also be
heard in the kitchen, though it was less loud there, and
seemed to come from the walls. Several people had heard it
and there was no natural cause to account for it. Then
there were the footsteps. It sounded like someone walking
down the back-stairs, the servant’s stairs, step by step, hes-
itatingly, and not returning, but just fading away!
They dubbed their ghostly guest "Elizabeth,” for
want of a better name. Mrs. Stewart did not consider her-
self psychic, nor did she have any interest in such matters.
But occasionally things had happened to her that defied
natural explanations, such as the time just after she had
lost a baby. She awoke form a heavy sleep to the intangible
feeling of a presence in her room. She looked up and there,
in the rocking chair across the room, she saw a woman,
now dead, who had taken care of her when she herself was
a child. Rocking gently in the chair, as if to reassure her,
the Nanny held Mrs. Stewart’s baby in her arms. In a
moment the vision was gone, but it had left Alexandra
Stewart with a sense of peace. She knew her little one was
well looked after.
The phenomena continued, however, and soon they
were no longer restricted to the upstairs. On the first floor,
in the living room, Mrs. Stewart heard the noise of some-
one breathing close to her. This had happened only
recently, again in the presence of her husband and a friend.
She asked them to hold their breath for a moment, and still
she heard the strange breathing continuing as before. Nei-
ther of the men could hear it, or so they said. But the fol-
lowing day the guest came back with another man. He
wanted to be sure of his observation before admitting that
he too had heard the invisible person breathing close to
him.
The corner of the living room where the breathing
had been heard was also the focal point for strange knock -
ings that faulty pipes could not explain. On one occasion
they heard the breaking of glass, and yet there was no evi-
dence that any glass had been broken. There was a feeling
that someone other than those visible was present at times
in their living room, and it made them a little nervous even
though they did not fear their “Elizabeth.”
Alexandra’s young husband had grown up in the
building trade, and now works as a photographer. He too
has heard the footsteps on many occasions, and he knows
the difference between footsteps and a house settling or
timbers creaking. These were definitely human noises.
Mrs. Martha Vaughn is a bookkeeper who had been
living in the building for two years. Hers is the apartment
in the rear portion of the second floor, and it includes the
back porch. Around Christmas of 1964 she heard a baby
crying on the porch. It was a particularly cold night, so she
went to investigate immediately. It was a weird, unearthly
sound — to her it seemed right near the porch, but there
was nobody around. The yard was deserted. The sound to
her was the crying of a small child, not a baby, but per-
haps a child of between one and three years of age. The
various families shared the downstairs living room "like a
kibbutz,” as Mrs. Stewart put it, so it was not out of the
ordinary for several people to be in the downstairs area. On
one such occasion Mrs. Vaughn also heard the breaking of
the invisible glass.
Richard Vaughn is a laboratory technician. He too
has heard the baby cry and the invisible glass break; he has
heard pounding on the wall, as have the others. A skeptic
at first, he tried to blame these noises on the steam pipes
that heat the house. But when he listened to the pipes
when they were acting up, he realized at once that the
noises he had heard before were completely different.
“What about a man named Dugan? Or someone hav-
ing to do with maps?” I asked.
“Well,” Vaughn said, and thought back, “I used to
get mail here for people who once lived here, and of course
I sent it all back to the post office. But I don’t recall the
name Dugan. What I do recall was some mail from a
Washington Bureau. You see, this house belongs to the
University of Chicago and a lot of professors used to live
here.”
“Professors?” 1 said with renewed interest.
Was Dugan one of them?
Several other people who lived in the house experi-
enced strange phenomena. Barbara Madonna, who works
three days a week as a secretary, used to live there too. But
in May of that year she moved out. She had moved into
the house in November of the previous year. She and her
husband much admired the back porch when they first
moved in, and had visions of sitting out there drinking a
beer on warm evenings. But soon their hopes were dashed
by the uncanny feeling that they were not alone, that
another presence was in their apartment, and especially out
on the porch. Soon, instead of using the porch, they stu-
diously avoided it, even if it meant walking downstairs to
shake out a mop. Theirs was the third-floor apartment,
directly above the Stewart apartment.
What Exactly Is a Ghost?
53
A girl by the name of Lolita Krol also had heard the
baby crying. She lived in the building for a time and bit-
terly complained about the strange noises on the porch.
Douglas McConnor is a magazine editor, and he and
his wife moved into the building in November of the year
Barbara Madonna moved out, first to the second floor and
later to the third. From the very first, when McConnor was
still alone — his wife joined him in the flat after their mar-
riage a little later — he felt extremely uncomfortable in the
place. Doors and windows would fly open by themselves
when there wasn’t any strong wind.
When he moved upstairs to the next floor, things
were much quieter, except for Sunday nights, when noisy
activities would greatly increase toward midnight. Foot-
steps, the sounds of people rushing about, and of doors
opening and closing would disturb Mr. McConnor’s rest.
The stairs were particularly noisy. But when he checked,
he found that everybody was accounted for, and that no
living person had caused the commotion.
It got to be so bad he started to hate Sunday nights.
I recounted Sybil’s trance to Mr. McConnor and the
fact that a woman named Judith had been the central figure
of it.
"Strange,” he observed, “but the story also fits that of
my ex-wife, who deserted her children. She is of course
very much alive now. Her name is Judith.”
Had Sybil intermingled the impression a dead maid-
servant with the imprint left behind by an unfit mother?
Or were there two Judiths? At any rate the Stewarts did
not complain further about uncanny noises, and the girl in
the blue-gray dress never came back.
As he drove as out to the airport Carl Subak seemed
unusually silent. What he had witnessed seemed to have
left an impression on him and his philosophy of life.
“What I find so particularly upsetting,” he finally
said, "is Sybil’s talking about a woman and a dead baby —
all of it borne out afterwards by the people in the house.
But Sybil did not know this. She couldn’t have.”
No, she couldn’t.
In September, three years later, a group consisting of
a local television reporter, a would-be psychic student, and
an assortment of clairvoyants descended on the building in
search of psychic excitement. All they got out of it were
mechanical difficulties with their cameras. The ghosts were
long gone.
* * *
Ghosts are not just for the thrill seekers, nor are they
the hallucinations of disturbed people. Nothing is as demo-
cratic as seeing or hearing a ghost, for it happens all the
time, to just about every conceivable type of person. Nei-
ther age nor race nor religion seem to stay these spectral
people in their predetermined haunts.
CHAPTER FOUR: What Exactly Is a Ghost?
Naturally I treat each case on an individual basis.
Some I reject on the face of the report, and others only
after I have undertaken a long and careful investigation.
But other reports have a ring of truth about them and are
worthy of belief, even though sometimes they are no longer
capable of verification because witnesses have died or sites
have been destroyed.
A good example is the case reported to me recently
by a Mrs. Edward Needs, Jr., of Canton, Ohio. In a small
town by the name of Homeworth, there is a stretch of land
near the highway that is today nothing more than a
neglected farm with a boarded-up old barn that’s still
standing. The spot is actually on a dirt road, and the near-
est house is half a mile away, with wooded territory in
between. This is important, you see, for the spot is isolated
and a man might die before help could arrive. On rainy
days, the dirt road is impassable. Mrs. Needs has passed
the spot a number of times, and does not particularly care
to go there. Somehow it always gives her an uneasy feeling.
Once, the Need’s car got stuck in the mud on a rainy day,
and they had to drive through open fields to get out.
It was on that adventure-filled ride that Mr. Needs
confided for the first time what had happened to him at
that spot on prior occasions. Edward Needs and a friend
were on a joy ride after dark. At that time Needs had not
yet married his present wife, and the two men had been
drinking a little, but were far from drunk. It was then that
they discovered the dirt road for the first time.
On the spur of the moment, they followed it. A
moment later they came to the old barn. But just as they
were approaching it, a man jumped out of nowhere in front
of them. What was even more sobering was the condition
this man was in: he was engulfed in flames from head to
toe!
Quickly Needs put his bright headlights on the scene,
to see better. The man then ran into the woods across the
road, and just disappeared.
Two men never became cold sober more quickly.
They turned around and went back to the main highway
fast. But the first chance they had, they returned with two
carloads full of other fellows. They were equipped with
strong lights, guns, and absolutely no whiskey. When the
first of the cars was within 20 feet of the spot where Needs
had seen the apparition, they all saw the same thing: there
before them was the horrible spectacle of a human being
blazing from top to bottom, and evidently suffering terribly
as he tried to run away from his doom. Needs emptied his
gun at the figure: it never moved or acknowledged that it
had been hit by the bullets. A few seconds later, the figure
ran into the woods — exactly as it had when Needs had first
encountered it.
Now the ghost posse went into the barn, which they
found abandoned, although not in very bad condition. The
only strange thing was a cluster of spots showing evidence
of fire: evidently someone or something had burned inside
the barn without setting fire to the barn as a whole. Or had
the fiery man run outside to save his barn from the fire?
54
* * *
Betty Ann Tylaska lives in a seaport in Connecticut.
Her family is a prominent one going back to Colonial days,
and they still occupy a house built by her great -great -great
-grandfather for his daughter and her husband back in
1807.
Mrs. Tylaska and her husband, a Navy officer, were
in the process of restoring the venerable old house to its
former glory. Neither of them had the slightest interest in
the supernatural, and to them such things as ghosts simply
did not exist except in children’s tales.
The first time Mrs. Tylaska noticed anything unusual
was one night when she was washing dishes in the kitchen.
Suddenly she had the strong feeling that she was
being watched. She turned around and caught a glimpse of
a man standing in the doorway between the kitchen and
the living room of the downstairs part of the house. She
saw him only for a moment, but long enough to notice his
dark blue suit and silver buttons. Her first impression was
that it must be her husband, who of course wore a navy
blue uniform. But on checking she found him upstairs,
wearing entirely different clothes.
She shrugged the matter off as a hallucination due to
her tiredness, but the man in blue kept returning. On sev-
eral occasions, the same uncanny feeling of being watched
came over her, and when she turned around, there was the
man in the dark blue suit.
It came as a relief to her when her mother confessed
that she too had seen the ghostly visitor — always at the
same spot, between the living room and kitchen. Finally
she informed her husband, and to her surprise, he did not
laugh at her. But he suggested that if it were a ghost, per-
haps one of her ancestors was checking up on them.
Perhaps he wanted to make sure they restored the
house properly and did not make any unwanted changes.
They were doing a great deal of painting in the process of
restoring the house, and whatever paint was left they would
spill against an old stone wall at the back of the house.
Gradually the old stones were covered with paint of
various hues.
One day Mr. Tylaska found himself in front of these
stones. For want of anything better to do at the moment,
he started to study them. To his amazement, he discovered
that one of the stones was different from the others: it was
long and flat. He called his wife and they investigated the
strange stone; upon freeing it from the wall, they saw to
their horror that it was a gravestone — her great -great -great-
grandfather’s tombstone, to be exact.
Inquiry at the local church cleared up the mystery of
how the tombstone had gotten out of the cemetery. It
seems that all the family members had been buried in a
small cemetery nearby. But when it had filled up, a larger
cemetery was started. The bodies were moved over to the
new cemetery and a larger monument was erected over the
great-great-great-grandfather’s tomb. Since the original
stone was of no use any longer, it was left behind. Some-
how the stone got used when the old wall was being built.
But evidently great-great-great-grandfather did not like the
idea. Was that the reason for his visits? After all, who likes
having paint splashed on one’s precious tombstone? I ask
you.
The Tylaska family held a meeting to decide what to
do about it. They could not very well put two tombstones
on granddad’s grave. What would the other ancestors
think? Everybody would want to have two tombstones
then; and while it might be good news to the stonecutter, it
would not be a thing to do in practical New England.
So they stood the old tombstone upright in their own
backyard. It was nice having granddad with them that way,
and if he felt like a visit, why, that was all right with them
too.
From the moment they gave the tombstone a place of
honor, the gentleman in the dark blue suit and the silver
buttons never came back. But Mrs. Tylaska does not par-
ticularly mind. Two Navy men in the house might have
been too much of a distraction anyway.
* * *
Give ghosts their due, and they’ll be happy. Happy
ghosts don’t stay around: in fact, they turn into normal
spirits, free to come and go (mostly go) at will. But until
people come to recognize that the denizens of the Other
World are real people like you and me, and not benighted
devils or condemned souls in a purgatory created for the
benefit of a political church, people will be frightened of
them quite needlessly. Sometimes even highly intelligent
people shudder when they have a brush with the uncanny.
Take young Mr. Bentine, for instance, the son of my
dear friend Michael Bentine, the British TV star. He, like
his father, is very much interested in the psychic. But
young Bentine never bargained for firsthand experiences.
It happened at school, Harrow, one of the finest
British “public schools” (in America they are called private
schools), one spring. Young Bentine lived in a dormitory
known as The Knoll. One night around 2 A.M., he awoke
from sound sleep. The silence of the night was broken by
the sound of footsteps coming from the headmaster’s room.
The footsteps went from the room to a nearby bathroom,
and then suddenly came to a halt. Bentine thought nothing
of it, but why had it awakened him? Perhaps he had been
studying too hard and it was merely a case of nerves. At
any rate, he decided not to pay any attention to the strange
footsteps. After all, if the headmaster wished to walk at
that ungodly hour, it was his business and privilege.
But the following night the same thing happened.
Again, at 2 A.M. he found himself awake, to the sound of
ominous footsteps. Again they stopped abruptly when they
reached the bathroom. Coincidence? Cautious, young Ben-
tine made some inquiries. Was the headmaster given to
nocturnal walks, perhaps? He was not.
What Exactly Is a Ghost?
55
The third night, Bentine decided that if it happened
again, he would be brave and look into it. He fortified him-
self with some tea and then went to bed. It was not easy
falling asleep, but eventually his fatigue got the upper hand
and our young man was asleep in his room.
Promptly at 2, however, he was awake again. And
quicker than you could say "Ghost across the hall,” there
were the familiar footsteps!
Quickly, our intrepid friend got up and stuck his
head out of his door, facing the headmaster’s room and the
bathroom directly across the corridor.
The steps were now very loud and clear. Although he
did not see anyone, he heard someone move along the
passage.
He was petrified. As soon as the footsteps had come
to the usual abrupt halt in front of the bathroom door, he
crept back into his own room and bed. But sleep was out
of the question. The hours were like months, until finally
morning came and a very tired Bentine went down to
breakfast, glad the ordeal of the night had come to an end.
He had to know what this was all about, no matter
what the consequences. To go through another night like
that was out of the question.
He made some cautious inquiries about that room.
There had been a headmaster fourteen years ago who had
died in that room. It had been suicide, and he had hanged
himself in the shower. Bentine turned white as a ghost
himself when he heard the story. He immediately tried to
arrange to have his room changed. But that could not be
done as quickly as he had hoped, so it was only after
another two-and-a-half weeks that he was able to banish
the steps of the ghostly headmaster from his mind.
His father had lent him a copy of my book, Ghost
Hunter, and he had looked forward to reading it when
exams eased up a bit. But now, even though he was in
another room that had not the slightest trace of a ghost, he
could not bring himself to touch my book. Instead, he con-
centrated on reading humor.
Unfortunately nobody did anything about the ghostly
headmaster, so it must be that he keeps coming back down
that passage to his old room, only to find his body still
hanging in the shower.
You might ask, "What shall I do if I think I have a
ghost in the house? Shall I run? Shall I stay? Do I talk to it
or ignore it? Is there a rule book for people having ghosts?”
Some of the questions I get are like that. Others merely
wish to report a case because they feel it is something I
might be interested in. Still others want help: free them
from the ghost and vice versa.
But so many people have ghosts — almost as many as
have termites, not that there is any connection — that I can-
not personally go after each and every case brought to my
attention by mail, telephone, e-mail, or television.
In the most urgent cases, I try to come and help the
people involved. Usually I do this in connection with a TV
show or lecture at the local university, for someone has to
pay my expenses. The airlines don’t accept ghost money,
nor do the innkeepers. And thus far I have been on my
own, financially speaking, with no institute or research
foundation to take up the slack. For destruction and bombs
there is always money, but for research involving the psy-
chic, hardly ever.
Granted, I can visit a number of people with
haunted -house problems every year, but what do the others
do when I can’t see them myself? Can I send them to a
local ghost hunter, the way a doctor sends patients to a col-
league if he can’t or does not wish to treat them?
Even if I could, I wouldn’t do it. When they ask for
my help, they want my approach to their peculiar problems
and not someone else’s. In this field each researcher sees
things a little differently from the next one. I am probably
the only parapsychologist who is unhesitatingly pro-ghost.
Some will admit they exist, but spend a lot of time trying
to find “alternate” explanations if they cannot discredit the
witnesses.
I have long, and for good scientific reasons, been con-
vinced that ghosts exist. Ghosts are ghosts. Not hallucina-
tions, necessarily, and not the mistakes of casual observers.
With that sort of practical base to start from, I go after the
cases by concentrating on the situation and the problems,
rather than, as some researchers will do, trying hard to
change the basic stories reported to me. I don’t work on
my witnesses; I’ve come to help them. To try and shake
them with the sophisticated apparatus of a trained parapsy-
chologist is not only unfair, but also foolish. The original
reports are straight reports of average people telling what
has happened in their own environment. If you try to
shake their testimony, you may get a different story — but
it won’t be the truth, necessarily. The more you confuse
the witnesses, the less they will recall firsthand information.
My job begins after the witnesses have told their
stories.
In the majority of the cases I have handled, I have
found a basis of fact for the ghostly "complaint.” Once in a
while, a person may have thought something was supernor-
mal when it was not, and on rare occasions I have come
across mentally unbalanced people living in a fantasy world
of their own. But there just aren’t that many kooks who
want my help: evidently my scientific method, even though
I am convinced of the veracity of ghostly phenomena, is
not the kind of searchlight they wish to have turned on
their strange stories.
What to do until the Ghost Hunter arrives? Relax, if
you can. Be a good observer even if you're scared stiff.
And remember, please — ghosts are also people.
There, but for the grace of God, goes someone like
you.
CHAPTER FOUR: What Exactly Is a Ghost?
56
CHAPTER FIVE
Famous Ghosts
HERE we DEAL WITH the ghosts of famous people, whose names nearly everyone will recognize.
This category includes historical celebrities, national figures, heroes, leaders, and also
celebrities of Hollywood, the theatre, people who once made headlines, and people who had
some measure of fame, which is usually a lot more than the proverbial fifteen minutes that, according
to the late Andy Warhol, everyone can find.
There are many houses or places where famous ghosts have appeared that are open to the public.
These include national monuments, local museums, historical houses and mansions. But are the
famous ghosts still there when you visit? Well, now, that depends: many ghostly experiences are, as I
have pointed out, impressions from the past, and you get to sort of relive the events that involved
them in the past. It is a little difficult to sort this out, tell which is a bona fide resident ghost still
hanging around the old premises and which is a scene from the past. But if you are the one who is
doing the exploring, the ghost hunter as it were, it is for you to experience and decide for yourself.
Good hunting!
GHOSTS IN FICTION
Ghosts, phantoms and spirits have always been a staple for novelists and dramatists. Mysterious and
worrisome ghosts are both part of the human experience yet outside the mainstream of that world.
Many of the false notions people have about ghosts come from fiction. Only in fictional ghost stories
do ghosts threaten or cause harm: in the real afterlife, they are too busy trying to understand their sit-
uation to worry about those in the physical world.
From Chaucer’s Canterville ghost with his rattling chain to Shakespeare’s ghost of Hamlet’s
father, who restlessly walked the ramparts of his castle because of unresolved matters (such as his
murder), in literature, ghosts seem frightening and undesirable. No Caspers there.
Famous Ghosts
57
The masters of the macabre, from E. T. A. Hoffman
to Edgar Allan Poe, have presented their ghosts as sorrow-
ful, unfortunate creatures who are best avoided.
The Flying Dutchman is a man, punished by God
for transgressions (though they are never quite explained),
who cannot stop being a ghost until true love comes his
way. Not likely, among the real kind.
* * *
Edith Wharton’s novels offer us far more realistic
ghosts, perhaps because she is nearer to our time and was
aware of psychical research in these matters.
There is a pair of ghostly dancing feet in one of Rud-
yard Kipling’s Indian tales that used to keep me up nights
when I was a boy. Today, they would merely interest me
because of my desire to see the rest of the dancer, too.
Arthur Conan Doyle presents us with a colorful but
very believable ghost story in "The Law of the Ghost.”
Lastly, the ghosts of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol are not
really ghosts but messengers from beyond, symbolic at
best.
Please don’t rush to Elsinore Castle in Denmark in
search of the unfortunate king who was murdered by his
brother because, alas, both the murdered king and his
brother Claudius are as much figments of Shakespeare’s
imagination as is the melancholy Dane, Hamlet, himself.
Television ghosts tend to be much less frightening, even
pleasant. The ghosts in “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,”
starring Rex Harrison, were sarcastic, almost lovable. The
ghostly couple the banker Topper had to contend with was
full of mischief, at worst, and helpful, at best.
And they did all sorts of things real ghosts don’t do,
but special effects will have their say.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
58
» 1
The Conference House Ghost
ONLY AN HOUR OR SO by ferry boat from bustling Man-
hattan lies the remote charm of Staten Island, where many
old houses and even farms still exist in their original form
within the boundaries of New York City.
One of these old houses, and a major sight-seeing
attraction, is the so-called “Conference House,” where the
British Commander, Lord Howe, received the American
Conference delegation consisting of Benjamin Franklin,
John Adams, and Edward Rutledge, on September 1 1 ,
1776. The purpose of the meeting was to convince the
Americans that a peaceful solution should be found for the
difficulties between England and the Colonies. The meet-
ing proved unsuccessful, of course, and the Revolutionary
War ensued.
The house itself is a sturdy white two- story building,
erected along typical English manorhouse lines, in 1688, on
a site known then as Bentley Manor in what is today Tot-
tenville. There are two large rooms on the ground floor,
and a staircase leading to an upper story, also divided into
two rooms; a basement contains the kitchen and a vaultlike
enclosure. The original owner of the house was Captain
Billopp of the British Navy, and his descendants lived in
the house until the close of the Revolutionary period.
Local legends have had the house “haunted” for
many years. The story was that Billopp, a hard man, jilted
his fiancee, and that she died of a broken heart in this very
house. For several generations back, reports of noises, mur-
murs, sighs, moans, and pleas have been received and the
old Staten Island Transcript, a local newspaper, has men-
tioned these strange goings-on over the years. When the
house was being rebuilt, after having been taken over as a
museum by the city, the workers are said to have heard the
strange noises, too.
It was against this background that I decided to
investigate the house in the company of Mrs. Meyers, who
was to be our sensitive, and two friends, Rose de Simone
and Pearl Winder, who were to be the "sitters,” or assis-
tants to the medium.
After we had reached Staten Island, and were about
half an hour’s drive from the house, Mrs. Meyers volun-
teered her impressions of the house which she was yet to
see! She spoke of it as being white, the ground floor
divided into two rooms, a brown table and eight chairs in
the east room; the room on the west side of the house is
the larger one, and lighter colored than the other room, and
some silverware was on display in the room to the left.
Upon arriving at the house, I checked these state-
ments; they were correct, except that the number of chairs
was now only seven, not eight, and the silver display had
been removed from its spot eight years before!
Mrs. Meyers’ very first impression was the name
“Butler”; later I found that the estate next door belonged
to the Butler family, unknown, of course, to the medium.
We ascended the stairs; Mrs. Meyers sat down on
the floor of the second -story room to the left. She described
a woman named Jane, stout, white-haired, wearing a dark
green dress and a fringed shawl, then mentioned the name
Howe. It must be understood that the connection of Lord
Howe with the house was totally unknown to all of us until
after checking up on the history of the Conference House,
later on.
Next Mrs. Meyers described a man with white hair,
or a wig, wearing a dark coat with embroidery at the neck,
tan breeches, dark shoes, and possessed of a wide, square
face, a thick nose, and looking “Dutch.” “The man died in
this room,” she added.
She then spoke of the presence of a small boy, about
six, dressed in pantaloons and with his hair in bangs. The
child born in this room was specially honored later, Mrs.
Meyers felt. This might apply to Christopher Billopp, born
at the house in 1737, who later became Richmond County
representative in the Colonial Assembly. Also, Mrs. Mey-
ers felt the “presence" of a big man in a fur hat, rather fat,
wearing a skin coat and high boots, brass-buckle belt and
black trousers; around him she felt boats, nets, sailing
boats, and she heard a foreign, broad accent, also saw him
in a four-masted ship of the square-rigger type. The initial
T was given. Later, I learned that the Billopp family were
prominent Tory leaders up to and during the Revolution.
This man, Mrs. Meyers felt, had a loud voice, broad
forehead, high cheekbones, was a vigorous man, tall, with
shaggy hair, and possibly Dutch. His name was Van B.,
she thought. She did not know that Billopp (or Van Bil-
lopp) was the builder of the house.
"I feel as if I’m being dragged somewhere by Indians,”
Mrs. Meyers suddenly said. “There is violence,
somebody dies on a pyre of wood, two men, one white, one
Indian; and on two sticks nearby are their scalps.”
Later, I ascertained that Indian attacks were frequent
here during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and
that, in fact, a tunnel once existed as an escape route to the
nearby waterfront, in case of hostile Indian sieges. Large
numbers of arrowheads have been unearthed around the
house.
Down in the cellar, Mrs. Meyers felt sure six people
had been buried near the front wall during the Revolution-
ary War, all British soldiers; she thought eight more were
buried elsewhere on the grounds and sensed the basement
full of wounded “like a hospital.” On investigation, I found
that some members of Billopp ’s family were indeed buried
on the grounds near the road; as for the British soldiers,
there were frequent skirmishes around the house between
Americans infiltrating from the nearby New Jersey shore
and the British, who held Staten Island since July 4, 1776.
The Conference House Ghost
59
At one time, Captain Billopp, a British subject, was kid-
napped by armed bandits in his own house, and taken to
New Jersey a prisoner of the Americans!
We returned to the upper part of the house once
more. Suddenly, Mrs. Meyers felt impelled to turn her
attention to the winding staircase. I followed with mount-
ing excitement.
Descending the stairs, our medium suddenly halted
her steps and pointed to a spot near the landing of the sec-
ond story. “Someone was killed here with a crooked knife,
a woman!” she said. There was horror on her face as if she
were reliving the murder. On questioning the custodian,
Mrs. Early, I discovered that Captain Billopp, in a rage,
had indeed killed a female slave on that very spot!
m 2
The Stranger at the Door
I HAVE FOUND THAT there are ghosts in all sorts of
places, in ancient castles, modern apartment houses, farms
and ships — but it is somewhat of a jolt to find out you’ve
lived in a house for a few years and didn’t even know it
was haunted. But that is exactly what happened to me.
For three years I was a resident of a beautiful twenty-
nine-story apartment building on Riverside Drive. I lived
on the nineteenth floor, and seldom worried about what
transpired below me. But I was aware of the existence of a
theater and a museum on the ground floor of the building.
I was also keenly aware of numerous inspired paintings,
some Tibetan, some Occidental, adorning the corridors of
this building. The museum is nowadays known as the
Riverside Museum, and the paintings were largely the work
of the great Rohrach, a painter who sought his inspirations
mainly in the mysticism of Tibet, where he spent many
years. On his return from the East, his many admirers
decided to chip in a few million and build him a monu-
ment worthy of his name. Thus, in 1930, was raised the
Rohrach building as a center of the then flourishing cult of
Eastern mysticism, of which Rohrach was the high priest.
After his death, a schism appeared among his followers,
and an exodus took place. A new “Rohrach Museum” was
established by Seena Fosdick, and is still in existence a few
blocks away from the imposing twenty-nine-story structure
originally known by that name. In turn, the building where
I lived changed its name to that of the Master Institute, a
combination apartment building and school, and, of course,
art gallery.
It was in February of 1960 when I met at a tea party
— yes, there are such things in this day and age — a young
actress and producer, Mrs. Roland, who had an interesting
experience at "my” building some years ago. She was not
sure whether it was 1952 or 1953, but she was quite sure
that it happened exactly the way she told it to me that win-
ter afternoon in the apartment of famed author Claudia de
Lys.
A lecture-meeting dealing with Eastern philosophy
had drawn her to the Rohrach building. Ralph Huston, the
CHAPTER FIV& Famous Ghosts
60
eminent philosopher, presided over the affair, and a full
turnout it was. As the speaker held the attention of the
crowd, Mrs. Roland’s eyes wandered off to the rear of the
room. Her interest was invited by a tall stranger standing
near the door, listening quietly and with rapt attention.
Mrs. Roland didn’t know too many of the active members,
and the stranger, whom she had never seen before, fasci-
nated her. His dress, for one thing, was most peculiar. He
wore a gray cotton robe with a high-necked collar, the kind
one sees in Oriental paintings, and on his head he had a
round black cap. He appeared to be a fairly young man,
certainly in the prime of life, and his very dark eyes in par-
ticular attracted her.
For a moment she turned her attention to the
speaker; when she returned to the door, the young man
was gone.
Peculiar, she thought; “why should he leave in the
middle of the lecture? He seemed so interested in it all.”
As the devotees of mysticism slowly filed out of the
room, the actress sauntered over to Mrs. Fosdick whom
she knew to be the “boss lady ” of the group.
“Tell me,” she inquired, “who was that handsome
dark-eyed young man at the door?”
Mrs. Fosdick was puzzled. She did not recall any
such person. The actress then described the stranger in
every detail. When she had finished, Mrs. Fosdick seemed
a bit pale.
But this was an esoteric forum, so she did not hesi-
tate to tell Mrs. Roland that she had apparently seen an
apparition. What was more, the description fitted the great
Rohrach — in his earlier years — to a T. Mrs. Roland had
never seen Rohrach in the flesh.
At this point, Mrs. Roland confessed that she had
psychic abilities, and was often given to "hunches.” There
was much head shaking, followed by some hand shaking,
and then the matter was forgotten.
I was of course interested, for what would be nicer
than to have a house ghost, so to speak?
The next morning, I contacted Mrs. Fosdick. Unfor-
tunately, this was one of the occasions when truth did not
conquer. When I had finished telling her what I wanted
her to confirm, she tightened up, especially when she found
out I was living at the “enemy camp,” so to speak.
Emphatically, Mrs. Fosdick denied the incident, but admit-
ted knowing Mrs. Roland.
With this, I returned to my informant, who reaf-
firmed the entire matter. Again I approached Mrs. Fosdick
with the courage of an unwelcome suitor advancing on the
castle of his beloved, fully aware of the dragons lurking in
the moat.
While I explained my scientific reasons for wanting
her to remember the incident, she launched into a tirade
concerning her withdrawal from the “original” Rohrach
group, which was fascinating, but not to me.
I have no reason to doubt Mrs. Roland’s account,
especially as I found her extremely well poised, balanced,
and indeed, psychic.
I only wondered if Mr. Rohrach would sometime
honor me with a visit, or vice versa, now that we were
neighbors?
» 3
A Visit with Alexander Hamilton’s
Ghost
THERE STANDS AT Number 27, Jane Street, in New
York’s picturesque artists’ quarters, Greenwich Village, a
mostly wooden house dating back to pre-Revolutionary
days. In this house Alexander Hamilton was treated in his
final moments. Actually, he died a few houses away, at 80
Jane Street, but No. 27 was the home of John Francis, his
doctor, who attended him after the fatal duel with Aaron
Burr.
However, the Hamilton house no longer exists, and
the wreckers are now after the one of his doctor, now occu-
pied a writer and artist, Jean Karsavina, who has lived
there since 1939.
The facts of Hamilton’s untimely passing are well
known; D. S. Alexander (in his Political History of the State
of New York) reports that, because of political enmity,
“Burr seems to have deliberately determined to kill him.”
A letter written by Hamilton calling Burr "despicable” and
“not to be trusted with the reins of government” found its
way into the press, and Burr demanded an explanation.
Hamilton declined, and on June 11, 1804, atWeehawken,
New Jersey, Burr took careful aim, and his first shot mor-
tally wounded Hamilton. In the boat back to the city,
Hamilton regained consciousness, but knew his end was
near. He was taken to Dr. Francis’ house and treated, but
died within a few days at his own home, across the street.
Ever since moving into 27 Jane Street, Miss Karsav-
ina has been aware of footsteps, creaking stairs, and the
opening and closing of doors; and even the unexplained
flushing of a toilet. On one occasion, she found the toilet
chain still swinging, when there was no one around! “I
suppose a toilet that flushes would be a novelty to someone
from the eighteenth century,” she is quoted in a brief
newspaper account in June of 1957.
She also has seen a blurred “shape,” without being
able to give details of the apparition; her upstairs tenant,
however, reports that one night not so long ago, “a man in
■*
eighteenth-century clothes, with his hair in a queue”
walked into her room, looked at her and walked out again.
Miss Karsavina turned out to be a well-read and
charming lady who had accepted the possibility of living
with a ghost under the same roof. Mrs. Meyers and I went
to see her in March 1960. The medium had no idea where
we were going.
At first, Mrs. Meyers, still in waking condition,
noticed a “shadow” of a man, old, with a broad face and
bulbous nose; a woman with a black shawl whose name she
thought was Deborah, and she thought “someone had a
case”; she then described an altar of white lilies, a bridal
couple, and a small coffin covered with flowers; then a very
old woman in a coffin that was richly adorned, with rela-
tives including a young boy and girl looking into the open
coffin. She got the name of Mrs. Patterson, and the girl’s
as Miss Lucy. In another “impression” of the same
premises, Mrs. Meyers described “an empty coffin, people
weeping, talking, milling around, and the American Flag
atop the coffin ; in the coffin a man’s hat, shoes with silver
buckles, gold epaulettes. . . .” She then got close to the man
and thought his lungs were filling with liquid and he died
with a pain in his side.
Lapsing into semitrance at this point, Mrs. Meyers
described a party of men in a small boat on the water, then
a man wearing white pants and a blue coat with blood
spilled over the pants. “Two boats were involved, and it is
dusk,” she added.
Switching apparently to another period, Mrs. Meyers
felt that "something is going on in the cellar, they try to
keep attention from what happens downstairs; there is a
woman here, being stopped by two men in uniforms with
short jackets and round hats with wide brims, and pistols.
There is the sound of shrieking, the woman is pushed back
violently, men are marching, someone who had been har-
bored here has to be given up, an old man in a nightshirt
and red socks is being dragged out of the house into the
snow.”
In still another impression, Mrs. Meyers felt herself
drawn up toward the rear of the house where “someone
died in childbirth”; in fact, this type of death occurred
A Visit with Alexander Hamilton’s Ghost
61
“several times” in this house. Police were involved, too,
but this event or chain of events is of a later period than
the initial impressions, she felt. The name Henry Oliver or
Oliver Henry came to her mind.
After her return to full consciousness, Mrs. Meyers
remarked that there was a chilly area near the center of the
downstairs room. There is; I feel it too. Mrs. Meyers
"sees” the figure of a slender man, well-formed, over aver-
age height, in white trousers, black boots, dark blue coat
and tails, white lace in front; he is associated with George
Washington and Lafayette, and their faces appear to her,
too; she feels Washington may have been in this house.
The man she “sees” is a general, she can see his epaulettes.
The old woman and the children seen earlier are somehow
connected with this, too. He died young, and there "was
fighting in a boat.” Now Mrs. Meyers gets the name “W.
Lawrence.” She has a warm feeling about the owner of the
house; he took in numbers of people, like refugees.
A “General Mills” stored supplies here — shoes, coats,
almost like a military post; food is being handed out. The
name Bradley is given. Then Mrs. Meyers sees an old man
playing a cornet; two men in white trousers “seen” seated
at a long table, bent over papers, with a crystal chandelier
above.
After the seance, Miss Karsavina confirmed that the
house belonged to Hamilton’s physician, and as late as
1825 was owned by a doctor, who happened to be the doc-
tor for the Metropolitan Opera House. The cornet
player might have been one of his patients.
In pre-Revolutionary days, the house may have been
used as headquarters of an “underground railroad,” around
1730, when the police tried to pick up the alleged instiga-
tors of the so-called "Slave Plot,” evidently being sheltered
here.
“Lawrence” may refer to the portrait of Washington
by Lawrence which used to hang over the fireplace in the
house. On the other hand, I found a T. Lawrence, M. D.,
at 146 Greenwich Street, in Elliot’s Improved Directory for
New York (1812); and a “Widow Patterson” is listed by
Longworth (1803) at 177 William Street; a William
Lawrence, druggist, at 80 John Street. According to
Charles Burr Todd’s Story of New York, two of Hamilton’s
pallbearers were Oliver Wolcott and John L. Lawrence.
The other names mentioned could not be found. The
description of the man in white trousers is of course the
perfect image of Hamilton, and the goings-on at the house
with its many coffins, and women dying in childbirth, are
indeed understandable for a doctor's residence.
It does not seem surprising that Alexander Hamil-
ton’s shade should wish to roam about the house of the
man who tried, vainly, to save his life.
» 4
The Fifth Avenue Ghost
SOME CASES OF haunted houses require but a single visit
to obtain information and evidence, others require two or
three. But very few cases in the annals of psychic research
can equal or better the record set by the case I shall call
The Fifth Avenue Ghost. Seventeen sessions, stretching
over a period of five months, were needed to complete this
most unusual case. I am presenting it here just as it
unfolded for us. I am quoting from our transcripts, our
records taken during each and every session; and because
so much evidence was obtained in this instance that could
only be obtained from the person these events actually
happened to, it is to my mind a very strong case for the
truth about the nature of hauntings.
* * *
It isn’t very often that one finds a haunted apartment
listed in the leading evening paper.
Occasionally, an enterprising real-estate agent will
add the epithet “looks haunted” to a cottage in the country
to attract the romanticist from the big city.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
But the haunted apartment I found listed in the New
York Daily News one day in July 1953 was the real McCoy.
Danton Walker, the late Broadway columnist, had this
item —
One for the books: an explorer, advertising his Fifth
Avenue Studio for sublet, includes among the attractions
‘attic dark room with ghost.’ . . .
The enterprising gentleman thus advertising his
apartment for rent turned out to be Captain Davis, a cele-
brated explorer and author of many books, including, here
and there, some ghost lore. Captain Davis was no skeptic.
To the contrary, I found him sincere and well aware of the
existence of psychical research. Within hours, I had dis-
cussed the case with the study group which met weekly at
the headquarters of the Association for Research and
Enlightenment, the Edgar Cayce Foundation. A team was
organized, consisting of Bernard Axelrod, Nelson Welsh,
Stanley Goldberg, and myself, and, of course, Mrs. Meyers
as the medium. Bernard Axelrod and I knew that there was
some kind of "ghost” at the Fifth Avenue address, but lit-
tle more. The medium knew nothing whatever. Two days
after the initial session, a somewhat fictional piece appeared
in the New York Times (July 13, 1953) by the late Meyer
Berger, who had evidently interviewed the host, but not the
62
ghost. Mr. Berger quoted Captain Davis as saying there
was a green ghost who had hanged himself from the studio
gallery, and allegedly sticks an equally green hand out of
the attic window now and then.
Captain Davis had no idea who the ghost was. This
piece, it must be re-emphasized, appeared two days after
the initial sitting at the Fifth Avenue house, and its con-
tents were of course unknown to all concerned at the time.
* * *
In order to shake hands with the good Captain, we
had to climb six flights of stairs to the very top of 226
Fifth Avenue. The building itself is one of those big old
town houses popular in the mid-Victorian age, somber,
sturdy, and well up to keeping its dark secrets behind its
thickset stone walls. Captain Davis volunteered the infor-
mation that previous tenants had included Richard Hard-
ing Davis, actor Richard Mansfield, and a lady magazine
editor. Only the lady was still around and, when inter-
viewed, was found to be totally ignorant of the entire ghost
tradition, nor had she ever been disturbed. Captain Davis
also told of guests in the house having seen the ghost at
various times, though he himself had not. His home is one
of the those fantastic and colorful apartments only an
explorer or collector would own — a mixture of comfortable
studio and museum, full of excitement and personality, and
offering more than a touch of the Unseen. Two wild jungle
cats completed the atmospheric picture, somewhat anticli-
maxed by the host's tape recorder set up on the floor. The
apartment is a kind of duplex, with a gallery or balcony
jutting out into the main room. In the middle of this bal-
cony was the window referred to in the Times interview.
Present were the host, Captain Davis, Mr. and Mrs.
Bertram Long, the Countess de Sales, all friends of the
host’s, and the group of researchers previously mentioned
— a total of eight people, and, if you wish, two cats. As
with most sittings, tape recordings were made of the pro-
ceedings from beginning to end, in addition to which writ-
ten notes were taken.
MEETING A GHOST
Like a well -rehearsed television thriller, the big clock in the
tower across the square struck nine, and the lights were
doused, except for one medium-bright electric lamp. This
was sufficient light, however, to distinguish the outlines of
most of the sitters, and particularly the center of the room
around the medium.
A comfortable chair was placed under the gallery, in
which the medium took her place; around her, forming a
circle, sat the others, with the host operating the recorder
and facing the medium. It was very still, and the atmos-
phere seemed tense. The medium had hardly touched the
chair when she grabbed her own neck in the unmistakable
manner of someone being choked to death, and nervously
told of being “hung by the neck until dead.” She then sat
in the chair and Bernard Axelrod, an experienced hypno-
tist, conditioned her into her usual trance condition, which
came within a few minutes.
With bated breath, we awaited the arrival of what-
ever personality might be the “ghost” referred to. We
expected some violence and, as will be seen shortly, we got
it. This is quite normal with such cases, especially at the
first contact. It appears that a “disturbed personality” con-
tinuously relives his or her “passing condition,” or cause of
death, and it is this last agony that so frequently makes
ghostly visitations matters of horror. If emotional anxiety is
the cause of death, or was present at death, then the “dis-
turbed personality,” or entity, will keep reliving that final
agony, much like a phonograph needle stuck in the last
groove of a record. But here is what happened on that first
occasion.
Sitting of July 11th, 1953, at 226 Fifth Avenue
The medium, now possessed by unknown entity, has diffi-
culty in speaking. Entity breaks into mad laughter full of
hatred.
Entity: . . .curry the horse. . .they’re coming. . .curry the
horse! Where is Mignon? WHERE IS SHE?
Question: We wish to help you. Who is Mignon?
Entity: She should be here. . .where is she. . .you’ve got
her! Where is she? Where is the baby?
Question: What baby?
Entity: What did they do with her?
Question: We’re your friends.
Entity: (in tears) Oh, an enemy . . .an enemy. . . .
Question: What is your name?
Entity: Guychone. . .Guychone. . . .(expresses pain at the
neck; hands feeling around are apparently puzzled by find-
ing a woman’s body)
Question: You are using someone else’s body. (Entity
clutches throat.) Does it hurt you there?
Entity: Not any more. . .it’s whole again. . . I can’t
see. . . .All is so different, all is very strange. . .nothing is the
same.
I asked how he died. This excited him immediately.
Entity: (hysterical) I didn’t do it. . . I tell you I didn’t do it,
no. . .Mignon, Mignon. . .where is she? They took the
baby . . . she put me away . . . they took her .... (Why did she
put you away?) So no one could find me (Where?) I stay
there (meaning upstairs) all the time.
The Fifth Avenue Ghost
63
At this point, tapes were changed. Entity, asked
where he came from, says Charleston, and that he lived in
a white house.
Question: Do you find it difficult to use this body?
Entity: WHAT?? WHAT?? I’m HERE. . .I’m here. , . . This is
my house. . .what are YOU doing here?
Question: Tell me about the little room upstairs.
Entity: (crying) Can I go. . .away. . .from the room?
At this point, the entity left, and the medium’s control,
Albert, took over her body.
Albert: There is a very strong force here, and it has been a
little difficult. This individual here suffered violence at the
hands of several people. He was a Confederate and he was
given up, hidden here, while they made their escape.
Question: What rank did he hold?
Albert: I believe that he had some rank. It is a little dubi-
ous as to what he was.
Question: What was his name?
Albert: It is not as he says. That is an assumed name, that
he likes to take. He is not as yet willing to give full particu-
lars. He is a violent soul underneath when he has oppor-
tunity to come, but he hasn't done damage to anyone, and
we are going to work with him, if possible, from this side.
Question: What about Mignon and the baby?
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
Albert: Well, they of course are a long time on this side, but
he never knew that, what became of them. They were sep-
arated cruelly. She did not do anything to him.
Question: How did he leave this world?
Albert: By violence. (Was he hanged?) Yes. (In the little
room?) Yes. (Was it suicide or murder?) He says it was
murder.
* * *
The control then suggests to end the trance, and try
for results in “open” sitting. We slowly awaken the
medium.
While the medium is resting, sitter Stanley Goldberg
remarks that he has the impression that Guychone’s father
came from Scotland.
Captain Davis observes that at the exact moment of
“frequency change” in the medium, that is, when Guy-
chone left and Albert took over, the control light of the
recording apparatus suddenly blazed up of its own accord,
and had to be turned down by him.
A standing circle was then formed by all present,
holding hands, and taking the center of the room. Soon the
medium started swinging forward and back like a sus-
pended body. She remarked feeling very stiff “from hang-
ing and surprised to find that I'm whole, having been cut
open in the middle.”
Both Axelrod and I observed a luminescent white and
greenish glow covering the medium, creating the impres-
sion of an older man without hair, with high cheekbones
and thin arms. This was during the period when Guychone
was speaking through the medium.
The seance ended at 12:30. The medium reported
feeling exhausted, with continued discomfort in the throat
and stomach.
THE INVESTIGATION CONTINUES
Captain Davis, unfortunately, left on a worldwide trip the
same week, and the new tenant was uncooperative. I felt
we should continue the investigation. Once you pry a
“ghost" loose from his place of unhappy memories, he can
sometimes be contacted elsewhere.
Thus, a second sitting took place at the headquarters
of the study group, on West 1 6th Street. This was a small,
normally-furnished room free of any particular atmosphere,
and throughout this and all following sittings, subdued
light was used, bright enough to see all facial expressions
quite clearly. There was smoking and occasional talking in
low voices, none of which ever disturbed the work. Before
the second sitting, Mrs. Meyers remarked that Guychone
had “followed her home” from the Fifth Avenue place, and
twice appeared to her at night in a kind of “whitish halo,”
with an expression of frantic appeal in his eyes. Upon her
admonition to be patient until the sitting, the apparition
had vanished.
64
Sitting of July 14th, 1953, at 125 West 16th Street
Question: Do you know what year this is?
Guychone: 1873.
Question: No, it is 1953. Eighty years have gone by. You
are no longer alive. Do you understand?
Guychone: Eighty years? EIGHTY YEARS? I’m not a
hundred-ten years?
Question: No, you’re not. You’re forever young. Mignon is
on your side, too. We have come to help you understand
yourself. What happened in 1873?
Guychone: Nobody’s goddamn business. . .mine. . .mine!
Question: All right, keep your secret then, but don’t you
want to see Mignon? Don’t you want justice done? (mad,
bitter laughter) Don’t you believe in God? (more laughter)
The fact you are here and are able to speak, doesn’t that
prove that there is hope for you? What happened in 1873?
Remember the house on Fifth Avenue, the room upstairs,
the horse to be curried?
Guychone: Riding, riding. . .find her. . .they took her away.
Question: Who took her away?
Guychone: YOU! (threatens to strike interrogator)
Question: No, we’re your friends. Where can we find a
record of your Army service? Is it true you were on a dan-
gerous mission?
Guychone: Yes.
Question: In what capacity?
Guychone: That is my affair! I do not divulge my secrets. I
am a gentleman, and my secrets die with me.
Question: Give us your rank.
Guychone: I was a Colonel.
Question: In what regiment?
Guychone: Two hundred and sixth.
Question: Were you infantry or cavalry?
Guychone: Cavalry.
Question: In the War Between the States?
Guychone: Yes.
Question: Where did you make your home before you came
to New York?
Guychone: Charleston. . .Elm Street.
Question: What is your family name, Colonel?
Guychone: (crying) As a gentleman, I am yet not ready to
give you that information. . .it’s no use, I won’t name it.
Question: You make it hard for us, but we will abide by
your wishes.
Guychone: (relieved) I am very much obliged to you. . .for
giving me the information that it is EIGHTY YEARS. Eighty
years!
I explain about the house on Fifth Avenue, and that
Guychone ’s “presence” had been felt from time to time.
Again, I ask for his name.
(Apparently fumbling for paper, he is given paper
and fountain pen; the latter seems to puzzle him at first,
but he then writes in the artistic, stylized manner of the
mid-Victorian age — ’’Edouard Guychone.”)
Question: Is your family of French extraction?
Guychone: Yes.
Question: Are you yourself French or were you born in this
country?
Guychone: In this country .. .Charleston.
Question: Do you speak French?
Guychone: No.
Question: Is there anything you want us to do for you?
Any unfinished business?
Guychone: Eighty years makes a difference. . .1 am a bro-
ken man. . .God bless you. . .Mignon. . .it is so dark, so
dark. . . .
I explain the reason for his finding himself temporar-
ily in a woman's body, and how his hatred had brought him
back to the house on Fifth Avenue, instead of passing over
to the “other side.”
Guychone: (calmer) There IS a God?
I ask when was he born.
Guychone: (unsure) 1840. . .42 years old. . . .
This was the most dramatic of the sittings. The tran-
script cannot fully convey the tense situation existing
between a violent, hate-inspired and God-denying person-
ality fresh from the abyss of perennial darkness, and an
interrogator trying calmly to bring light into a disturbed
mind. Toward the end of the session, Guychone under-
stood about God, and began to realize that much time had
passed since his personal tragedy had befallen him. Actu-
ally, the method of "liberating” a ghost is no different from
that used by a psychiatrist to free a flesh-and-blood person
from obsessions or other personality disturbances. Both
deal with the mind.
It became clear to me that many more sessions would
be needed to clear up the case, since the entity was reluc-
tant to tell all. This is not the case with most "ghosts,”
who generally welcome a chance to “spill” emotions pent
up for long years of personal hell. Here, however, the
return of reason also brought back the critical faculty of
reasoning, and evaluating information. We had begun to
liberate Guychone’s soul, but we had not yet penetrated to
The Fifth Avenue Ghost
65
his conscience. Much hatred, fear, and pride remained, and
had to be removed, before the true personality could
emerge.
Sitting of July 21st, 1953
Albert, the medium’s control, spoke first.
Question: Have you found any information about his wife
and child?
Albert: You understand that this is our moral code, that
that which comes from the individual within voluntarily is
his sacred development. That which he wishes to divulge
makes his soul what it should eventually be.
I asked that he describe Guychone’s appearance to
us.
Albert: At the moment he is little developed from the
moment of passing. He is still like his latter moments in
life. But his figure was of slight build, tall. . .five feet nine
or ten. . .his face is round, narrow at the chin, high at the
cheekbones, the nose is rather prominent, the mouth rather
wide. . .the forehead high, at the moment of death and for
many years previous very little hair. The eyes set close to
the nose.
Question: Have you learned his real name?
Albert: It is not his wish as yet. He will tell you, he will
develop his soul through his confession. Here he is!
Guychone: (at first grimacing in pain) It is nice to come,
but it is hell. . .1 have seen the light. It was so dark.
Question: Your name, sir?
Guychone: I was a gentleman. . .my name was defiled. I
cannot see it, I cannot hear it, let me take it, when it is
going to be right. I have had to pay for it; she has paid her
price. I have been so happy. I have moved about. I have
learned to right wrongs. I have seen the light.
Question: I am going to open your eyes now. Look at the
calendar before you, and tell me what is the date on it?
(placing calendar)
Guychone: 1953.... (pointing at the tape recorder in
motion) Wagon wheels!
Question: Give us the name of one of your fellow officers
in the war. Write it down.
Guychone: Iamapoor soul.... (writes: Mignonmy
wife. . .Guychone) Oh, my feet, oh my feet. . .they hurt
me so now. ..they bleed. ..I have to always go backwards,
backwards. What shall I do with my feet? They had no
shoes. . .we walked over burning weed. . .they burned the
weed. . .(Who?) The Damyankees. . .1 wake up, I see the
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
66
burning weed — (Where? When?) I have to reach out, I
have so much to reach for, have patience with me, I can
only reach so far — I’ll forget. I will tell you everything.
(Where?) Georgia! Georgia! (Did you fight under General
Lee?) I fell under him. (Did you die under him?) No, no.
Question: Who was with you in the regiment?
Guychone: Johnny Greenly. . .it is like another
world. . .Jerome Harvey. (Who was the surgeon?) I did not
see him. Horse doctors. (Who was your orderly?) Wal-
ter. . .my boy. . I can’t tell the truth, and I try so hard. . . .
I will come with the truth when it comes, you see the
burning weeds came to me. . . I will think of happier things
to tell. . .I’d like to tell you about the house in Charleston,
on Elm Street. I think it is 320, I was born in it.
Question: Any others in the family?
Guychone: Two brothers. They died. They were in the war
with me. I was the eldest. William, and Paul. (And you're
Edward?) Yes. (Your mother?) Mary. (Your father?)
Frederick. (Where was he born?) Charleston. (Your moth-
er’s maiden name?) Ah. . . ! (Where did you go to college?)
William. . .William and. . .a white house with green grass.
(When did you graduate?) Fifty-three. . .ONE HUNDRED
YEARS — It is hard to get into those corners where I can’t
think any more.
"I never had my eyes open before, in trance,”
observed Mrs. Meyers afterwards. ‘‘While I could look at
you and you looked like yourself, I could almost look
through you. That never happened before. I could only see
what I focused on. This machine. . .it seemed the wheels
were going much, much faster than they are going now.”
* * *
On July 25th, 1953, a "planchette” session was held
at the home of Mrs. Meyers, with herself and the late Mrs.
Zoe Britton present, during which Guychone made himself
known, and stated that he had a living son, 89 years old,
now living in a place called Seymour, West Virginia.
EVIDENTIAL MATERIAL BEGINS TO PILE UP
By now we knew we had an unusual case. I went through
all the available material on this period (and there is a lot),
without turning up anyone named Guychone.
These were extremely hot afternoons, but the quest
went on. Rarely has any psychic researcher undertaken a
similarly protracted project to hunt down psychic evidence.
Sitting of July 28th, 1953
Finding a St. Michael’s medal around my neck, Guychone
says it reminds him of a medal of St. Anne, which his
‘Huguenot mother,” Marie Guychone, had given him.
Question: Do you remember the name of your college?
Guychone: Two colleges. St. Anne’s in Charleston, South
Carolina. ... Only one thought around another, that’s all I
had — curry the horses. Why? I know now. I remember. I
want to say my mother is here, I saw her, she says God
bless you. I understand more now. Thank you. Pray for
me.
Sitting of August 4th, 1953
This sitting repeated previous information and consisted in
a cat-and-mouse game between Guychone and myself.
However, toward the end, Guychone began to speak of his
son Gregory, naming him for the first time. He asked us to
find him. We asked, “What name does Gregory use?”
Guychone casually answered: “I don’t
know. . .Guychone. . .maybe McGowan. ...” The name
McGowan came very quietly, but sufficiently distinct to be
heard by all present. At the time, we were not over-
whelmed. Only when research started to yield results did
we realize that it was his real name at last. But I was not
immediately successful in locating McGowan on the regi-
mental rosters, far from it! I was misled by his statement of
having served in the cavalry, and naturally gave the cavalry
rosters my special attention, but he wasn’t in them. Late in
August I went through the city records of Charleston,
West Virginia, on a futile search for the Guychone family,
assuming still that they were his in-laws. Here I found
mention of a “McGowan’s Brigade.”
Sitting of August 18th, 1953
Question: Please identify yourself, Colonel.
McGowan: Yes. . .Edward. . .1 can stay? I can stay?
Question: Why do you want so much to stay? Are you not
happy where you are?
McGowan: Oh yes. But I like to talk very much. . .how
happy I am.
Question: What was your mother’s name?
McGowan: Marie Guychone.
Question: What is your name?
McGowan: Guychone.
Question: Yes; that is the name you used, but you really
are...?
McGowan: Edward Mac. . .Mac. . .curry the horses!
(excited, is calmed by me) Yes, I see. . .Mac. . .McGowan!
I remember more now, but I can only tell what I
know. . .it is like a wall. . .1 remember a dark night, I was
crazy. . .war on one hand, fighting, bullets. . .and then, fly-
ing away, chasing, chasing, chasing. . . .
Question: What regiment were you with?
McGowan: Six. . .two. . .sometimes horse. . .oh, in that
fire....
Question: Who was your commanding general?
McGowan: But — Butler.
He then speaks of his service in two regiments, one
of which was the Sixth South Carolina Regiment, and he
mentions a stand on a hill, which was hell, with the
Damyankees on all sides. He says it was at Chattanooga.
* * *
Question: The house on Fifth Avenue, New York. . .do
you remember the name of your landlord?
McGowan: A woman. . .Elsie (or L. C.). . .stout. ...
Actually, he says, a man collected the rent, which he
had trouble paying at times. He knew a man named Pat
Duffy in New York. He was the man who worked for his
landlady, collecting the rent, coming to his door.
During the interrogation about his landlord,
McGowan suddenly returns to his war experiences. “There
was a Griffin,” he says, referring to an officer he knew.
Sitting of August 25th, 1953
“The Colonel,” as we now called him, came through very
clearly. He introduced himself by his true name. Asked
again about the landlady in New York, he now adds that
she was a widow. Again, he speaks of “Griff. . .Griff. ...”
Asked what school he went to, he says "St. Anne’s College
in Charleston, South Carolina, and also William and Mary
College in Virginia, the latter in 1850, 51, 52, 53, 54.”
What was his birthday? He says "February 10, 1830.” Did
he write any official letters during the war? He says, "I
wrote to General Robert E. Lee.” What about? When?
“January, 1864. Atlanta.... I needed horses, horses, wheels
to run the things on.” Did you get them? “No.” What reg-
iment was he with then? “The Sixth from South Carolina.”
But wasn’t he from West Virginia? Amazed, McGowan
says, "No, from South Carolina.”
I then inquired about his family in New York.
McGowan explained that his mother did live with
him there, and died there, but after his own death “they”
went away, including his sister-in-law Gertrude and
brother William. Again, he asks that we tell his son
Gregory “that his father did not do away with himself."
I asked, "Where is there a true picture of you?”
McGowan replied, "There is one in the courthouse in
Charleston, South Carolina." What kind of a picture?
“Etch. . .etch. . .tintype!"
All through these sittings it was clear that
McGowan’s memory was best when "pictures” or scenes
were asked for, and worst when precise names or dates
were being requested. He was never sure when he gave a
figure, but was very sure of his facts when he spoke of sit-
The Fifth Avenue Ghosts
67
uations or relationships. Thus, he gave varying dates for
his own birthday, making it clear that he was hazy about
it, not even aware of having given discrepant information
within a brief period.
But then, if a living person undergoes a severe shock,
is he not extremely hazy about such familiar details as his
name or address? Yet, most shock victims can describe their
house, or their loved ones. The human memory, appar-
ently, is more reliable in terms of associations, when under
stress, than in terms of factual information, like names and
figures.
By now research was in full swing, and it is fortunate
that so much prima facie evidence was obtained before the
disclosure of McGowan’s true name started the material
flowing. Thus, the old and somewhat tiring argument of
“mental telepathy” being responsible for some of the infor-
mation can only be applied, if at all, to a part of the sit-
tings. No one can read facts in a mind before they get into
that mind!
The sittings continued in weekly sessions, with
Colonel McGowan rapidly becoming our “star” visitor.
Sitting of September 1st, 1953
Question: What was your rank at the end of the war?
McGowan: That was on paper. . .made to serve.
Question: Did you become a general?
McGowan: Naw. . .honors. . .1 take empty honors.
Question: When you went to school, what did you study?
McGowan: The law of the land.
Question: What happened at Manassas?
McGowan: Oh... defeat. Defeat.
Question: What happened to you personally at Manassas?
McGowan: Ah, cut, cut. Bayonets. Ah. Blood, blood.
Question: What happened at Malvern Hill?
McGowan: Success. We took the house. Low brick build-
ing. We wait. They come up and we see right in the
mouth of a cannon. 1864. They burned the house around
our ears. But we didn’t move. v
Question: What was under your command at that time?
McGowan: Two divisions.
Question: How many regiments?
McGowan: Four. . .forty. . .(Four?) TEEN!
Question: What did you command?
McGowan: My commander was shot down, I take over.
(Who for?) John. . .Major. ...
Question: Listen, Colonel, your name is not Edward. Is
there any other first or middle name you used? (Silence)
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
68
Did anyone of high rank serve from South Carolina? (My
brother William) Anyone else? (Paul)
McGowan: Do you think of Charles McGowan? That was
no relation of mine. He was on the waterfront. He
was... exporter.
Question: Were you at Gettysburg, Colonel? (Yes.) What
regiments were under your command then?
McGowan: I had a wound at Gettysburg. I was very tom.
(Where did you get the wound?) Atlanta. . .change of rank.
Empty honors (About his son Gregory) Seymour. . .many
years Lowell, Massachusetts, and then he went back down
South, Seymour, South Carolina, and sometimes West
Virginia. . .he was in a store, he left and then he came into
property, mother also had property, down there near
Charleston in West Virginia. . .that is where he is, yes.
Question: You say your father was Frederick? (Yes.) Who
was William. (My brother.) Who was Samuel? (Long
pause, stunned, then: I wrote that name!) Why didn’t you
tell us? (Crying: I didn t want to tell — ) Tell us your true
rank, too. (I don’t care what it was). Please don’t evade us.
What was your rank? (Brigadier. . .General). Then you are
General Samuel McGowan?
McGowan: You made me very unhappy .. .such a name
(crying). . .blood, empty honors. . . .
Question: Who was James Johnson? (My commander.)
What happened to him? (Indicates he was shot.) Who took
over for Johnson? (I did.) What regiment was it?
McGowan: I don’t know the figures. . .1 don’t know.
Question: Your relative in New York, what was his name?
McGowan: Peter Paul.
Question: What was his profession?
McGowan: A doctor. (Any particular kind of doctor?)
Cuts. (What kind?) (McGowan points to face.) (Nose doc-
tor?) (McGowan points to mouth and shakes head.)
(Mouth doctor?) (McGowan violently grabs his teeth and
shakes them.) (Oh, teeth? A dentist) (McGowan nods
assent.)
Question: I will name some regiments, tell me if any of
them mean anything to you. The 10th. . .the 34th. . .the
14th. ..(McGowan reacts?) The 14th? Does it mean any-
thing to you?
McGowan: I don t know, figures don’t mean anything on
this side....
SOME INTERESTING FACTS
BROUGHT OUT BY RESEARCH
In the sitting of August 1 8th, McGowan stated his land-
lord was a woman and that her name was “Elsie” or L. C.
The Hall of Records of New York City lists the owner of
226 Fifth Avenue as "Isabella S. Clarke, from 1853 to (at
least) March 1, 1871.” In the same sitting, McGowan
stated that Pat Duffy was the man who actually came to
The house today
collect the rent, working for the landlady. Several days after
this information was voluntarily received from the entity, I
found in Trow’s New York Directory for 1869/70:
Page 195: ‘‘Clark, Isabella, wid. Constantine h.
(house) 45 Cherry.”
Page 309: “Duffy, Patrick, laborer, 45 Cherry.”
This could be known only to someone who actually
knew these people, 80 years ago; it proved our ghost was
there in 1873!
The sitting of September 1st also proved fruitful.
A “Peter McGowan, dentist, 253 W. 13 St.” appears
in Trow’s New York City Directory for 1870/71.
J. F. J. Caldwell, in his "History of a Brigade of South
Carolinians known first as Gregg 's, and subsequently as
McGowan’s Brigade,” (Philadelphia, 1866) reports:
Page 10: “The 14th Regiment South Carolina Volun-
teers selected for field officers. . .Col. James Jones, Lt. Col.
Samuel McGowan. . .(1861).”
Page 12: “Colonel Samuel McGowan commands the
14th Regiment.”
Page 18: “McGowan arrives from the Chicka-
hominy river (under Lee).”
Page 24: “Conspicuous gallantry in the battle of
Malvern Hill.”
Page 37: “...of the 11 field officers of our brigade,
seven were wounded: Col. McGowan, etc. (in the 2nd bat-
tle of Manassas) . ”
Page 53: “Col. Samuel McGowan of the 14th Regi-
ment (at Fredericksburg).”
Page 60: “The 13th and 14th regiments under
McGowan....”
Page 61: “Gen. Gregg’s death Dec. 14, 1862.
McGowan succeeds to command.”
Page 66: “Biography: Born Laurens district, S.C.
1820. Graduated 1841 South Carolina College, Law; in
Mexican War, then settled as lawyer in Abbeville, S.C.
Became a Brig. Gen. January 20, 1863, assists in taking Ft.
Sumter April 1861; but lapsing commission as General in
State Militia, he becomes Lt. Col. in the Confederate
Army, takes part at Bull Run, Manassas Plains, under
Gen. Bonham. Then elected Lt. Col. of 14th Regiment,
S.C.; Spring 1862, made full Col. succeeding Col. Jones who
was killed. McGowan is wounded in battle of Manassas.”
Biographer Caldwell, who was McGowan's aide as a lieu-
tenant, says (in 1866) “he still lives.”
Page 79: "April 29, 1863, McGowan’s Brigade gets
orders to be ready to march. Gen. McGowan commands
the brigade.”
Page 80: “Wounded again (Fredericksburg).”
Page 89: "Gen. Lee reviews troops including
McGowan’s. Brigade now consists of 1st, 12th, 13th, 14th
Regiments and Orr’s Rifles. Also known as ‘McGowan’s
Sharpshooters.”'
Page 91: “McGowan takes part in battle of
Chancellorsville
Page 96: “Battle of Gettysburg: McGowan commands
13th, 12th, 14th, and 1st.”
Page 110: "McGowan near Culpepper Courthouse.”
Page 122: “Gen. McGowan returned to us in Febru-
ary (1864). He had not sufficiently recovered from the
The Fifth Avenue Ghost
69
wound received at Chancellorsville to walk well, but
remained with us and discharged all the duties of his
office.”
Page 125: About Butler: ‘‘Butler to lead column
(against McGowan) from the Eastern coast.” Another
Butler (Col.) commanded the Confederate 1st Regt. (Battle
of Chickamauga)
Page 126sq.: “Battle of Spottsyl vania, May 1864.”
Page 133: “Gen. Lee and Gen. Hill were there
(defeat).”
Page 142: “McGowan wounded by a 'minie ball,’ in
the right arm, quits field.”
But to continue with our sittings, and with
McGowan’s personal recollections —
Sitting of September 8th, 1953
McGowan: (speaking again of his death) It was in the
forties. . .they killed me on the top floor. They dragged me
up, that ‘man of color’ named Walter. He was a giant of a
man. She was a virtuous woman, I tell you she was. But
they would not believe it.
I wanted to get his reaction to a name I had found in
the records, so I asked, “Have you ever met a
McWilliams?”
McGowan: You have the knowledge of the devil with you.
Her family name.
Question: Did you stay in New York until your passing?
McGowan: 1869, 1873. Back and forth. I have written to
Lee, Jackson, James, and Beaufort. 1862-63, March.
Question: What did you do at the end of the war?
McGowan: Back and forth, always on the go. Property was
gone, ruined. Plantations burned. I did not work. I could
not. Three or four bad years. I quit. My wits, my wits. My
uncle. The house was burned in Charleston. Sometimes
Columbia. (Then, of Mignon, his wife, he says) She died
in 1892. . .Francois Guychone. . .he was so good to little
boys, he made excursions in the Bay of Charleston — we
sailed in boats. He was my uncle.
Sitting of September 15th, 1953
I asked, what did he look like in his prime.
McGowan: I wasn’t too bad to look at, very good brow,
face to the long, and at one time I indulged in the
whiskers. . .not so long, for the chin. . .colonial. . .1 liked to
see my chin a good deal, sometimes I cover (indicates mus-
tache)
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
70
Question: What can you tell us about the cemetery in
Abbeville?
McGowan: There is a monument, the family cemetery. . .
nobody cared. . .my father was born the fifth of January. . . .
(What was on your tombstone?) Samuel Edward
McGowan, born. . .32?. . .died 1883? 1873? 1-8-7 hard to
read, so dirty., .age 40. . .41 . ..gray-brown stars. . .bat-
tered.. . . I go between the bushes, I look at the monument
it's defaced....
Question: What news did your family give out of your
death?
McGowan: Foul play. (What happened to the body?)
Cremated I guess, I think in this city. The remains were
destroyed: not in the grave, a monument to a memory
(What did they tell the public?) Lost forever. . .1 could
have been at sea. . .house was destroyed by fire. . . . (Do you
mean there is no official record of your death?) No. Not
identical to passing, they never told the exact month or
day... I see... 1879... very blurred... September 4th. ...
Question: Were you ever injured in an argument?
McGowan : I spent much time on my back because of a
wound. . .on my head. (An argument?) Yes. (With whom?)
A man. Hand to hand. Rapier — Glen, Glen. . .Ardmore.
Sitting of September 22nd, 1953
"Mother” Marie Guychone spoke briefly in French and
was followed by McGowan. He said he was at one time “an
associate Justice” in the city of Columbia.
Here again do I wish to report some more research
information bearing on this part of the investigation.
Evans, in his Confederate Military History, 1899* has a pic-
ture of the General which became available to us after the
September 22nd sitting. His biography, on page 414, men-
tions the fact that “he was associate Justice of the (State)
Supreme Court.” Curiously, this author also states that
McGowan died in "December 1893.” Careful scrutiny of
two major New York dailies then existing ( Post and Times)
brought to light that the author of the Confederate Military
History made a mistake, albeit an understandable one. A
certain Ned McGowan, described as a “notorious character,
aged 80” had died in San Francisco on December 9, 1893.
This man was also a Confederate hero. (The New York
Times, XII/9). However, the same source ( The New York
Times, August 13, 1897) reports General McGowan’s death
as having occurred on the 9th of August, 1897. The obitu-
ary contains the facts already noted in the biography
quoted earlier, plus one interesting additional detail, that
McGowan received a cut across the scalp in a duel.
Another good source, The Dictionary of American
Biography, says of our subject: “McGowan, Samuel. Son of
William and Jeannie McGowan, law partner of William H.
Parker. Died August 9, 1897 in Abbeville. Buried in Long
*Vol. V., p. 409.
Cane Cemetery in Abbeville. Born Oct. 9, 1819 in
Crosshill section of Laurens district, S. C. Mother’s name
was McWilliams. Law partner of Perrin in Abbeville. Rep-
resentative in State House of South Carolina. Elected to
Congress, but not seated."
A Colonel at Gettysburg, by Varina Brown, about her
late husband Colonel Brown, contains the following: “In
the battle of Jericho Mills, ‘Griffin’s Division' of Federals
wrought havoc against McGowan’s Brigade.”
Correspondence with Mrs. William Gaynes, a resident
of Abbeville, revealed on October 1st, 1953 — "The old
general was a victim of the failing mind but he was doctored
up until the date of his death. He was attended by his
cousin Dr. F. E. Harrison."
Eminent & Representative Men of South Carolina by
Brant & Fuller (Madison, Wisconsin, 1892) gives this
picture:
Samuel McGowan was born of Scotch Irish parents in
Laurens County, S. C. on October 9th, 1819. Graduated
with distinction from the South Carolina College in
1841. Read law at Abbeville withT. C. Perrin who
offered him a partnership. He entered the service as a
private and went to Mexico with the Palmetto Regi-
ment. He was appointed on the general Quartermaster’s
Staff with the rank of Captain. After the war he
returned to Abbeville and resumed the practice of law
withT. C. Perrin. He married Susan Caroline, eldest
daughter of Judge David Lewis Wardlaw and they lived
in Abbeville until some years after the death of Gen.
McGowan in 1897. The home of Gen. McGowan still
stands in Abbeville and was sold some time ago to the
Baptist Church for 50,000 dollars. ... After the war he
entered law practice with William H. Parker
(1869/1879) in Abbeville. He took an interest in political
affairs. . .member of the Convention that met in Colum-
bia in September, 1865. Elected to Congress but not
allowed to take his seat. Counted out on the second
election two years later. In 1878 he was a member of the
State Legislature and in 1 879 he was elected Associate
Justice of the State Supreme Court.
General McGowan lived a long and honorable life in
* Abbeville. He was a contributing member of the Episcopal
Church, Trinity, and became a member later in life.
At his death the following appeared in the Abbeville
Medium, edited by Gen. R. R. Hemphill who had
served in McGowan’s Brigade. "General Samuel
McGowan died at his home in this city at 8:35 o’clock
last Monday morning August 8th. Full of years and
i honors he passed away surrounded by his family and
friends. He had been in declining health for some time
and suffered intense pain, though his final sickness was
for a few days only and at the end all was Peace.
Impressive services were held in Trinity Church Tuesday
afternoon, at four o’clock, the procession starting from
the residence. At the Church, the procession... preceded
by Dr. Wm. M. Grier and Bishop Ellison Capers who
read the solemn service. . .directly behind the coffin old
Daddy Willis Marshall, a colored man who had served
him well, bore a laurel wreath. Gen. McGowan was
buried at Long Lane, cemetery and there is a handsome
stone on the plot.”
Mrs. William Gaynes further reports:
Gen. McGowan had a 'fine line of profanity’ and
used it frequently in Court. He was engaged in a duel
once with Col. John Cunningham and was wounded
behind one ear and came near passing out. Col. Cun-
ningham challenged Col. Perrin who refused the chal-
lenge on the ground that he did not approve of dueling,
and Gen. McGowan took up the challenge and the duel
took place at Sand Bar Ferry, near Augusta, with
McGowan being wounded.
As far as I know, there was never any difficulty
between Mrs. McGowan and the old General. His
father-in-law, Judge Wardlaw, married Sarah Rebecca
Allen, and her mother was Mary Lucia Garvey.
In other words, Judge Wardlaw married Sarah
Garvey.
Mrs. Gaynes continues: "I have seen him frequently
on his way to his law office, for he had to pass right by our
office. If he ever was out of town for any length of time,
Abbeville did not know it."
The inscription on Samuel McGowan’s tombstone in
Long Cane Graveyard reads as follows:
“Samuel McGowan, born Laurens County 9 October
1819. Died in Abbeville 9 August 1897. Go soldier to thy
honored rest, thy trust and honor valor bearing. The brave
are the tenderest, the loving are the daring.”
Side 2: “From humble birth he rose to the highest
honor in Civic and military life. A patriot and a leader of
men. In peace his country called him, he waited not to her
call in war. A man’s strength, a woman’s tenderness, a
child’s simplicity were his and his a heart of charity fulfill-
ing the law of love. He did good and not evil all the days
of his life and at its end his country his children and his
children’s children rise up and call him blessed. In Mexi-
can War 1846-1848. A Captain in United States Army.
The Confederate War 1861-1865. A Brigadier General
C.S.A. Member of the Legislature 1848-1850. Elected to
Congress 1866. Associate Justice of Supreme Court of
South Carolina 1878-1894. A hero in two wars. Seven
times wounded. A leader at the Bar, a wise law giver, a
righteous judge. He rests from his labors and his works do
follow him.”
McGOWAN BECOMES A “REGULAR”
OF THE WEEKLY SITTINGS
General McGowan had by now become an always impa-
tient weekly "guest” at our sittings, and he never liked the
idea of leaving. Whenever it was suggested that time was
The Fifth Avenue Ghost
71
running short, McGowan tried to prolong his stay by
becoming suddenly very talkative.
Sitting of September 29th, 1953
A prepared list of eight names, all fictitious but one (the
sixth is that of Susan Wardlaw, McGowan’s wife) is read
to him several times. McGowan reacts to two of the nonex-
istent names, but not to the one of his wife. One of the fic-
titious names is John D. Sumter, to which McGowan
mumbles, “Colonel.” Fact is, there was a Colonel Sumter
in the Confederate Army!
McGowan also described in detail the farm where his
son Gregory now lives. Asked about the name Guychone,
he says it comes from Louisiana; Mignon, on her mother’s
side, had it. He identifies his hometown newspapers as
“Star-Press.” (“Star-Press, paper, picture, Judge, Columbia,
picture in paper....”)
Question: Who was Dr. Harrison?
McGowan: Family doctor.
Question: Is your home in Abbeville still standing?
McGowan: It isn’t what it was. Strange pictures and things.
(Anyone live in it?) No. Strange things, guns and cannons.
Sitting of October 14th, 1953
McGowan says he had two daughters. Trying again to read
his tombstone, he says, "1887, or is it 97?” As to his birth
year, he reads, “1821. ...31?”
Sitting of October 20th, 1953
When the control introduces McGowan, there is for sever-
al moments intense panic and fear brought on by a metal
necklace worn by the medium. When McGowan is assured
that there is no longer any “rope around his neck,” he
calms down, and excuses himself for his regression.
Question: Who was the Susan you mentioned the last time?
McGowan: The mother of my children.
Question: What was her other name?
McGowan: Cornelia.
Question: Were you elected to Congress?
McGowan: What kind of Congress? (The U. S. Congress.)
I lost. Such a business, everybody grabs, everybody
steals. . . . Somebody always buys the votes and it’s such a
mess.
Question: Are Mignon and Susan one and the same person
or not?
McGowan: I don’t wish to commit myself. (I insist.) They
are not!
Question; Let us talk about Susan. What profession did
your father-in-law follow?
McGowan: Big man. . .in the law.
Question: What was your mother-in-law’s first name?
McGowan: Sarah.
Question: Did she have another name?
McGowan: Garfey . . . .
Question: Coffee? Spell it.
McGowan: Not coffee. Garvey!
At a sitting on October 28th, 1953, at the home of
Mrs. Meyers, McGowan’s alleged grandson, Billy, mani-
fested himself as follows:
"My name is William, I passed in 1949, at
Charleston. I’m a grandson of General McGowan. I was
born in Abbeville, January 2nd, 1894. Gregory is half-
brother, son of the French bitch. He (McGowan) would
have married her, but he had a boss, grandfather, who held
the purse strings. Susan’s father of Dutch blood, hard-
headed.”
Sitting of October 29th, 1953
McGowan: You must find Gregory. He may be surprised
about his father, but I must let him know I wanted for
him, and they took for them. . .all. And they gave him noth-
ing. Nothing! I had made other plans. (Was there a will?)
There was. . .but I had a Judge in the family that made
other plans. . .They WERE not mine! You must tell
Gregory I provided. . . . I tell you only the truth because I
was an honest man. . .1 did the best for my family, for my
people, for those I considered my countrymen, that what
you now call posterity. . .1 suffer my own sins. ... For you
maybe it means nothing, for me, for those who remember
me, pity . . .they are now aware of the truth, only now is
my son unaware of the truth. Sir, you are my best friend.
And I go into hell for you. I tell you always the truth, sir,
but there are things that would not concern you or any-
body. But I will give you those names yet!
Question: I ask again for the name of McGowan’s father-
in-law.
McGowan: Wida. . .Wider.
THE “GHOST” IS FREED
One of the functions of a “rescue circle” is to make sure a
disturbed entity does not return to the scene of his unhap-
piness. This mission was accomplished here.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
72
Sitting of November 3rd, 1953
McGowan : I see the house where I lived, you know, where
you found me. I go there now, but I am not anymore dis-
turbed. I found my mother and my father. They could not
touch me, but now, we touch hands. I live over my life,
come back to many things. Herman! He was a good soul,
he helped me when I was down in Atlanta. He bathed my
feet, my legs were scorched, and he was good to me, and he
is over here. I thank him. 1 thanked him then, but I was
the big man, and he was nothing, but now I see he is a fine
gentleman, he polished my boots, he put my uniform in
order.
Sitting of November 6th, 1953
I was alone with the medium, Mrs. Meyers, at her home,
when I had a chance to question McGowan about his
apparent murder, and the “conspiracy of silence" concern-
ing it.
McGowan: The Judge protected them, did not report my
death. They had devised the kidnapping. I was murdered
downstairs, strangled by the kidnapper Walter. He took
her (Mignon) all the way to Boston. ! wore the uniform of
Damyankees (during the war), rode a horse every night to
Boston. . .no, I made a mistake. I came to my Uncle Peter
Paul in New York, I had a letter from Marie Guychone,
she was in New York. Begged me to find Mignon and Gre-
gory. I come to New York. I can’t find her, she was in
Boston then, but I didn’t know that until later. Marie Guy-
chone remained with my uncle, and I gave up the chase,
and like a thief crawled back to Confederate grounds. That
was in 1863. After the war, there was a struggle, property
was worthless, finally the Union granted that we withdraw
our holdings, and with that I came to New York. My
mother and father came also, until rehabilitation was suffi-
cient for their return.
I continued to live with my wife, Susan, and the chil-
dren, and I found Mignon. She had escaped, and came to
her mother in New York. I made a place for them to live
with my uncle and when my wife returned to stay with her
father (the Judge), I had Mignon, but she was pregnant
and she didn’t know it, and there was a black child — there
was unpleasantness between us, I didn’t know if it were
mine and Mignon was black, but it was not so, it was his
child (Walter’s), and he came for it and for her, he traced
her to my house (on Fifth Avenue); my father-in-law (the
Judge) was the informer, and he (Walter) strangled me, he
was a big man.
And when I was not dead yet, he dragged me up the
stairs. Mignon was not present, not guilty. I think. . .it was
in January 1874. But I may be mistaken about time. Gre-
gory had two sons, William and Edward. William died on
a boat in the English Channel in 1918. Gregory used the
name Fogarty, not McGowan. The little black boy died,
they say. It was just as well for him.
McGowan then left peacefully, promising more infor-
mation about the time lag between his given date and that
officially recorded. I told him the difference was "about
twenty years.” For the first time, McGowan had stated his
story reasonably, although some details of it would be hard
to check. No murder or suicide was reported in the news-
papers of the period, similar to this case. But of course
anyone planning a crime like this might have succeeded in
keeping it out of the public eye. We decided to continue
our sittings.
Sitting of November 10th, 1953
McGowan talked about the duel he fought, which cost him
his hair, due to a wound on the left side, back and top of
his head. It was over a woman and against a certain
Colonel C., something like "Collins,” but a longer name.
He said that Perry or Perrin did so make a stand, as if
someone had doubted it!
MORE PROOF TURNS UP!
Leading away from personal subjects, the questioning now
proceeded toward matters of general interest about New
York at the time of McGowan’s residence here. The
advantage of this line of questioning is its neutral value for
research purposes; and as no research was undertaken until
after the sittings of November 17th, mental telepathy must
be excluded as an alternate explanation!
Sitting of November 17th, 1953
McGowan: You don’t have a beard. They called them
milksops in my days, the beardless boys!
Question: What did they call a man who was a nice dresser
and liked ladies?
McGowan: A Beau Brummel.
Question: What did they call a gentleman who dressed too
well, too fancifully?
McGowan: A fop.
Question: What was your favorite sport?
McGowan: Billiards (He explains he was good at it, and the
balls were made of cloth.)
Question: What was the favorite game of your day?
McGowan: They played a Cricket kind of game.. . .
Question : Who was mayor of New York?
McGowan: Oh. . .Grace. Grace. ..Edmond. . .Grace. . .
something like it.
The Fifth Avenue Ghost
73
William R. Grace was mayor of New York,
1881-1882, and Franklin Edson (not Edmond) followed,
1883-1884. Also, plastic billiard balls as we know them
today are a comparatively recent invention, and billiard
balls in the Victorian era were indeed made of cloth. The
cricket kind of game must be baseball. Beau Brummel, fop,
milksop are all authentic Victorian expressions.
Sitting of November 26th, 1953
I asked the General about trains in New York in his time.
McGowan: They were smoke stacks, up in the air, smoke
got in your eyes, they went down to the Globe Building
near City Hall. The Globe building was near Broadway
and Nassau. The train went up to Harlem. It was a nice
neighborhood. I took many strolls in the park.
Question: Where was the Hotel Waldorf-Astoria?
McGowan: Near Fifth Avenue and 33rd, near my
house. . .and the Hotel Prince George. Restaurants were Ye
Olde Southern, Hotel Brevoort. You crack my brain, you
are worse than that boss in the Big House, Mr. Tammany
and Mr. Tweed. (I discussed his house, and he mentioned
doing business with — ) Somebody named Costi. . .1 paid
$128.50 a month for the entire house. A suit of clothes cost
$100.00.
Question: Who lived next door to you?
McGowan: Herman. . .was a carriage smith. He had a busi-
ness where he made carriages. He lived next door, but his
business was not there, the shop was on Third Avenue,
Third Street, near the river.
Question: Any other neighbors?
McGowan: Corrigan Brown, a lawyer. . .lived three houses
down. The editor of the Globe was White. . . Stone . . .
White . . . the editor of the Globe was not good friends with
the man in the Big House. They broke his house down
when he lived on Fifth Avenue. He was a neighbor. Her-
man the carriage maker made good carriages. I bought one
with fringes and two seats, a cabrio. . . .
Question: Did you have a janitor?
McGowan: There was a black boy named Ted, mainly col-
ored servants, we had a gardener, white, named Patrick.
He collects the rent, he lives with the Old Crow on Cherry
Street. Herman lives next door. He had a long mustache
and square beard. He wore a frock coat, a diamond tie pin,
and spectacles. I never called him Herman. . .(trying to
remember his true name). . .Gray. . .1 never called him
Herman. He had a wife named Birdie. His wife had a sister
named Finny who lived there too. . .Mrs. Finny. . .she was a
young widow with two children. . .she was a good friend to
my Susan.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
74
McGowan then reluctantly signs his name as
requested.
* * *
Research, undertaken after the sitting, again excluded
mental telepathy. The facts were of a kind not likely to be
found in the records, unless one were specifically looking
for them!
The New York Globe building, which McGowan
remembers "near Broadway and Nassau,” was then (1873)
at 7 Square Street and apparently also at 162 Nassau
Street. The Globe is on Spruce, and Globe and Evening
Press on Nassau, around the corner.
McGowan describes the steam-powered elevated rail-
road that went from City Hall to Harlem. Steam cars
started in 1867 and ran until 1906, according to the New
York Historical Society, and there were two lines fitting his
description, "Harlem, From Park Row to. . .E. 86th Street”
and "Third Avenue, from Ann Street through Park Row
to. . .Harlem Bridge.”1 McGowan was right in describing
Harlem as a nice neighborhood in his day.
McGowan also acknowledged at once that he had
been to the Waldorf-Astoria, and correctly identified its
position at Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street. The Waldorf-
Astoria came into being on March 14th, 1893. Conse-
quently, McGowan was alive then, and evidently sane, if he
could visit such places as the Waldorf, Brevoort, and
others.
McGowan refers to a (later) landlord as Costi. In
1895, a real-estate firm by the name of George and John
Coster was situated at 173 Fifth Avenue, a few houses
down the street from McGowan’s place.*
As for the carriage smith named Herman, a little later
referred to as Herman Gray, there was a carriage maker
named William H. Gray from 1872 or earlier, and existing
beyond the turn of the century, whose shop was at first at
20 Wooster Street, and who lived at 258 West Fourth
Street, until at least 1882. In 1895 he is listed as living at
275 West 94th Street. Not all Troy volumes in between are
available, so that residence in McGowan’s neighborhood
can neither be confirmed nor denied. At one time, Gray’s
shops were on West Broadway. As for Corrigan Brown,
the lawyer neighbor, McGowan’s mispronouncing of names
almost tripped me up. There was no such lawyer. There
was, however, one Edmond Congar Brown, lawyer, listed
for the first time as such in 1886, and before that only as a
clerk. No home is, unfortunately, listed for his later
years. ,f McGowan stated that the editor of the Globe was
$
Trow’s New York City Directory for 1872/73, p. 448 regular sec-
tion and p. 38 City Register section.
Ibid, City Register, p. 18, under “City Railroads.”
*Trow, 1895/96, p. 550.
+ Trow, 1872/73, City Register, p. 27.
Trow, 1895/96, p. 174, lists his office as 132 Nassau.
named White -and -something, and that he lived near his
(McGowan’s) house on Fifth Avenue.
Well, one Horace P. Whitney, editor, business, 128
Fulton Street, home, 287 Fifth Avenue, is listed in Trow.
And 128 Fulton Street is the place of the Globe’s competi-
tor, the New York Mercury, published by Cauldwell and
Whitney.
*1872, p. 1287, regular section.
Trow i i872i City Register section, p. 39.
* * *
That McGowan did not die in 1873 seems certain to
me, as the above information proves. But if he did not die
in 1873, something very traumatic must have been done to
him at that time. Or perhaps the murder, if such it was,
took place in 1897?
It could well be that General McGowan will take this
ultimate secret with him into the Great Land where he now
dwells safely forever.
* 5
The Case of the Murdered Financier
I REMEMBER THE NIGHT we went to visit the house where
financier Serge Rubinstein was killed. It was a year after his
death but only I, among the group, had knowledge of the
exact date of the anniversary. John Latouche, my much-
too-soon departed friend, and I picked up Mrs. Meyers at
her Westside home and rode in a taxi to Fifth Avenue and
60th Street. As a precaution, so as not to give away the
address which we were headed for, we left the taxi two
blocks south of the Rubinstein residence.
Our minds were careful blanks, and the conversation
was about music. But we didn’t fool our medium. “What’s
the pianist doing here?” she demanded to know. What
pianist, I countered. “Rubinstein,” said she. For to our
medium, a professional singing teacher, that name could
only stand for the great pianist. It showed that our medium
was, so to speak, on-the-beam, and already entering into
the “vibration,” or electrically charged atmosphere of the
haunting.
Latouche and I looked at each other in amazement.
Mrs. Meyers was puzzled by our sudden excitement.
Without further delay, we rang the bell at the stone man-
sion, hoping the door would open quickly so that we would
not be exposed to curiosity -seekers who were then still
hanging around the house where one of the most publi-
cized murders had taken place just a year before, to the
hour.
It was now near midnight, and my intention had
been to try and make contact with the spirit of the
departed. I assumed, from the manner in which he died,
that Serge Rubinstein might still be around his house, and
I had gotten his mother’s permission to attempt the
contact.
The seconds on the doorstep seemed like hours, as
Mrs. Meyers questioned me about the nature of tonight’s
“case.” I asked her to be patient, but when the butler came
and finally opened the heavy gate, Mrs. Meyers suddenly
realized where we were. "It isn’t the pianist, then!” she
mumbled, somewhat dazed. "It’s the other Rubinstein!”
With these words we entered the forbidding-looking
building for an evening of horror and ominous tension.
The murder is still officially unsolved, and as much
an enigma to the world as it was on that cold winter night,
in 1955, when the newspaper headlines screamed of “bad
boy” financier Serge Rubinstein’s untimely demise. That
night, after business conferences and a night on the town
with a brunette, Rubinstein had some unexpected visitors.
Even the District Attorney couldn’t name them for sure,
but there were suspects galore, and the investigation never
ran out of possibilities.
Evidently Serge had a falling-out with the brunette,
Estelle Gardner, and decided the evening was still young,
so he felt like continuing it with a change of cast. Another
woman, Pat Wray, later testified that Rubinstein tele-
phoned her to join him after he had gotten rid of Estelle,
and that she refused.
The following morning, the butler, William Morter,
found Rubinstein dead in his third-floor bedroom. He was
wearing pajamas, and evidently the victim of some form of
torture — for his arms and feet were tied, and his mouth
and throat thickly covered by adhesive tape. The medical
examiner dryly ruled death by strangulation.
The police found themselves with a first-rate puzzle
on their hands. Lots of people wanted to kill Rubinstein,
lots of people had said so publicly without meaning it — but
who actually did? The financier’s reputation was not the
best, although it must be said that he did no more nor less
than many others; but his manipulations were neither ele-
gant nor quiet, and consequently, the glaring light of pub-
licity and exposure created a public image of a monster
that did not really fit the Napoleonic-looking young man
from Paris.
Rubinstein was a possessive and jealous man. A tiny
microphone was placed by him in the apartment of Pat
Wray, sending sound into a tape recorder hidden in a car
parked outside the building. Thus, Rubinstein was able to
monitor her every word!
Obviously, his dealings were worldwide, and there
were some 2,000 names in his private files.
The Case of the Murdered Financier
75
The usual sensational news accounts had been seen in
the press the week prior to our seance, but none of them
contained anything new or definite. Mrs. Meyers’ knowl-
edge of the case was as specific as that of any ordinary
newspaper reader.
* * *
We were received by Serge’s seventy-nine-year-old
mother, Stella Rubinstein; her sister, Eugenia Forrester; the
Rubinstein attorney, Ennis; a female secretary; a guard
named Walter, and a newspaper reporter from a White
Russian paper, Jack Zwieback. After a few moments of
polite talk downstairs — that is, on the second floor where
the library of the sumptuous mansion was located — I sug-
gested we go to the location of the crime itself.
We all rose, when Mrs. Meyers suddenly stopped in
her tracks. “I feel someone’s grip on my arm,” she
commented.
We went upstairs without further incident.
The bedroom of the slain financier was a medium-
size room in the rear of the house, connected with the front
sitting room through a large bathroom. We formed a circle
around the bed, occupying the center of the room. The
light was subdued, but the room was far from dark. Mrs.
Meyers insisted on sitting in a chair close to the bed, and
remarked that she “was directed there.”
Gradually her body relaxed, her eyes closed, and the
heavy, rhythmic breathing of onsetting trance was heard in
the silence of the room, heavily tensed with fear and appre-
hension of what was to come.
Several times, the medium placed her arm before her
face, as if warding off attacks; symptoms of choking dis-
torted her face and a struggle seemed to take place before
our eyes!
Within a few minutes, this was over, and a new,
strange voice came from the lips of the medium. ‘‘I can
speak. . .over there, they’re coming!” The arm pointed
toward the bathroom.
I asked who “they” were.
"They’re no friends. . .Joe, Stan. . .cheap girl. . .in
the door, they — ” The hand went to the throat, indicating
choking.
Then, suddenly, the person in command of the
medium added: “The woman should be left out. There was
a calendar with serial numbers. . .box numbers, but they
can’t get it! Freddie was here, too!”
“What was in the box?”
“Fourteen letters. Nothing for the public.”
"Give me more information.”
“Baby-Face. . .1 don’t want to talk too
much... they'll pin it on Joe.”
"Flow many were there?”
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
76
“Joe, Stan, and Freddie... stooges. Her bosses’
stooges! London. . .let me go, let me go. . I’m too frantic
here... not up here... I’ll come again.”
With a jolt, the medium awoke from her trance. Per-
spiration stood on her forehead, although the room was
cold. Not a word was said by the people in the room. Mrs.
Meyers leaned back and thought for a moment.
“I feel a small, stocky man here, perverted minds,
and there is fighting all over the room. He is being sur-
prised by the bathroom door. They were hiding in the next
room, came through this window and fire escape.”
We descended again to the library, where we had
originally assembled. The conversation continued quietly,
when suddenly Mrs. Meyers found herself rapidly slipping
into trance again.
“Three men, one wiry and tall, one short and very
stocky, and one tall and stout — the shorter one is in
charge. Then there is Baby-Face. . .she has a Mona Lisa-
like face. Stan is protected. I had the goods on them. . . .
Mama’s right, it’s getting hot. ...”
"Give us the name!” I almost shouted. Tension
gripped us all.
The medium struggled with an unfamiliar sound.
“Kapoich. . .?” Then she added, “The girl here. . .poker
face.”
“But what is her name?”
“Ha ha... tyrant.”
When Mrs. Meyers came out of her trance, I ques-
tioned Rubinstein’s mother about the seance. She readily
agreed that the voice had indeed sounded much like her
late son’s. Moreover, there was that girl — named in the
investigation — who had a “baby face.” She never showed
emotion, and was, in fact, poker-faced all the time. Her
name?
"My son often called her his tyrant,” the mother
said, visibly shaken.
"What about the other names?”
"My son used a hired limousine frequently. The
chauffeur was a stocky man, and his name was Joe or Joey.
Stan? I have heard that name many times in business con-
versations. One of the men involved in the investigation
was named Kubitschek. Had the deceased tried to pro-
nounce that name?
A wallet once belonging to Serge had been handed to
Mrs. Meyers a few minutes before, to help her maintain
contact with the deceased. Suddenly, without warning, the
wallet literally flew out of her hands arid hit the high ceiling
of the library with tremendous impact.
Mrs. Meyers’ voice again sounded strange, as the late
financier spoke through her in anger. "Do you know how
much it costs to sell a man down the river?”
Nobody cared to answer. We had all had quite enough
for one evening!
We all left in different directions, and I sent a dupli-
cate of the seance transcript to the police, something I have
done with every subsequent seance as well. Mrs. Meyers
L
and I were never the only ones to know what transpired in
trance. The police knew, too, and if they did not choose to
arrest anyone, that was their business.
We were sure our seance had not attracted attention,
and Mrs. Rubinstein herself, and her people, certainly
would not spread the word of the unusual goings-on in the
Fifth Avenue mansion on the anniversary of the murder.
But on February 1 , Cholly Knickerbocker headlined
—"Serge’s Mother Holds A Seance”!
Not entirely accurate in his details — his source turned
out to be one of the guards — Mr. Cassini, nevertheless,
came to the point in stating: “To the awe of all present, no
less than four people were named by the medium. If this
doesn’t give the killers the chills, it certainly does us.”
We thought we had done our bit toward the solution
of this baffling murder, and were quite prepared to forget
the excitement of that evening. Unfortunately, the wraith
of Rubinstein did not let it rest at that.
During a routine seance then held at my house on
West 70th Street, he took over the medium’s personality,
and elaborated on his statements. He talked of his offices
in London and Paris, his staff, and his enemies. One of his
lawyers, Rubinstein averred, knew more than he dared
disclose!
I called Mrs. Rubinstein and arranged for another,
less public sitting at the Fifth Avenue house. This time
only the four of us, the two elderly ladies, Mrs. Meyers
and I, were present. Rubinstein’s voice was again recog-
nized by his mother.
“It was at 2:45 on the nose. 2:45!” he said, speaking
of the time of his death. “Pa took my hand, it wasn't so
bad. I want to tell the little angel woman here, I don’t
always listen like a son should — she told me always, ‘You
go too far, don’t take chances!”'
Then his voice grew shrill with anger. “Justice will be
done. I have paid for that.”
I asked, what did this fellow Joey, whom he men-
tioned the first time, do for a living?
“Limousines. He knew how to come. He brought
them here, they were not invited.”
He then added something about Houston, Texas, and
insisted that a man from that city was involved. He was
sure “the girl” would eventually talk and break the case.
There were a number of other sittings, at my house,
where the late Serge put his appearance into evidence.
Gradually, his hatred and thirst for revenge gave way to a
calmer acceptance of his untimely death. He kept us
informed of “poker face’s moves” — whenever “the girl”
moved, Serge was there to tell us. Sometimes his language
was rough, sometimes he held back.
“They’ll get Mona Lisa,” he assured me on March
30th, 1956. I faithfully turned the records of our seances
over to the police. They always acknowledged them, but
were not eager to talk about this help from so odd a source
as a psychical researcher!
Rubinstein kept talking about a Crown Street Head-
quarters in London, but we never were able to locate this
address. At one time, he practically insisted in taking his
medium with him into the street, to look for his murderers!
It took strength and persuasion for me to calm the restless
one, for I did not want Mrs. Meyers to leave the safety of
the big armchair by the fireplace, which she usually occu-
pied at our seances.
“Stan is on this side now,” he commented on April
13th.
I could never fathom whether Stan was his friend of
his enemy, or perhaps both at various times. Financier
Stanley died a short time after our initial seance at the
Fifth Avenue mansion.
Safe deposit boxes were mentioned, and numbers
given, but somehow Mrs. Rubinstein never managed to
find them.
On April 26th, we held another sitting at my house.
This time the spirit of the slain financier was particularly
restless.
“Vorovsky,” he mumbled, “yellow cab, he was paid
good for helping her get away from the house. Doug paid
him, he’s a friend of Charley's. Tell mother to hire a private
detective.”
I tried to calm him. He flared up at me. “Who’re you
talking to? The Pope?”
The next day, I checked these names with his
mother. Mrs. Rubinstein also assured me that the expres-
sion “who do you think I am — the Pope?” was one of his
favorite phrases in life!
“Take your nose down to Texas and you’ll find a
long line to London and Paris,” he advised us on May
10th.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Rubinstein increased the reward for
the capture of the murderer to $50,000. Still, no one was
arrested, and the people the police had originally ques-
tioned had all been let go. Strangely enough, the estate was
much smaller than at first anticipated. Was much money
still in hiding, perhaps in some unnamed safe deposit box?
We’ll never know. Rubinstein’s mother has gone on to join
him on the other side of the veil, too.
My last contact with the case was in November of
1961 , when columnist Hy Gardner asked me to appear on
his television program. We talked about the Rubinstein
seances, and he showed once more the eerie bit of film he
called “a collector’s item” — the only existing television
interview with Rubinstein, made shortly before his death in
1955.
The inquisitive reporter’s questions are finally parried
by the wily Rubinstein with an impatient — ’’Why, that’s
like asking a man about his own death!”
Could it be that Serge Rubinstein, in addition to all his
other “talents,” also had the gift of prophecy?
The Case of the Murdered Financier
77
# 6
The Rockland County Ghost*
In November 1951 the writer heard for the first time of
the haunted house belonging to the New York home of the
late Danton Walker, the well-known newspaper man.
Over a dinner table in a Manhattan restaurant, the
strange goings-on in the Rockland County house were dis-
cussed with me for the first time, although they had been
observed over the ten years preceding our meeting. The
manifestations had come to a point where they had forced
Mr. Walker to leave his house to the ghost and build him-
self a studio on the other end of his estate, where he was
able to live unmolested.
A meeting with Mrs. Garrett, the medium, was soon
arranged, but due to her indisposition, it had to be post-
poned. Despite her illness, Mrs. Garrett, in a kind of
"traveling clairvoyance,” did obtain a clairvoyant impres-
sion of the entity. His name was “Andreas,” and she felt
him to be rather attached to the present owner of the
house. These findings Mrs. Garrett communicated to Mr.
Walker, but nothing further was done on the case until the
fall of 1952. A "rescue circle” operation was finally orga-
nized on November 22, 1952, and successfully concluded
the case, putting the disturbed soul to rest and allowing
Mr. Walker to return to the main house without further
fear of manifestations.
Before noting the strange phenomena that have been
observed in the house, it will be necessary to describe this
house a bit, as the nature of the building itself has a great
deal to do with the occurrences.
Mr. Walker’s house is a fine example of colonial
architecture, of the kind that was built in the country dur-
ing the second half of the eighteenth century. Although
Walker was sure only of the first deed to the property,
dated 1813 and naming the Abrams family, of pre-Revolu-
tionary origin in the country, the house itself is unques-
tionably much older.
When Mr. Walker bought the house in the spring of
1942, it was in the dismal state of disrepair typical of some
dwellings in the surrounding Ramapo Mountains. It took
the new owner several years and a great deal of money to
rebuild the house to its former state and to refurbish it
with the furniture, pewter, and other implements of the
period. I am mentioning this point because in its present
state the house is a completely livable and authentic colo-
nial building of the kind that would be an entirely familiar
and a welcome sight to a man living toward the end of the
eighteenth century, were he to set foot into it today.
The house stands on a hill which was once part of a
farm. During the War for Independence, this location was
*Courtesy of Tomorrow, Vol. I, No. 3.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
78
the headquarters of a colonial army. In fact, "Mad”
Anthony Wayne’s own headquarters stood near this site,
and the Battle of Stony Point (1779) was fought a few
miles away. Most likely, the building restored by Mr.
Walker was then in use as a fortified roadhouse, used both
for storage of arms, ammunitions, and food supplies, and
for the temporary lodging of prisoners.
After the house passed from the hands of the Abrams
family in the earlier part of the last century, a banker
named Dixon restored the farm and the hill, but paid scant
attention to the house itself. By and by, the house gave in
to the ravages of time and weather. A succession of moun-
tain people made it their living quarters around the turn of
the century, but did nothing to improve its sad state of dis-
repair. When Mr. Walker took over, only the kitchen and
a small adjoining room were in use; the rest of the house
was filled with discarded furniture and other objects. The
upstairs was divided into three tiny rooms and a small
attic, which contained bonnets, hoop skirts, and crudely
carved wooden shoe molds and toys, dating from about the
Civil War period.
While the house was being reconstructed, Mr.
Walker was obliged to spend nights at a nearby inn, but
would frequently take naps during the day on an army cot
upstairs. On these occasions he received distinct impres-
sions of "a Revolutionary soldier” being in the room.
Mr. Walker’s moving in, in the spring of 1942,
touched off the usual country gossip, some of which later
reached his ears. It seemed that the house was haunted.
One woman who had lived in the place told of an “old
man” who frightened the children, mysterious knocks at
the front door, and other mysterious happenings. But none
of these reports could be followed up. For all practical pur-
poses, we may say that the phenomena started with the
arrival of Mr. Walker.
Though Mr. Walker was acutely sensitive to the
atmosphere of the place from the time he took over, it was
not until 1944 that the manifestations resulted in both visi-
ble and audible phenomena. That year, during an after-
noon when he was resting in the front room downstairs, he
was roused by a violent summons to the front door, which
has a heavy iron knocker. Irritated by the intrusion when
no guest was expected, he called "Come in!,” then went to
the front door and found no one there.
About this time, Mr. Walker’s butler, Johnny,
remarked to his employer that the house was a nice place
to stay in “if they would let you alone.” Questioning
revealed that Johnny, spending the night in the house
alone, had gone downstairs three times during the night to
answer knocks at the front door. An Italian workman
named Pietro, who did some repairs on the house, reported
sounds of someone walking up the stairs in midafternoon
"with heavy boots on,” at a time when there definitely was
no one else in the place. Two occasional guests of the
owner also were disturbed, while reading in the living
room, by the sound of heavy footsteps overhead.
In 1950 Mr. Walker and his secretary were eating
dinner in the kitchen, which is quite close to the front
door. There was a sharp rap at the door. The secretary
opened it and found nobody there. In the summer of 1952,
when there were guests downstairs but no one upstairs,
sounds of heavy thumping were heard from upstairs, as if
someone had taken a bad fall.
Though Mr. Walker, his butler, and his guests never
saw or fancied they saw any ghostly figures, the manifesta-
tions did not restrict themselves to audible phenomena.
Unexplainable dents in pewter pieces occurred from time
to time. A piece of glass in a door pane, the same front
door of the house, was cracked but remained solidly in
place for some years. One day it was missing and could not
be located in the hall indoors, nor outside on the porch. A
week later this four -by -four piece of glass was accidentally
found resting on a plate rail eight feet above the kitchen
floor. How it got there is as much of a mystery now as it
was then.
On one occasion, when Johnny was cleaning the
stairs to the bedroom, a picture that had hung at the top of
the stairs for at least two years tumbled down, almost strik-
ing him. A woman guest who had spent the night on a
daybed in the living room, while making up the bed next
morning, was almost struck by a heavy pewter pitcher
which fell (“almost as if thrown at her”) from a bookshelf
hanging behind the bed. There were no unusual vibrations
of the house to account for these things.
On the white kitchen wall there are heavy semicircu-
lar black marks where a pewter salt box, used for holding
keys, had been violently swung back and forth. A large
pewter pitcher, which came into the house in perfect condi-
tion, now bears five heavy imprints, four on one side, one
on the other. A West Pointer with unusually large hands
fitted his own four fingers and thumb into the dents!
Other phenomena included gripping chills felt from
time to time by Mr. Walker and his more sensitive guests.
These chills, not to be confused with drafts, were also felt
in all parts of the house by Mr. Walker when alone. They
took the form of a sudden paralyzing cold, as distinct as a
cramp. Such a chill once seized him when he had been ill
and gone to bed early. Exasperated by the phenomenon, he
unthinkingly called out aloud, "Oh, for God’s sake, let me
alone!” The chill abruptly stopped.
But perhaps the most astounding incident took place
in November 1952, only a few days before the rescue circle
met at the house.
Two of Mr. Walker’s friends, down-to-earth men
with no belief in the so-called supernatural, were weekend
guests. Though Walker suggested that they both spend the
night in the commodious studio about three-hundred feet
from the main house, one of them insisted on staying
upstairs in the “haunted” room. Walker persuaded him to
leave the lights on.
An hour later, the pajama-clad man came rushing
down to the studio, demanding that Mr. Walker put an
end “to his pranks.” The light beside his bed was blinking
on and off. All other lights in the house were burning
steadily!
Assured that this might be caused by erratic power
supply and that no one was playing practical jokes, the
guest returned to the main house. But an hour or so later,
he came back to the studio and spent the rest of the night
there. In the morning he somewhat sheepishly told that he
had been awakened from a sound sleep by the sensation of
someone slapping him violently in the face. Sitting bolt
upright in bed, he noticed that the shirt he had hung on
the back of a rocking chair was being agitated by the
“breeze.” Though admitting that this much might have
been pure imagination, he also seemed to notice the chair
gently rocking. Since all upstairs windows were closed,
there definitely was no “breeze.”
“The sensation described by my guest,” Mr. Walker
remarked, “reminded me of a quotation from one of Edith
Wharton’s ghost stories. Here is the exact quote:
‘“Medford sat up in bed with a jerk which resembles
no other. Someone was in his room. The fact reached him
not by sight or sound. . .but by a peculiar faint disturbance
of the invisible currents that enclose us.’
“Many people in real life have experienced this sensa-
tion. I myself had not spent a night alone in the main
house in four years. It got so that I just couldn’t take it. In
fact, I built the studio specifically to get away from staying
there. When people have kidded me about my ‘haunted
house,’ my reply is, would I have spent so much time and
money restoring the house, and then built another house to
spend the night in, if there had not been some valid
reason?”
On many previous occasions, Mr. Walker had
remarked that he had a feeling that someone was trying
"desperately” to get into the house, as if for refuge. The
children of an earlier tenant had mentioned some agitation
“by the lilac bush” at the corner of the house. The original
crude walk from the road to the house, made of flat native
stones, passed this lilac bush and went to the well, which,
according to local legend, was used by soldiers in Revolu-
tionary times.
“When I first took over the place,” Mr. Walker
observed, "I used to look out of the kitchen window twenty
times a day to see who was at the well. Since the old walk
has been replaced by a stone walk and driveway, no one
could now come into the place without being visible for at
least sixty-five feet. Following the reconstruction, the stone
wall blocking the road was torn down several times at the
exact spot where the original walk reached the road.”
In all the disturbances which led to the efforts of the
rescue circle, I detected one common denominator. Some-
one was attempting to get into the house, and to call atten-
tion to something. Playing pranks, puzzling people, or even
frightening them, were not part of the ghost’s purpose;
The Rockland County Ghost
79
they were merely his desperate devices for getting atten-
tion, attention for something he very much wanted to say.
On a bleak and foreboding day in November 1952,
the little group comprising the rescue circle drove out into
the country for the sitting. They were accompanied by Dr.
L., a prominent Park Avenue psychiatrist and psychoana-
lyst, and of course by Mr. Walker, the owner of the
property.
The investigation was sponsored by Parapsychology
Foundation, Inc., of New York City. Participants included
Mrs. Eileen J. Garrett; Dr. L., whose work in psychiatry
and analysis is well known; Miss Lenore Davidson, assis-
tant to Mrs. Garrett, who was responsible for most of the
notes taken; Dr. Michael Pobers, then Secretary General of
the Parapsychology Foundation; and myself.
The trip to the Rockland County home of Mr.
Walker took a little over an hour. The house stands atop a
wide hill, not within easy earshot of the next inhabited
house, but not too far from his own “cabin” and two other
small houses belonging to Mr. Walker’s estate. The main
house, small and compact, represents a perfect restoration
of colonial American architecture.
A plaque in the ground at the entrance gate calls
attention to the historical fact that General Wayne’s head-
quarters at the time of the Battle of Stony Point, 1 779,
occupied the very same site. Mr. Walker’s house was pos-
sibly part of the fortification system protecting the hill, and
no doubt served as a stronghold in the war of 1779 and in
earlier wars and campaigns fought around this part of the
country. One feels the history of many generations clinging
to the place.
We took our places in the upstairs bedroom, group-
ing ourselves so as to form an imperfect circle around Mrs.
Garrett, who sat in a heavy, solid wooden chair with her
back to the wall and her face toward us.
The time was 2:45 P.M. and the room was fully lit by
ample daylight coming in through the windows.
After a moment, Mrs. Garrett placed herself in full
trance by means of autohypnosis. Quite suddenly her own
personality vanished, and the medium sank back into her
chair completely lifeless, very much like an unused garment
discarded for the time being by its owner. But not for long.
A few seconds later, another personality "got into” the
medium’s body, precisely the way one dons a shirt or coat.
It was Uvani, one of Mrs. Garrett’s two spirit guides who
act as her control personalities in all of her experiments.
Uvani, in his own lifetime, was an East Indian of consider-
able knowledge and dignity, and as such he now appeared
before us.
As “he” sat up — I shall refer to the distinct personal-
ities now using the "instrument” (the medium’s body) as
“he” or "him” — it was obvious that we had before us a
gentleman from India. Facial expression, eyes, color of
skin, movements, the folded arms, and the finger move-
ments that accompanied many of his words were all those
of a native of India. As Uvani addressed us, he spoke in
perfect English, except for a faltering word now and then
or an occasional failure of idiom, but his accent was
typical.
At this point, the tape recorder faithfully took down
every word spoken. The transcript given here is believed to
be complete, and is certainly so where we deal with Uvani,
who spoke clearly and slowly. In the case of the ghost,
much of the speech was garbled because of the ghost’s
unfortunate condition; some of the phrases were repeated
several times, and a few words were so badly uttered that
they could not be made out by any of us. In order to pre-
sent only verifiable evidence, I have eliminated all such
words and report here nothing which was not completely
understandable and clear. But at least 70% of the words
uttered by the ghost, and of course all of the words of
Uvani, are on record. The tape recording is supplemented
by Miss Davidson’s exacting transcript, and in the final
moments her notes replace it entirely.
Uvani: It is I, Uvani. I give you greeting, friends. Peace be
with you, and in your lives, and in this house!
Dr. L. : And our greetings to you, Uvani. We welcome
you.
Uvani: I am very happy to speak with you, my good
friend. (Bows to Dr. L.) You are out of your native
element.
Dr. L. : Very much so. We have not spoken in this env-
ironment at all before. . . .
Uvani: What is it what you would have of me today,
please?
Dr. L. : We are met here as friends of Mr. Walker, whose
house this is, to investigate strange occurrences which have
taken place in this house from time to time, which lead us
to feel that they partake of the nature of this field of inter-
est of ours. We would be guided by you, Uvani, as to the
method of approach which we should use this afternoon.
Our good friend and instrument (Mrs. Garrett) has the
feeling that there was a personality connected with this
house whose influence is still to be felt here.
Uvani: Yes, I would think so. I am confronted myself
with a rather restless personality. In fact, a very strange
personality, and one that might appear to be in his own life
perhaps not quite of the right mind — I think you would
call it.
I have a great sense of agitation. I would like to tell
you about this personality, and at the same time draw your
attention to the remarkable — what you might call — atmos-
pherics that he is able to bring into our environment. You,
who are my friend and have worked with me very much,
know that when I am in control, we are very calm — yes?
Yet it is as much as I can do to maintain the control, as
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
80
you see — for such is the atmosphere produced by this per-
sonality, that you will note my own difficulty to retain and
constrain the instrument. (The medium’s hand shakes in
rapid palsy. Uvani’s voice tremble.) This one, in spite of
me, by virtue of his being with us brings into the process
of our field of work a classical palsy. Do you see this?
Dr. L.: Ido.
Uvani: This was his condition, and that is why it may be
for me perhaps necessary (terrific shaking of medium at
this point) to ask you to — deal — with this — personality
yourself — while I withdraw — to create a little more qui-
etude around the instrument. Our atmosphere, as you
notice, is charged. . . . You will not be worried by anything
that may happen, please. You will speak, if you can, with
this one — and you will eventually return the instrument to
my control.
Dr. L.: I will.
Uvani: Will you please to remember that you are dealing
with a personality very young, tired, who has been very
much hurt in life, and who was, for many years prior to his
passing, unable — how you say — to think for himself. Now
will you please take charge, so that I permit the complete
control to take place. . . .
Uvani left the body of the medium at this point. For
a moment, all life seemed gone from it as it lay still in the
chair. Then, suddenly, another personality seemed to pos-
sess it. Slowly, the new personality sat up, hands violently
vibrating in palsy, face distorted in extreme pain, eyes
blinking, staring, unable to see anything at first, looking
straight through us all without any sign of recognition. All
this was accompanied by increasing inarticulate outcries,
leading later into halting, deeply emotional weeping.
For about ten seconds, the new personality main-
tained its position in the chair, but as the movements of
the hands accelerated, it suddenly leaned over and crashed
to the floor, narrowly missing a wooden chest nearby.
Stretched out on the floor before us, "he” kept uttering
inarticulate sounds for perhaps one or two minutes, while
vainly trying to raise himself from the floor.
One of Dr. L. ’s crutches, which he uses when walk-
ing about, was on the floor next to his chair. The entity
seized the crutch and tried to raise himself with its help,
but without success. Throughout the next seconds, he tried
again to use the crutch, only to fall back onto the floor.
One of his legs, the left one, continued to execute rapid
convulsive movements typical of palsy. It was quite visible
that the leg had been badly damaged. Now and again he
threw his left hand to his head, touching it as if to indicate
that his head hurt also.
Dr. L. : We are friends, and you may speak with us. Let us
help you in any way we can. We are friends.
Entity: Mhh — mhh — mhh — (inarticulate sounds of sobbing
and pain).
Dr. L. : Speak with us. Speak with us. Can we help you?
(More crying from the entity) You will be able to speak
with us. Now you are quieter. You will be able to talk to
us. (The entity crawls along the floor to Mr. Walker,
seems to have eyes only for him, and remains at Walker’s
knee throughout the interrogation. The crying becomes
softer.) Do you understand English?
Entity: Friend. . .friend. Mercy... mercy... mercy.... (The
English has a marked Polish accent, the voice is rough,
uncouth, bragging, emotional.) I know. . .1 know. . .1
know. . . . (pointing at Mr. Walker)
Dr. L. : When did you know him before?
Entity: Stones. . .stones. . . . Don’t let them take me!
Dr. L. : No, we won’t let them take you.
Entity: (More crying) Talk. . . .
Mr. Walker: You want to talk to me? Yes, I’ll talk to you.
Entity: Can’t talk. . ..
Mr. Walker: Can’t talk? It is hard for you to talk?
Entity: (Nods) Yes.
Dr. L. : You want water? Food? Water?
Entity: (Shakes head) Talk! Talk! (To Mr. Walker) Friend?
You?
Mr. Walker: Yes, friend. We’re all friends.
Entity: (Points to his head, then to his tongue.)
Stones... no?
Dr. L. : No stones. You will not be stoned.
Entity: No beatin'?
Dr. L. : No, you won’t be stoned, you won’t be beaten.
Entity: Don’t go!
Mr. Walker: No, we are staying right here.
Entity: Can’t talk. . . .
Mr. Walker: You can talk. We are all friends.
Dr. L. : It is difficult with this illness that you have, but
you can talk. Your friend there is Mr. Walker. And what
is your name?
Entity: He calls me. I have to get out. I cannot go any fur-
ther. In God’s name I cannot go any further. (Touches Mr.
Walker)
Mr. Walker: I will protect you. (At the word "protect” the
entity sits up, profoundly struck by it.) What do you fear?
Entity: Stones....
Mr. Walker: Stones thrown at you?
Dr. L. : That will not happen again.
Entity: Friends! Wild men. . .you know. ...
The Rockland County Ghost
81
Mr. Walker: Indians?
Entity: No.
Dr. L. : White man?
Entity: Mh... teeth gone — (shows graphically how his
teeth were kicked in)
Mr. Walker: Teeth gone.
Dr. L. : They knocked your teeth out?
Entity: See? I can’t. . . . Protect me!
Mr. Walker: Yes, yes. We will protect you. No more beat-
ings, no more stones.
Dr. L. : You live here? This is your house?
Entity: (Violent gesture, loud voice) No, oh no! I hide here.
Mr. Walker: In the woods?
Entity: Cannot leave here.
Dr. L. : Whom do you hide from?
Entity: Big, big, strong. . .big, big, strong....
Dr. L. : Is he the one that beat you?
Entity: (Shouts) All... I know. ..I know. ..I know....
Dr. L. : You know the names?
Entity: (Hands on Mr. Walker’s shoulders) Know the
plans....
Dr. L. : They tried to find the plans, to make you tell, but
you did not tell? And your head hurts?
Entity: (Just nods to this) Ah. . .ah. . . .
Dr. L. : And you’ve been kicked, and beaten and stoned.
(The entity nods violently.)
Mr. Walker: Where are the plans?
Entity: I hid them. . .far, far. . . .
Mr. Walker: Where did you hide the plans? We are
friends, you can tell us.
Entity: Give me map.
(The entity is handed note pad and pen, which he
uses in the stiff manner of a quill. The drawing, showing
the unsteady and vacillating lines of a palsy sufferer, is on
hand.)
Entity: In your measure. . .Andreas Hid. . . . (drawing)
Mr. Walker: Where the wagon house lies?
Entity: A house. . .not in the house. . .timber
house... log....
Mr. Walker: Log house?
Entity: (Nods) Plans. . .log house. . .under. . .under. . .
stones.. .fifteen. . .log. . .fifteen stones. . .door. . .plans —
for whole shifting of . . . .
Mr. Walker: Of ammunitions?
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
82
—
Entity: No. . .men and ammunitions. . .plans — I have for
French. ... I have plans for French. . .plans I have to
deliver to log house. . .right where sun strikes window. . . .
Dr. L. : Fifteen stones from the door?
Entity: Where sun strikes the window. . . . Fifteen stones. . .
under. . .in log house. . . . There I have put away . . .
plans. . . . (agitated) Not take again!
Mr. Walker: No, no, we will not let them take you again.
We will protect you from the English.
Entity: (Obviously touched) No one ever say — no one ever
say — I will protect you. . . .
Mr. Walker: Yes, we will protect you. You are protected
now for always.
Entity: Don’t send me away, no?
Dr. L. : No, we won’t send you away.
Entity: Protect. . .protect. . .protect. . . .
Dr. L. : You were not born in this country?
Entity: No.
Dr. L. : You are a foreigner?
Entity: (Hurt and angry, shouts) Yeah. . .dog! They call
me dog. Beasts!
Dr. L. : Are you German? (The entity makes a disdainful
negative gesture.) Polish?
Entity: Yes.
Dr. L. : You came here when you were young?
Entity: (His voice is loud and robust with the joy of meet-
ing a countryman.) Das. . .das. . .das! Yes. . .brother?
Friends? Pole? Polski, yeah?
Mr. Walker: Yes, yes.
Entity: (Throws arms around Walker) I hear. . .1 see. . .
like. . .like brother. . .like brother. . Jilitze. ..Jilitze. ...
Mr. Walker: What is your name?
Entity: Gospodin! Gospodin! (Polish for “master”)
Mr. Walker: What’s the name? (in Polish) Zo dje lat?
Entity: (Touching Mr. Walker’s face and hands as he
speaks) Hans? Brother. . .like Hans. . .like Hans. . .me
Andre — you Hans.
Mr. Walker: I’m Hans?
Entity : My brother ... he killed too ... I die ... I die .. .
die. . .die
Mr. Walker: Where? At Tappan? Stony Point?
Entity: Big field, battle. Noise, noise. Big field. Hans like
you.
Mr. Walker: How long ago was this battle?
Entity: Like yesterday .. .like yesterday. . .1 lie here in dark
night . . . bleed ... call Hans . . . call Hans ... Polski?
Mr. Walker: Did you die here?
Entity: Out here. ... (pointing down) Say again. . .protect,
friend.... (points at himself) Me, me. . .you. . .Andreas?
You like Hans. . .friend, brother. . .you. . .Andreas?
Dr. L. : Do you know anything about dates?
Entity: Like yesterday. English all over. Cannot. . .they are
terrible. . . . (hits his head)
Dr. L. : You were with the Americans?
Entity: No, no.
Dr. L. : Yankees?
Entity: No, no. Big word. ..Re. ..Re. ..Republic...
Republic. . . . (drops back to the floor with an outcry of
pain)
Dr. L. : You are still with friends. You are resting. You are
safe.
Entity: Protection. . .protection. . .the stars in the
flag. . .the stars in the flag. . . Republic. . .they sing. . . .
Dr. L. : How long have you been hiding in this house?
Entity: I go to talk with brother later. . . . Big man say, you
go away, he talk now. ... I go away a little, he stays. . .he
talk. . .he here part of the time. . . .
By “big man’’ the entity was referring to his guide,
Uvani. The entity rested quietly, becoming more and more
lifeless on the floor. Soon all life appeared to be gone from
the medium’s body. Then Uvani returned, took control, sat
up, got back up into the chair without trouble, and
addressed us in his learned and quiet manner as before.
Uvani: (Greeting us with bended arms, bowing) You will
permit me. You do not very often find me in such sur-
roundings. I beg your pardon. Now let me tell to you a lit-
tle of what I have been able to ascertain. You have here
obviously a poor soul who is unhappily caught in the
memory of perhaps days or weeks or years of confusion. I
permit him to take control in order to let him play out the
fantasy ... in order toplayoutthe fears .thedifficulties.... I
am able thus to relax this one. It is then that I will give
you what I see of this story.
He was obviously kept a prisoner of. . .a hired army.
There had been different kinds of soldiers from Europe
brought to this country. He tells me that he had been in
other parts of this country with French troops, but they
were friendly. He was a friend for a time with one who was
friendly not only with your own people, but with Revolu-
tionary troops. He seems, therefore, a man who serves a
man. . .a mercenary.
He became a jackboot for all types of men who have
fought, a good servant. He is now here, now there.
He does not understand for whom he works. He
refers to an Andre, with whom he is for some time in con-
tact, and he likes this Andre very much because of the
similar name. . .because he is Andre(w)ski. There is this
similarity to Andre. It is therefore he has been used, as far
as I can see, as a cover-up for this man. Here then is the
confusion.
He is caught two or three times by different people
because of his appearance — he is a “dead ringer”. . .a dou-
ble. His friend Andre disappears, and he is lost and does
what he can with this one and that one, and eventually he
finds himself in the hands of the British troops. He is
known to have letters and plans, and these he wants me to
tell you were hidden by him due east of where you now
find yourselves, in what he says was a temporary building
of sorts in which were housed different caissons. In this
there is also a rest house for guards. In this type kitchen
he. . .he will not reveal the plans and is beaten mercilessly.
His limbs are broken and he passes out, no longer in the
right mind, but with a curious break on one side of the
body, and his leg is damaged.
It would appear that he is from time to time like one
in a coma — he wakes, dreams, and loses himself again, and
I gather from the story that he is not always aware of peo-
ple. Sometimes he says it is a long dream. Could it there-
fore be that these fantasies are irregular? Does he come and
go? You get the kind of disturbance — “Am I dreaming?
What is this? A feeling that there is a tempest inside of
me ” So I think he goes into these states, suspecting
them himself. This is his own foolishness. . .lost between
two states of being.
(To Mr. Walker who is tall and blue-eyed)
He has a very strong feeling that you are like his
brother, Sahib. This may account for his desire to be near
you. He tells me, “I had a brother and left him very
young, tall, blue-eyed,” and he misses him in a battlefield
in this country.
Now I propose with your prayers and help to try to
find his brother for him. And I say to him, “I have asked
for your protection, where you will not be outcast,
degraded, nor debased, where you will come and go in
freedom. Do as your friends here ask. In the name of that
God and that faith in which you were brought up, seek sal-
vation and mercy for your restlessness. Go in peace. Go to
a kindlier dream. Go out where there is a greater life.
Come with us — you are not with your kind. In mercy let
us go hand in hand.”
Now he looks at me and asks, “If I should return,
would he like unto my brother welcome me?” I do not
think he will return, but if you sense him or his wildness
of the past, I would say unto you, Sahib, address him as
we have here. Say to him, “You who have found the God
of your childhood need not return.” Give him your love
and please with a prayer send him away.
May there be no illness, nor discord, nor unhappiness
in this house because he once felt it was his only resting
place. Let there indeed be peace in your hearts and let
The Rockland County Ghost
83
there be understanding between here and there. It is such a
little way, although it looks so far. Let us then in our daily
life not wait for this grim experience, but let us help in
every moment of our life.
Mr. Walker was softly repeating the closing prayer.
Uvani relinquished control, saying, "Peace be unto
you. ..until we meet again.” The medium fell back in the
chair, unconscious for a few moments. Then her own per-
sonality returned.
Mrs. Garrett rose from the chair, blinked her eyes,
and seemed none the worse for the highly dramatic and
exciting incidents which had taken place around her — none
of which she was aware of. Every detail of what had hap-
pened had to be told to Mrs. Garrett later, as the trance
state is complete and no memory whatsoever is retained.
It was 2:45 P.M. when Mrs. Garrett went into trance,
and 4 P.M. when the operation came to an end. After some
discussion of the events of the preceding hour and a quar-
ter, mainly to iron out differing impressions received by
the participants, we left Mr. Walker’s house and drove
back to New York.
On December 2, 1952, Mr. Walker informed me that
"the atmosphere about the place does seem much calmer.”
It seems reasonable to assume that the restless ghost has at
last found that “sweeter dream” of which Uvani spoke.
In cases of this nature, where historical names and
facts are part of the proceedings, it is always highly desir-
able to have them corroborated by research in the available
» 7
A Revolutionary Corollary:
Patrick Henry, Nathan Hale, et al.
Nathan Hale, as every schoolboy knows, was the
American spy hanged by the British. He was captured at
Huntington Beach and taken to Brooklyn for trial. How he
was captured is a matter of some concern to the people of
Huntington, Long Island. The town was originally settled
by colonists from Connecticut who were unhappy with the
situation in that colony. There were five principal families
who accounted for the early settlement of Huntington, and
to this day their descendants are the most prominent fami-
lies in the area. They were the Sammes, the Downings, the
Busches, the Pauldings, and the Cooks. During the Revo-
lutionary War, feelings were about equally divided among
the townspeople: some were Revolutionaries and some
remained Tories. The consensus of historians is that mem-
bers of these five prominent families, all of whom were
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
reference works. In the case of "The Ghost of Ash Manor”
(Tomorrow, Autumn 1952) this was comparatively easy, as
we were dealing with a personality of some rank and
importance in his own lifetime. In this case, however, we
were dealing with an obscure immigrant servant, whose
name is not likely to appear in any of the regimental
records available for the year and place in question. In fact,
extensive perusal of such records shows no one who might
be our man. There were many enlisted men with the name
Andreas serving in the right year and in the right regiment
for our investigation, but none of them seems to fit.
And why should it? After all, our Andrewski was a
very young man of no particular eminence who served as
ordinary jackboot to a succession of colonial soldiers, as
Uvani and he himself pointed out. The search for Andreas’
brother Hans was almost as negative. Pursuing a hunch
that the Slavic exclamation “Jilitze. . .Jilitze. . . ” which the
ghost made during the interrogation, might have been
“Ulica...Ulica. ...” I found that a Johannes Ulick (Hans
Ulick could be spelled that way) did indeed serve in 1779
in the Second Tryon County Regiment.
The "fifteen stones to the east” to which the ghost
referred as the place where he hid the plans may very well
have been the walk leading from the house to the log house
across the road. Some of these stone steps are still pre-
served. What happened to the plans, we shall never know.
They were probably destroyed by time and weather, or
were found and deposited later in obscure hands. No mat-
ter which — it is no longer of concern to anyone.
Tories, were responsible for the betrayal of Nathan Hale to
the British.
All this was brought to my attention by Mrs. Geral-
dine P. of Huntington. Mrs. P. grew up in what she con-
siders the oldest house in Huntington, although the
Huntington Historical Society claims that theirs is even
older. Be that as it may, it was there when the Revolution-
ary War started. Local legend has it that an act of violence
took place on the corner of the street, which was then a
crossroads in the middle of a rural area. The house in
which Mrs. P. grew up stands on that street. Mrs. P. sus-
pects that the capture — or, at any rate, the betrayal — of the
Revolutionary agent took place on that crossroads. When
she tried to investigate the history of her house, she found
little cooperation on the part of the local historical society.
It was a conspiracy of silence, according to her, as if some
people wanted to cover up a certain situation from the past.
The house had had a “strange depressing effect on all
its past residents,” according to Mrs. P. Her own father,
who studied astrology and white magic for many years,
related an incident that occurred in the house. He awoke in
the middle of the night in the master bedroom because he
felt unusually cold. He became aware of “something” rush-
84
ing about the room in wild, frantic circles. Because of his
outlook and training, he spoke up, saying, “Can I help
you?” But the rushing about became even more frantic. He
then asked what was wrong and what could be done. But
no communication was possible. When he saw that he
could not communicate with the entity, Mrs. P.’s father
finally said, “If I can’t help you, then go away.” There was
a snapping sound, and the room suddenly became quiet
and warm again, and he went back to sleep. There have
been no other recorded incidents at the house in question.
But Mrs. P. wonders if some guilty entity wants to mani-
fest, not necessarily Nathan Hale, but perhaps someone
connected with his betrayal.
At the corner of 43rd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue,
Manhattan, one of the busiest and noisiest spots in all of
New York City, there is a small commemorative plaque
explaining that Nathan Hale, the Revolutionary spy, was
executed on that spot by the British. I doubt that too many
New Yorkers are aware of this, or can accurately pinpoint
the location of the tragedy. It is even less likely that a for-
eigner would know about it. When I suggested to my good
friend Sybil Leek that she accompany me to a psychically
important spot for an experiment, she readily agreed.
Despite the noises and the heavy traffic, the spot being
across from Grand Central Station, Sybil bravely stood
with me on the street corner and tried to get some sort of
psychic impression.
“I get the impression of food and drink,” Sybil said. I
pointed out that there were restaurants all over the area,
but Sybil shook her head. "No, I was thinking more of a
place for food and drink, and I don’t mean in the present.
It is more like an inn, a transit place, and it has some con-
nection with the river. A meeting place, perhaps, some sort
of inn. Of course, it is very difficult in this noise and with
all these new buildings here.”
“If we took down these buildings, what would we
see?”
"I think we would see a field and water. I have a
strong feeling that there is a connection with water and
with the inn. There are people coming and going — I sense
a woman, but I don’t think she’s important. I am not
sure. . .unless it would mean foreign. I hear a foreign lan-
guage. Something like Verchenen* I can’t quite get it. It is
not German.”
“Is there anything you feel about this spot?”
“This spot, yes. I think I want to go back two hun-
dred years at least, it is not very clear, 1769 or 1796. That
is the period. The connection with the water puzzles me.”
“Do you feel an event of significance here at any
time?”
“Yes. It is not strong enough to come through to me
completely, but sufficiently drastic to make me feel a little
nervous.”
*Verplanck’s Point, on the Hudson River, was a Revolutionary
strongpoint at the time.
“In what way is it drastic?”
"Hurtful, violent. There are several people involved
in this violence. Something connected with water, papers
connected with water, that is part of the trouble.”
Sybil then suggested that we go to the right to see if
the impressions might be stronger at some distance. We
went around the corner and I stopped. Was the impression
any stronger?
“No, the impression is the same. Papers, violence.
For a name, I have the impression of the letters P.T. Peter.
It would be helpful to come here in the middle of the
night, I think. I wish I could understand the connection
with water, here in the middle of the city.”
“Did someone die here?”
Sybil closed her eyes and thought it over for a
moment. “Yes, but the death of this person was important
at that time and indeed necessary. But there is more to it
than just the death of the person. The disturbance involves
lots of other things, lots of other people. In fact, two dis-
tinct races were involved, because I sense a lack of under-
standing. I think that this was a political thing, and the
papers were important.”
“Can you get anything further on the nature of this
violence you feel here?"
“Just a disturbed feeling, an upheaval, a general dis-
turbance. I am sorry I can’t get much else. Perhaps if we
came here at night, when things are quieter."
I suggested we get some tea in one of the nearby
restaurants. Over tea, we discussed our little experiment
and Sybil suddenly remembered an odd experience she had
had when visiting the Hotel Biltmore before. (The plaque
in question is mounted on the wall of the hotel.) “I receive
many invitations to go to this particular area of New
York,” Sybil explained, “and when I go I always get the
feeling of repulsion to the extent where I may be on my
way down and get into a telephone booth and call the peo-
ple involved and say, ‘No, I’ll meet you somewhere else.’ I
don’t like this particular area we just left; I find it very
depressing. I feel trapped."
* * *
I am indebted to R. M. Sandwich of Richmond, Vir-
ginia, for an intriguing account of an E.S.P. experience he
has connected to Patrick Henry. Mr. Sandwich stated that
he has had only one E.S.P. experience and that it took
place in one of the early estate-homes of Patrick Henry. He
admitted that the experience altered his previously dim
view of E.S.P. The present owner of the estate has said
that Mr. Sandwich has not been the only one to experience
strange things in that house.
The estate-home where the incident took place is
called Pine Flash and is presently owned by E. E. Verdon,
a personal friend of Mr. Sandwich. It is located in Hanover
A Revolutionary Corollary:
Patrick Henry, Nathan Hale, et al.
85
County, about fifteen miles outside of Richmond. The
house was given to Patrick Henry by his father-in-law.
After Henry had lived in it for a number of years, it
burned to the ground and was not rebuilt until fifteen years
later. During that time Henry resided in the old cottage,
which is directly behind the house, and stayed there until
the main house had been rebuilt. This cottage is frequently
referred to in the area as the honeymoon cottage of young
Patrick Henry. The new house was rebuilt exactly as it had
been before the fire. As for the cottage, which is still in
excellent condition, it is thought to be the oldest wood
frame dwelling in Virginia. It may have been there even
before Patrick Henry lived in it.
On the Fourth of July, 1968, the Sandwiches had
been invited to try their luck at fishing in a pond on Mr.
Verdon’s land. Since they would be arriving quite early in
the morning, they were told that the oars to the rowboat,
which they were to use at the pond, would be found inside
the old cottage. They arrived at Pine Flash sometime
around 6 A.M. Mrs. Sandwich started unpacking their fish-
ing gear and food supplies, while Mr. Sandwich decided to
inspect the cottage. Although he had been to the place sev-
eral times before, he had never actually been inside the cot-
tage itself.
Here then is Mr. Sandwich’s report.
"I opened the door, walked in, and shut the door
tight behind me. Barely a second had passed after I shut
the door when a strange feeling sprang over me. It was the
kind of feeling you would experience if you were to walk
into an extremely cold, damp room. I remember how still
everything was, and then I distinctly heard footsteps over-
head in the attic. I called out, thinking perhaps there was
someone upstairs. No one answered, nothing. At that time
I was standing directly in front of an old fireplace. I admit
I was scared half to death. The footsteps were louder now
and seemed to be coming down the thin staircase toward
me. As they passed me, I felt a cold, crisp, odd feeling. I
started looking around for something, anything that could
have caused all this. It was during this time that I noticed
the closed door open very, very slowly. The door stopped
when it was half opened, almost beckoning me to take my
leave, which I did at great speed! As I went through that
open door, I felt the same cold mass of air I had experi-
enced before. Standing outside, I watched the door slam
itself, almost in my face! My wife was still unpacking the
car and claims she neither saw nor heard anything.”
* * *
Revolutionary figures have a way of hanging on to
places they liked in life. Candy Bosselmann of Indiana has
had a long history of psychic experiences. She is a budding
trance medium and not at all ashamed of her talents. In
1964 she happened to be visiting Ashland, the home of
Henry Clay, in Lexington, Kentucky. She had never been
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
to Ashland, so she decided to take a look at it. She and
other visitors were shown through the house by an older
man, a professional guide, and Candy became somewhat
restless listening to his historical ramblings. As the group
entered the library and the guide explained the beautiful
ash paneling taken from surrounding trees (for which the
home is named), she became even more restless. She knew
very well that it was the kind of feeling that forewarned her
of some sort of psychic event. As she was looking over
toward a fireplace, framed by two candelabra, she suddenly
saw a very tall, white-haired man in a long black frock coat
standing next to it. One elbow rested on the mantel, and
his head was in his hand, as if he were pondering some-
thing very important.
Miss Bosselmann was not at all emotionally involved
with the house. In fact, the guided tour bored her, and she
would have preferred to be outside in the stables, since she
has a great interest in horses. Her imagination did not con-
jure up what she saw: she knew in an instant that she was
looking at the spirit imprint of Henry Clay.
In 1969 she visited Ashland again, and this time she
went into the library deliberately. With her was a friend
who wasn’t at all psychic. Again, the same restless feeling
came over her. But when she was about to go into trance,
she decided to get out of the room in a hurry.
* * *
Rock Ford, the home of General Edward Hand, is
located four miles south of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and
commands a fine view of the Conestoga River. The house
is not a restoration but a well-preserved eighteenth -century
mansion, with its original floors, railings, shutters, doors,
cupboards, panelings, and window glass. Even the original
wall painting can be seen. It is a four -story brick mansion
in the Georgian style, with the rooms grouped around a
center hall in the design popular during the latter part of
the eighteenth century. The rooms are furnished with
antiquities of the period, thanks to the discovery of an
inventory of General Hand’s estate which permitted the
local historical society to supply authentic articles of daily
usuage wherever the originals had disappeared from the
house.
Perhaps General Edward Hand is not as well known
as a hero of the American Revolution as others are, but to
the people of the Pennsylvania Dutch country he is an
important figure, even though he was of Irish origin rather
than German. Trained as a medical doctor at Trinity Col-
lege, Dublin, he came to America in 1767 with the Eigh-
teenth Royal Irish Regiment of Foote. However, he
resigned British service in 1774 and came to Lancaster to
practice medicine and surgery. With the fierce love of lib-
erty so many of the Irish possess, Dr. Hand joined the
Revolutionaries in July of 1 775, becoming a lieutenant
colonel in the Pennsylvania Rifle Battalion. He served in
the army until 1800, when he was discharged as a major
general. Dr. Hand was present at the Battle of Trenton, the
86
Battle of Long Island, the Battle of White Plains, the Bat-
tle of Princeton, the campaign against the Iroquois, and the
surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. He also served on
the tribunal which convicted Major John Andre the British
spy, and later became the army’s adjutant general. He was
highly regarded by George Washington, who visited him
in his home toward the end of the war. When peace came,
Hand became a member of the Continental Congress and
served in the Assembly of Pennsylvania as representative of
his area. He moved into Rock Ford when it was completed
in 1793 and died there in September 1802.
Today, hostesses from a local historical society serve
as guides for the tourists who come to Rock Ford in
increasing numbers. Visitors are taken about the lower floor
and basement and are told of General Hand’s agricultural
experiments, his medical studies, and his association with
George Washington. But unless you ask specifically, you
are not likely to hear about what happened to the house
after General Hand died. To begin with, the General’s son
committed suicide in the house. Before long the family
died out, and eventually the house became a museum since
no one wanted to live in it for very long. At one time,
immigrants were contacted at the docks and offered free
housing if they would live in the mansion. None stayed.
There was something about the house that was not as it
should be, something that made people fear it and leave it
just as quickly as they could.
Mrs. Ruth S. lives in upstate New York. In 1967 a
friend showed her a brochure concerning Rock Ford, and
the house intrigued her. Since she was travelling in that
direction, she decided to pay Rock Ford a visit. With her
family, she drove up to the house and parked her car in the
rear. At that moment she had an eerie feeling that some-
thing wasn’t right. Mind you, Mrs. S. had not been to the
house before, had no knowledge about it nor any indication
that anything unusual had occurred in it. The group of vis-
itors was quite small. In addition to herself and her family,
there were two young college boys and one other couple.
Even though it was a sunny day, Mrs. S. felt icy cold.
"I felt a presence before we entered the house and
before we heard the story from the guide,” she explained.
“If I were a hostess there, I wouldn’t stay there alone for
two consecutive minutes.” Mrs. S. had been to many old
houses and restorations before but had never felt as she did
at Rock Ford.
* * *
It is not surprising that George Washington should
be the subject of a number of psychic accounts. Probably
the best known (and most frequently misinterpreted) story
concerns General Washington’s vision which came to him
during the encampment at Valley Forge, when the fortunes
of war had gone heavily in favor of the British, and the
American army, tattered and badly fed, was just about
falling to pieces. If there ever was a need for divine guid-
ance, it was at Valley Forge. Washington was in the habit
of meditating in the woods at times and saying his prayers
when he was quite alone. On one of those occasions he
returned to his quarters more worried than usual. As he
busied himself with his papers, he had the feeling of a
presence in the room. Looking up, he saw opposite him a
singularly beautiful woman. Since he had given orders not
to be disturbed, he couldn’t understand how she had got-
ten into the room. Although he questioned her several
times, the visitor would not reply. As he looked at the
apparition, for that is what it was, the General became
more and more entranced with her, unable to make any
move. For a while he thought he was dying, for he imag-
ined that the apparition of such unworldly creatures as he
was seeing at that moment must accompany the moment of
transition.
Finally, he heard a voice, saying, “Son of the Repub-
lic, look and learn.” At the same time, the visitor extended
her arm toward the east, and Washington saw what to him
appeared like white vapor at some distance. As the vapor
dissipated, he saw the various countries of the world and
the oceans that separated them. He then noticed a dark,
shadowy angel standing between Europe and America, tak-
ing water out of the ocean and sprinkling it over America
with one hand and over Europe with the other. When he
did this, a cloud rose from the countries thus sprinkled,
and the cloud then moved westward until it enveloped
America. Sharp flashes of lightning became visible at inter-
vals in the cloud. At the same time, Washington thought
he heard the anguished cries of the American people
underneath the cloud. Next, the strange visitor showed him
a vision of what America would look like in the future, and
he saw villages and towns springing up from one coast to
the other until the entire land was covered by them.
“Son of the Republic, the end of the century cometh,
look and learn,” the visitor said. Again Washington was
shown a dark cloud approaching America, and he saw the
American people fighting one another. A bright angel then
appeared wearing a crown on which was written the word
Union. This angel bore the American Flag, which he
placed between the divided nation, saying, “Remember,
you are brethren." At that instant, the inhabitants threw
away their weapons and became friends again.
Once more the mysterious voice spoke. “Son of the
Republic, look and learn.” Now the dark angel put a trum-
pet to his mouth and sounded three distinct blasts. Then
he took water from the ocean and sprinkled it on Europe,
Asia, and Africa. As he did so, Washington saw black
clouds rise from the countries he had sprinkled. Through
the black clouds, Washington could see red light and
hordes of armed men, marching by land and sailing by sea
to America, and he saw these armies devastate the entire
country, burn the villages, towns, and cities, and as he lis-
A Revolutionary Corollary:
Patrick Henry, Nathan Hale, et al.
87
tened to the thundering of the cannon, Washington heard
the mysterious voice saying again, “Son of the Fapublic,
look and learn.”
Once more the dark angel put the trumpet t^tis
mouth and sounded a long and fearful blast. As he did so,
a light as of a thousand suns shone down from above him
and pierced the dark cloud which had enveloped America.
At the same time the angel wearing the word Union on his
head descended from the heavens, followed by legions of
white spirits. Together with the inhabitants of America,
Washington saw them renew the battle and heard the mys-
terious voice telling him, once again, "Son of the Republic,
look and learn.”
For the last time, the dark angel dipped water from
the ocean and sprinkled it on America; the dark cloud
rolled back and left the inhabitants of America victorious.
But the vision continued. Once again Washington saw vil-
lages, towns, and cities spring up, and he heard the bright
angel exclaim, “While the stars remain and the heavens
send down dew upon the earth, so long shall the Union
last.” With that, the scene faded, and Washington beheld
once again the mysterious visitor before him. As if she had
guessed his question, the apparition then said:
“Son of the Republic, what you have seen is thus
interpreted: Three great perils will come upon the Repub-
lic. The most fearful is the third, during which the whole
world united shall not prevail against her. Let every child
of the Republic learn to live for his God, his land, and his
Union.” With that, the vision disappeared, and Washing-
ton was left pondering over his experience.
One can interpret this story in many ways, of course.
If it really occurred, and there are a number of accounts of
it in existence which lead me believe that there is a basis of
fact to this, then we are dealing with a case of prophecy on
the part of General Washington. It is a moot question
whether the third peril has already come upon us, in the
shape of World War II, or whether it is yet to befall us.
The light that is stronger than many suns may have omi-
nous meaning in this age of nuclear warfare.
Washington himself is said to have appeared to Sena-
tor Calhoun of South Carolina at the beginning of the War
between the States. At that time, the question of secession
had not been fully decided, and Calhoun, one of the most
powerful politicians in the government, was not sure
whether he could support the withdrawal of his state from
the Union. The question lay heavily on his mind when he
went to bed one hot night in Charleston, South Carolina.
During the night, he thought he awoke to see the appari-
tion of General George Washington standing by his bed-
side. The General wore his presidential attire and seemed
surrounded by a bright outline, as if some powerful source
of light shone behind him. On the senator’s desk lay the
declaration of secession, which he had not yet signed. With
Calhoun’s and South Carolina's support, the Confederacy
would be well on its way, having closed ranks. Earnestly,
the spirit of George Washington pleaded with Senator Cal-
houn not to sign the declaration. Fie warned him against
the impending perils coming to America as a divided
nation; he asked him to reconsider his decision and to work
for the preservation of the Union. But Calhoun insisted
that the South had to go its own way. When the spirit of
Washington saw that nothing could sway Senator Calhoun,
he warned him that the very act of his signature would be
a black spot on the Constitution of the United States. With
that, the vision is said to have vanished.
One can easily explain the experience as a dream,
coming as it did at a time when Senator Calhoun was par-
ticularly upset over the implications of his actions. On the
other hand, there is this to consider: Shortly after Calhoun
had signed the document taking South Carolina into the
Confederacy, a dark spot appeared on his hand, a spot that
would not vanish and for which medical authorities had no
adequate explanation.
* * *
Mrs. Margaret Smith of Orlando, Florida, has had a
long history of psychic experiences. She has personally seen
the ghostly monks of Beaulieu, England; she has seen the
actual lantern of Joe Baldwin, the famous headless ghost of
Wilmington, North Carolina; and she takes her “supernat-
ural” experiences in her stride the way other people feel
about their musical talents or hobbies. When she was only
a young girl, her grandmother took her to visit the von
Steuben house in Hackensack, New Jersey. (General F. W.
A. von Steuben was a German supporter of the American
Revolution who aided General Washington with volunteers
who had come over from Europe because of repressions,
hoping to find greater freedom in the New World.) The
house was old and dusty, the floorboards were creaking,
and there was an eerie atmosphere about it. The house had
been turned into an historical museum, and there were
hostesses to take visitors through.
While her grandmother was chatting with the guide
downstairs, the young girl walked up the stairs by herself.
In one of the upstairs parlors she saw a man sitting in a
chair in the corner. She assumed he was another guide.
When she turned around to ask him a question about the
room, he was gone. Since she hadn’t heard him leave, that
seemed rather odd to her, especially as the floorboards
would creak with every step. But being young she didn’t
pay too much attention to this peculiarity. A moment later,
however, he reappeared. As soon as she saw him, she asked
the question she had on her mind. This time he did not
disappear but answered her in a slow, painstaking voice
that seemed to come from far away. When he had satisfied
her curiosity about the room, he asked her some questions
about herself, and finally asked the one which stuck in her
mind for many years afterward — “What is General Wash-
ington doing now about the British?”
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
88
Margaret was taken aback at this question. She was
young, but she knew very well that Washington had been
dead for many years. Tactfully, she told him this and
added that Harry Truman was now president and that the
year was 1 951. At this information, the man looked
stunned/nd sat down again in the chair. As Margaret
watched him in fascinated horror, he faded away.
* 8
The Vindication of Aaron Burr
VERY FEW HISTORICAL figures have suffered as much
from their enemies or have been as misunderstood and per-
sistently misrepresented as the onetime Vice-President of
the United States, Aaron Burr, whose contributions to
American independence are frequently forgotten while his
later troubles are made to represent the man.
Burr was a lawyer, a politician who had served in the
Revolutionary forces and who later established himself in
New York as a candidate of the Democratic- Republican
party in the elections of 1796 and 1800. He didn’t get
elected in 1796, but in 1800 he received exactly as many
electoral votes as Thomas Jefferson. When the House of
Representatives broke the tie in Jefferson’s favor, Burr
became Vice-President.
Burr soon realized that Jefferson was his mortal
enemy. He found himself isolated from all benefits, such as
political patronage, normally accruing to one in his posi-
tion, and he was left with no political future at the end of
his term. Samuel Engle Burr, a descendant of Theodosia
Barstow Burr, Aaron’s first wife, and the definitive author-
ity on Aaron Burr himself, calls him “the American
Phoenix," and truly he was a man who frequently rose
from the ashes of a smashed career.
Far from being bitter over the apparent end of his
career, Burr resumed his career by becoming an indepen-
dent candidate for governor of New York. He was
defeated, however, by a smear campaign in which both his
opponents, the Federalists, and the regular Democratic-
Republican party took part.
"Some of the falsehoods and innuendoes contained in
this campaign literature,” writes Professor Burr in his
namesake’s biography, “have been repeated as facts down
through the years. They have been largely responsible for
much of the unwarranted abuse that has been heaped upon
him since that time.”
Aside from Jefferson, his greatest enemies were the
members of the Hamilton-Schuyler family, for in 1791
Burr had replaced Alexander Hamilton’s father-in-law,
General Philip Schuyler, as the senator from New York.
Hamilton himself had been Burr’s rival from the days of
the Revolutionary War, but the political slurs and state-
ments that had helped to defear Burr in 1804, and that had
been attributed to Hamilton, finally led to the famed duel.
In accepting Burr’s challenge, Hamilton shared the
illegality of the practice. He had dueled with others before,
such as Commodore Nicholson, a New York politician, in
1795. His own son, Philip Hamilton, had died in a duel
with New York lawyer George Eacker in 1801. Thus nei-
'ther party came to Weehawken, New Jersey that chilly July
morning in 1 804 exactly innocent of the rules of the game.
Many versions have been published as to what hap-
pened, but to this day the truth is not clear. Both men
fired, and Burr’s bullet found its mark. Whether or not the
wound was fatal is difficult to assess today. The long voy-
age back by boat and the primitive status of medicine in
1 804 may have been contributing factors to Hamilton’s
death.
That Alexander Hamilton’s spirit was not exactly at
rest I proved a few years ago when I investigated the house
in New York City where he had spent his last hours after
the duel. The house belonged to his physician, but it has
been torn down to make room for a modern apartment
house. Several tenants have seen the fleeting figure of the
late Alexander Hamilton appear in the house and hurry out
of sight, as if trying to get someplace fast. I wonder if he is
trying to set the record straight, a record that saw his
opponent Burr charged with murder by the State of New
Jersey.
Burr could not overcome the popular condemnation
of the duel; Hamilton had suddenly become a martyr, and
he, the villain. He decided to leave New York for a while
and went to eastern Florida, where he became acquainted
with the Spanish colonial system, a subject that interested
him very much in his later years. Finally he returned to
Washington and resumed his duties as the Vice-President
of the United States.
In 1805 he became interested in the possibilities of
the newly acquired Louisiana Territory, and tried to inter-
est Jefferson in developing the region around the Ouachita
River to establish there still another new state.
Jefferson turned him down, and finally Burr orga-
nized his own expedition. Everywhere he went in the West
he was cordially received. War with Spain was in the air,
and Burr felt the United States should prepare for it and,
at the right time, expand its frontiers westward.
Since the government had given him the cold shoul-
der, Burr decided to recruit a group of adventurous
colonists to join him in establishing a new state in
Louisiana Territory and await the outbreak of the war he
The Vindication of Aaron Burr
89
felt was sure to come soon. He purchased four hundred
thousand acres of land in the area close to the Spanish -
American frontier and planned on establishing there his
dream state, to be called Burrsylvania.
In the course of his plans, Burr had worked with one
General James Wilkinson, then civil governor of Louisiana
Territory and a man he had known since the Revolutionary
War. Unfortunately Burr did not know that Wilkinson was
actually a double agent, working for both Washington and
the Spanish government.
In order to bolster his position with the Jefferson
government, Wilkinson suggested to the President that
Burr’s activities could be considered treasonable. The
immediate step taken by Wilkinson was to alter one of
Burr’s coded letters to him in such a way that Burr’s state-
ment could be used against him. He sent the document
along with an alarming report of his own to Jefferson in
July of 1806.
Meanwhile, unaware of the conspiracy against his
expedition, Burr's colonists arrived in the area around
Natchez, when a presidential proclamation issued by Jeffer-
son accused him of treason. Despite an acquittal by the ter-
ritorial government of Mississippi, Washington sent orders
to seize him.
Burr, having no intention of becoming an insurrec-
tionist, disbanded the remnants of his colonists and
returned east. On the way he was arrested and taken to
Richmond for trial. The treason trial itself was larded with
paid false witnesses, and even Wilkinson admitted having
forged the letter that had served as the basis for the gov-
ernment’s case. The verdict was “not guilty,” but the pub-
lic, inflamed against him by the all-powerful Jefferson
political machine, kept condemning Aaron Burr.
Under the circumstances, Burr decided to go to
Europe. He spent the four years from 1808 to 1812 travel-
ing abroad, eventually returning to New York, where he
reopened his law practice with excellent results.
The disappearance at sea the following year of his
only daughter Theodosia, to whom he had been extremely
close, shattered him; his political ambitions vanished, and
he devoted the rest of his life to an increasingly successful
legal practice. In 1833 he married for the second time — his
first wife, Theodosia’s mother, also called Theodosia, hav-
ing died in 1794. The bride was the widow of a French
wine merchant named Stephen Jumel, who had left Betsy
Jumel a rich woman indeed. It was a stormy marriage, and
ultimately Mrs. Burr sued for divorce. This was granted on
the 14th of September 1836, the very day Aaron Burr died.
Betsy never considered herself anything but the widow of
the onetime Vice-President, and she continued to sign all
documents as Eliza B. Burr.
Burr had spent his last years in an apartment at Port
Richmond, Staten Island, overlooking New York Harbor.
His body was laid to rest at Princeton, the president of
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
which for many years had been Burr's late father, the Rev-
erend Aaron Burr.
I had not been familiar with any of this until after
the exciting events of June 1967, when I was able to make
contact with the person of Aaron Burr through psychic
channels.
My first encounter with the name Aaron Burr came
in December of 1961 . I was then actively investigating var-
ious haunted houses in and around New York City as part
of a study grant by the Parapsychology Foundation. My
reports later grew into a popular book called Ghost Hunter.
One day a publicist named Richard Mardus called
my attention to a nightclub on West Third Street doing
business as the Cafe Bizarre. Mr. Mardus was and is an
expert on Greenwich Village history and lore, and he
pointed out to me that the club was actually built into
remodeled stables that had once formed part of Richmond
Hill, Aaron Burr’s estate in New York City. At the time of
Burr’s occupancy this was farmland and pretty far uptown,
as New York City went.
But Mardus did not call to give me historical news
only: Psychic occurrences had indeed been observed at the
Burr stables, and he asked me to look into the matter. I
went down to have a look at the edifice. It is located on a
busy side street in the nightclub belt of New York, where
after dark the curious and the tourists gather to spend an
evening of informal fun. In the daytime, the street looks
ugly and ordinary, but after dark it seems to sparkle with
an excitement of its own.
The Cafe Bizarre stood out by its garish decor and
posters outside the entrance, but the old building housing
it, three stories high, was a typical nineteenth-century stone
building, well preserved and showing no sign of replace-
ment of the original materials.
Inside, the place had been decorated by a nightmarish
array of paraphernalia to suggest the bizarre, ranging from
store dummy arms to devil’s masks, and colorful lights
played on this melee of odd objects suspended from the
high ceiling. In the rear of the long room was a stage, to
the left of which a staircase led up to the loft; another
staircase was in back of the stage, since a hayloft had occu-
pied the rear portion of the building. Sawdust covered the
floor, and perhaps three dozen assorted tables filled the
room.
It was late afternoon and the atmosphere of the place
was cold and empty, but the feeling was nevertheless that
of the unusual — uncanny, somehow. I was met by a pretty,
dark-haired young woman, who turned out to be the
owner’s wife, Mrs. Renee Allmen. She welcomed me to the
Cafe Bizarre and explained that her husband, Rick, was not
exactly a believer in such things as the psychic, but that
she herself had indeed had unusual experiences here. On
my request, she gave me a written statement testifying
about her experiences.
In the early morning of July 27, 1961, at 2:20 A.M.,
she and her husband were locking up for the night. They
90
walked out to their car when Mrs. Allmen remembered
that she had forgotten a package inside. Rushing back to
the cafe, she unlocked the doors again and entered the
deserted building. She turned on the lights and walked
toward the kitchen, which is about a third of the way
toward the rear of the place. The cafe was quite empty,
and yet she had an eerie sensation of not being alone. She
hurriedly picked up her package and walked toward the
front door again. Glancing backward into the dark recesses
of the cafe, she then saw the apparition of a man, staring at
her with piercing black eyes. He wore an antique ruffled
shirt and seemed to smile at her when she called out to
him, "Who is it?”
But the figure never moved or reacted.
“What are you doing here?” Renee demanded, all the
while looking at the apparition.
There was no answer, and suddenly Renee’s courage
left her. Running back to the front door, she summoned
her husband from the car, and together they returned to
the cafe. Again unlocking the door, which Renee had shut
behind her when she fled from the specter, they discovered
the place to be quite empty. In the usual husbandly fash-
ion, Mr. Allmen tried to pass it off as a case of nerves or
tired eyes, but his wife would not buy it. She knew what
she had seen, and it haunted her for many years to come.
Actually, she was not the first one to see the gentle-
man in the white ruffled shirt with the piercing black eyes.
One of their waiters also had seen the ghost and promptly
quit. The Village was lively enough without psychic phe-
nomena, and how much does a ghost tip?
I looked over the stage and the area to the left near
the old stairs to see whether any reflecting surface might be
blamed for the ghostly apparition. There was nothing of
the sort, nothing to reflect light. Besides, the lights had
been off in the rear section, and those in the front were far
too low to be seen anywhere but in the immediate vicinity
of the door.
Under the circumstances I decided to arrange for a
visit with psychic Ethel Johnson Meyers to probe further
into this case. This expedition took place on January 8,
1962, and several observers from the press were also
present.
The first thing Mrs. Meyers said, while in trance,
was that she saw three people in the place, psychically
speaking. In particular she was impressed with an older
man with penetrating dark eyes, who was the owner. The
year, she felt, was 1804. In addition, she described a previ-
ous owner named Samuel Bottomslee, and spoke of some of
the family troubles this man had allegedly had in his life-
time. She also mentioned that the house once stood back
from the road, when the road passed farther away than it
does today. This I found to be correct.
“I’m an Englishman and I have my rights here,” the
spirit speaking through Mrs. Meyers thundered, as we sat
spellbound. Later I found out that the property had
belonged to an Englishman before it passed into Burr’s
hands.
The drama that developed as the medium spoke halt-
ingly did not concern Aaron Burr, but the earlier settlers.
Family squabbles involving Samuel's son Alan, and a girl
named Catherine, and a description of the building as a
stable, where harness was kept, poured from Ethel’s lips.
From its looks, she could not have known consciously that
this was once a stable.
The period covered extended from 1775 to 1804,
when another personality seemed to take over, identifying
himself as one John Bottomsley. There was some talk
about a deed, and I gathered that all was not as it should
have been. It seemed that the place had been sold, but that
the descendants of Samuel Bottomslee didn’t acknowledge
this too readily.
Through all this the initials A.B. were given as
prominently connected with the spot.
I checked out the facts afterward; Aaron Burr’s Rich-
mond Hill estate had included these stables since 1797.
Before that the area belonged to various British colonials.
When I wrote the account of this seance in my book
Ghost Hunter in 1963, I thought I had done with it. And I
had, except for an occasional glance at the place whenever I
passed it, wondering whether the man with the dark, pierc-
ing eyes was really Aaron Burr.
Burr’s name came to my attention again in 1964
when I investigated the strange psychic phenomena at the
Morris-Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights, where Burr
had lived during the final years of his life as the second
husband of Mme. Betsy Jumel. But the spectral manifesta-
tions at the Revolutionary house turned out to be the rest-
less shades of Mme. Jumel herself and that of her late first
husband, accusing his wife of having murdered him.
* * *
One day in January 1967 I received a note from a
young lady named Alice McDermott. It concerned some
strange experiences of hers at the Cafe Bizarre — the kind
one doesn’t expect at even so oddly decorated a place. Miss
McDermott requested an interview, and on February 4 of
the same year I talked to her in the presence of a friend.
She had been “down to the Village” for several years
as part of her social life — she was now twenty — and visited
the Bizarre for the first time in 1964. She had felt strange,
but could not quite pinpoint her apprehension.
“I had a feeling there was something there, but I let it
pass, thinking it must be my imagination. But there was
something on the balcony over the stage that seemed to
stare down at me — I mean something besides the dummy
suspended from the ceiling as part of the decor.”
At the time, when Alice was sixteen, she had not yet
heard of me or my books, but she had had some ESP expe-
The Vindication of Aaron Burr
91
riences involving premonitions and flashes of a psychic
nature.
* * *
Alice, an only child, works as a secretary in Manhat-
tan. Her father is a barge officer and her mother an
accountant. She is a very pretty blonde with a sharp mind
and a will of her own. Persuaded to try to become a nun,
she spent three months in a Long Island convent, only to
discover that the religious life was not for her. She then
returned to New York and took a job as a secretary in a
large business firm.
After she left the convent she continued her studies
also, especially French. She studied with a teacher in
Washington Square, and often passed the Cafe Bizarre on
her way. Whenever she did, the old feeling of something
uncanny inside came back. She did not enter the place, but
walked on hurriedly.
But on one occasion she stopped, and something
within her made her say, “Whoever you are in there, you
must be lonely!” She did not enter the place despite a
strong feeling that "someone wanted to say hello to her”
inside. But that same night, she had a vivid dream. A man
was standing on the stage, and she could see him clearly.
He was of medium height, and wore beige pants and black
riding boots. His white shirt with a kind of Peter Pan coll-
ar fascinated her because it did not look like the shirts
men wear today. It had puffy sleeves. The man also had a
goatee, that is, a short beard, and a mustache.
“He didn’t look dressed in today’s fashion, then?”
"Definitely not, unless he was a new rock ‘n’ roll
star.” But the most remarkable features of this man were
his dark, piercing eyes, she explained. He just stood there
with his hands on his hips, looking at Alice. She became
frightened when the man kept looking at her, and walked
outside.
That was the end of this dream experience, but the
night before she spoke to me, he reappeared in a dream.
This time she was speaking with him in French, and also
to a lady who was with him. The lady wore glasses, had a
pointed nose, and had a shawl wrapped around her — “Oh,
and a plain gold band on her finger.”
The lady also wore a Dutch type white cap, Alice
reported. I was fascinated, for she had described Betsy
Jumel in her old age — yet how could she connect the
ghostly owner of Jumel Mansion with her Cafe Bizarre
experience? She could not have known the connection, and
yet it fit perfectly. Both Burr and Betsy Jumel spoke
French fluently, and often made use of that language.
"Would you be able to identify her if I showed you a
picture?” I asked.
"If it were she,” Alice replied, hesitatingly.
I took out a photograph of a painting hanging at
Jumel Mansion, which shows Mme. Jumel in old age.
I did not identify her by name, merely explaining it
was a painting of a group of people I wanted her to look at.
“This is the lady,” Alice said firmly, "but she is
younger looking in the picture than when I saw her.”
What was the conversation all about? I wanted to
know.
Apparently the spirit of Mme. Jumel was pleading
with her on behalf of Burr, who was standing by and
watching the scene, to get in touch with me! I asked Alice,
who wants to be a commercial artist, to draw a picture of
what she saw. Later, I compared the portrait with known
pictures of Aaron Burr. The eyes, eyebrows, and forehead
did indeed resemble the Burr portraits. But the goatee was
not known.
After my initial meeting with Alice McDermott, she
wrote to me again. The dreams in which Burr appeared to
her were getting more and more lively, and she wanted to
go on record with the information thus received. According
to her, Aaron poured his heart out to the young girl,
incredible though this seemed on the face of it.
The gist of it was a request to go to “the white house
in the country” and find certain papers in a metal box.
“This will prove my innocence. I am not guilty of treason.
There is written proof. Written October 18, 1802 or
1803.” The message was specific enough, but the papers of
course were long since gone.
The white house in the country would be the Jumel
Mansion.
I thanked Alice and decided to hold another investi-
gation at the site of the Cafe Bizarre, since the restless
spirit of the late Vice-President of the United States had
evidently decided to be heard once more.
At the same time I was approached by Mel Bailey of
Metromedia Television to produce a documentary about
New York haunted houses, and I decided to combine these
efforts and investigate the Burr stables in the full glare of
television cameras.
On June 12, 1967 I brought Sybil Leek down to the
Bizarre, having flown her in from California two days
before. Mrs. Leek had no way of knowing what was
expected of her, or where she would be taken. Neverthe-
less, as early as June 1 , when I saw her in Hollywood, she
had remarked to me spontaneously that she “knew” the
place I would take her to on our next expedition — then
only a possibility — and she described it in detail. On June
9, after her arrival in New York, she telephoned and again
gave me her impressions.
"I sense music and laughter and drumbeat,” she
began, and what better is there to describe the atmosphere
at the Cafe Bizarre these nights? “It is a three-story place,
not a house but selling something; two doors opening, go
to the right-hand side of the room and something is raised
up from the floor, where the drumbeat is.”
Entirely correct; the two doors lead into the elongated
room, with the raised stage at the end.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
92
“Three people. . .one has a shaped beard, aquiline
nose, he is on the raised part of the floor; very dark around
the eyes, an elegant man, lean, and there are two other
people near him, one of whom has a name starting with a
Th....”
In retrospect one must marvel at the accuracy of the
description, for surely Sybil Leek had no knowledge of
either the place, its connection with Burr, nor the descrip-
tion given by the other witnesses of the man they had seen
there.
This was a brief description of her first impressions
given to me on the telephone. The following day I received
a written account of her nocturnal impressions from Mrs.
Leek. This was still two days before she set foot onto the
premises!
In her statement, Mrs. Leek mentioned that she
could not go off to sleep late that night, and fell into a
state of semiconsciousness, with a small light burning near
her bed. Gradually she became aware of the smell of fire,
or rather the peculiar smell when a gun has just been fired.
At the same time she felt an acute pain, as if she had been
wounded in the left side of the back.
Trying to shake off the impression, Mrs. Leek started
to do some work at her typewriter, but the presence per-
sisted. It seemed to her as if a voice was trying to reach
her, a voice speaking a foreign language and calling out a
name, Theo.
I questioned Mrs. Leek about the foreign language
she heard spoken clairvoyantly.
“I had a feeling it was French,” she said.
Finally she had drifted into deeper sleep. But by Sat-
urday afternoon the feeling of urgency returned. This time
she felt as if someone wanted her to go down to the river,
not the area where I live (uptown), but “a long way the
other way,” which is precisely where the Burr stables were
situated.
* * *
Finally the big moment had arrived. It was June 12,
and the television crews had been at work all morning in
and around the Cafe Bizarre to set up cameras and sound
equipment so that the investigation could be recorded
without either hitch or interruption. We had two cameras
taking turns, to eliminate the need for reloading. The cen-
tral area beneath the "haunted stage” was to be our setting,
and the place was reasonably well lit, certainly brighter
than it normally is when the customers are there at night.
Everything had been meticulously prepared. My wife
Catherine was to drive our white Citroen down to the
Bizarre with Sybil at her side. Promptly at 3 P.M. the car
arrived, Sybil Leek jumped out and was greeted at the
outer door by me, while our director, Art Forrest, gave the
signal for the cameras to start. "Welcome to the Cafe
Bizarre,” I intoned and led my psychic friend into the
semidark inside. Only the central section was brightly lit.
I asked her to walk about the place and gather
impressions at will.
"I’m going to those drums over there,” Sybil said
firmly, and walked toward the rear stage as if she knew the
way.
“Yes — this is the part. I feel cold. Even though I
have not been here physically, I know this place."
"What do we have to do here, do you think?” I
asked.
“I think we have to relieve somebody, somebody
who’s waited a long time.”
“Where is this feeling strongest?”
"In the rear, where this extra part seems to be put
on.”
Sybil could not know this, but an addition to the
building was made years after the original had been con-
structed, and it was precisely in that part that we were now
standing.
She explained that there was more than one person
involved, but one in particular was dominant; that this was
something from the past, going back into another century.
I then asked her to take a chair, and Mrs. Renee Allmen
and my wife Catherine joined us around a small table.
This was going to be a seance, and Sybil was in deep
trance within a matter of perhaps five minutes, since she
and I were well in tune with one another, and it required
merely a signal on my part to allow her to "slip out.”
At first there was a tossing of the head, the way a
person moves when sleep is fitful.
Gradually, the face changed its expression to that of a
man, a stern face, perhaps even a suspicious face. The hiss-
ing sound emanating from her tightly closed lips gradually
changed into something almost audible, but I still could
not make it out.
Patiently, as the cameras ground away precious color
film, I asked “whoever it might be” to speak louder and to
communicate through the instrument of Mrs. Leek.
"Theo!” the voice said now. It wasn’t at all like Sybil’s
own voice.
“Theo. . .I’m lost. . .where am I?” I explained that this
was the body of another person and that we were in a house
in New York City.
"Where’s Theo?” the voice demanded with greater
urgency. "Who are you?”
I explained my role as a friend, hoping to establish
contact through the psychic services of Mrs. Leek, then in
turn asked who the communicator was. Since he had called
out for Theo, he was not Theo, as I had first thought.
“Bertram Delmar. I want Theo,” came the reply.
"Why do you want Theo?”
“Lost.”
Despite extensive research I was not able to prove
that Bertram Delmar ever existed or that this was one of
the cover names used by Aaron Burr; but it is possible that
The Vindication of Aaron Burr
93
The Cafe Bizarre — once Aaron Burr’s stables
he did, for Burr was given to the use of code names during
his political career and in sensitive correspondence.
What was far more important was the immediate call
for Theo, and the statement that she was "lost.” Theodosia
Burr was Burr’s only daughter and truly the apple of his
eye. When she was lost at sea on her way to join him, in
1813, he became a broken man. Nothing in the up-and-
down life of the American Phoenix was as hard a blow of
fate than the loss of his beloved Theo.
The form “Theo,” incidentally, rather than the full
name Theodosia, is attested to by the private correspon-
dence between Theodosia and her husband, Joseph Alston,
governor of South Carolina. In a rare moment of forebod-
ing, she had hinted that she might soon die. This letter
was written six months before her disappearance in a storm
at sea and was signed, “Your wife, your fond wife, Theo.”
After the seance, I asked Dr. Samuel Engle Burr
whether there was any chance that the name Theo might
apply to some other woman.
Dr. Burr pointed out that the Christian name Theo-
dosia occurred in modern times only in the Burr family. It
was derived from Theodosius Bartow, father of Aaron
Burr's first wife, who was mother of the girl lost at sea.
The mother had been Theodosia the elder, after her father,
and the Burrs had given their only daughter the same
unusual name.
After her mother’s passing in 1794, the daughter
became her father’s official hostess and truly "the woman
in the house.” More than that, she was his confidante and
shared his thoughts a great deal more than many other
daughters might have. Even after her marriage to Alston
and subsequent move to South Carolina, they kept in
touch, and her family was really all the family he had.
Thus their relationship was a truly close one, and it is not
surprising that the first thought, after his "return from the
dead,” so to speak, would be to cry out for his Theo!
I wasn’t satisfied with his identification as “Bertram
Delmar,” and insisted on his real name. But the communi-
cator brushed my request aside and instead spoke of
another matter.
“Where’s the gun?”
“What gun?”
I recalled Sybil’s remark about the smell of a gun
having just been fired. I had to know more.
"What are you doing here?”
"Hiding.”
“What are you hiding from?”
“You.”
Was he mistaking me for someone else?
“I’m a friend,” I tried to explain, but the voice inter-
rupted me harshly.
“You’re a soldier.”
In retrospect one cannot help feeling that the emo-
tionally disturbed personality was reliving the agony of
being hunted down by U.S. soldiers prior to his arrest,
confusing it, perhaps, in his mind with still another
unpleasant episode when he was being hunted, namely,
after he had shot Hamilton!
I decided to pry farther into his personal life in order
to establish identity more firmly.
“Who is Theo? What is she to you?”
“I have to find her, take her away. . .it is dangerous,
the French are looking for me.”
“Why would the French be looking for you?” I asked
in genuine astonishment. Neither I nor Mrs. Leek had any
notion of this French connection at that time.
"Soldiers watch....”
Through later research I learned that Burr had indeed
been in France for several years, from 1808 to 1812. At
first, his desire to have the Spanish American colonies freed
met with approval by the then still revolutionary Bonaparte
government. But when Napoleon’s brother Joseph
Napoleon was installed as King of Spain, and thus also
ruler of the overseas territories, the matter became a politi-
cal horse of another color; now Burr was advocating the
overthrow of a French-owned government, and that could
no longer be permitted.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
94
Under the circumstances, Burr saw no point in stay-
ing in France, and made arrangements to go back to New
York. But he soon discovered that the French government
wouldn’t let him go so easily. “All sorts of technical diffi-
culties were put in his way,” writes Dr. Samuel Engle Burr,
“both the French and the American officials were in agree-
ment to the effect that the best place for the former Vice-
President was within the Empire of France.” Eventually, a
friendly nobleman very close to Napoleon himself managed
to get Burr out. But it is clear that Burr was under surveil-
lance all that time and probably well aware of it!
I continued my questioning of the entity speaking
through an entranced Sybil Leek, the entity who had glibly
claimed to be a certain Bertram Delmar, but who knew so
many things only Aaron Burr would have known.
What year was this, I asked.
“Eighteen ten.”
In 1810, Burr had just reached France. The date fit
in well with the narrative of soldiers watching him.
“Why are you frightened?” I asked.
“The soldiers, the soldiers. ...”
“Have you done anything wrong?”
“Who are you?”
"I’m a friend, sent to help you!”
"Traitor! You. . .you betrayed me. . . .”
"Tell me what you are doing, what are you trying to
establish here?”
“Traitor!”
Later, as I delved into Burr’s history in detail, I
thought that this exchange between an angry spirit and a
cool interrogator might refer to Burr’s anger at General
James Wilkinson, who had indeed posed as a friend and
then betrayed Burr. Not the "friend” ostensibly helping
Burr set up his western colony, but the traitor who later
caused soldiers to be sent to arrest him. It certainly fit the
situation. One must understand that in the confused men-
tal state a newly contacted spirit personality often finds
himself, events in his life take on a jumbled and fragmen-
tary quality, often flashing on the inner mental screen like
so many disconnected images from the emotional reel of
his life. It is then the job of the psychic researcher to sort
it all out.
* * *
I asked the communicator to “tell me all about him-
self” in the hope of finding some other wedge to get him to
admit he was Aaron Burr.
“I escaped. . .from the French.”
“Where are the French?”
“Here.”
This particular “scene” was apparently being re-
enacted in his mind, during the period he lived in France.
“Did you escape from any particular French person?”
I asked.
“Jacques. . ,de la Beau. ...”
The spelling is mine. It might have been different,
but it sounded like “de la Beau.”
“Who is Jacques de la Beau?”
Clenched teeth, hissing voice — "I’m. . .not. . .telling
you. Even... if you., .kill me.”
I explained I had come to free him, and what could I
do for him?
"Take Theo away. . .leave me. . .1 shall die. ...”
Again I questioned him about his identity. Now he
switched his account and insisted he was French, bom at a
place called Dasney near Bordeaux. Even while this infor-
mation was coming from the medium’s lips, I felt sure it
was a way to throw me off his real identity. This is not
unusual in some cases. When I investigated the ghost of
General Samuel Edward McGowan some years ago, it took
several weeks of trance sessions until he abandoned an
assumed name and admitted an identity that could later be
proven. Even the discarnates have their pride and emo-
tional “hangups.”
The name Jacques de la Beau puzzled me. After the
seance, I looked into the matter and discovered that a cer-
tain Jacques Prevost (pronounced pre-voh) had been first
husband of Aaron Burr’s first wife, Theodosia. Burr, in
fact, raised their two sons as his own, and there was a close
link between them and Burr in later years. But despite his
French name, Prevost was in the British service.
* * *
When Burr lived in New York, he had opened his
home to the daughter of a French admiral, from whom she
had become separated as a consequence of the French Rev-
olution. This girl, Natalie, became the close companion of
Burr’s daughter Theodosia, and the two girls considered
themselves sisters. Natalie’s father was Admiral de Lage de
Volade. This name, too, has sounds similar to the “de la
Beau” I thought I had understood. It might have been “de
la voh” or anything in between the two sounds. Could the
confused mind of the communicator have drawn from both
Prevost and de Lage de Volade? Both names were of
importance in Burr’s life.
“Tell me about your wife,” I demanded now.
“No. I don’t like her.”
I insisted, and he, equally stubborn, refused.
“Is she with you?” I finally said.
“Got rid of her,” he said, almost with joy in the
voice.
“Why?”
“No good to me. . .deceived me. . .married. ...”
There was real disdain and anger in the voice now.
Clearly, the communicator was speaking of the sec-
ond Mrs. Burr. The first wife had passed away a long time
before the major events in his life occurred. It is perfectly
true that Burr “got rid of her” (through two separations
and one divorce action), and that she "deceived him,” or
The Vindication of Aaron Burr
95
rather tricked him into marrying her: He thought she was
wealthier than she actually was, and their main difficulties
were about money. In those days people did not always
marry for love, and it was considered less immoral to have
married someone for money than to deceive someone into
marrying by the prospects of large holdings when they
were in fact small. Perhaps today we think differently and
even more romantically about such matters; in the 1830s, a
woman’s financial standing was as negotiable as a bank
account.
* * *
The more I probed, the more excited the communi-
cator became; the more I insisted on identification, the
more cries of “Theo! Theo!” came from the lips of Sybil
Leek.
When I had first broached the subject of Theo ’s rela-
tionship to him, he had quickly said she was his sister. I
brought this up again, and in sobbing tones he admitted
this was not true. But he was not yet ready to give me the
full story.
“Let me go,” he sobbed.
“Not until you can go in peace,” I insisted. "Tell me
about yourself. You are proud of yourself, are you not?”
"Yes,” the voice came amid heavy sobbing, “the dis-
grace. . .the disgrace. ...”
"I will tell the world what you want me to say. I’m
here as your spokesman. Use this chance to tell the world
your side of the facts!”
There was a moment of hesitation, then the voice,
gentler started up again.
"I. ..loved.. .Theo. ... I have to.. .find her. ...”
The most important thought, evidently, was the loss
of his girl. Even his political ambitions took a back seat to
his paternal love.
“Is this place we’re in part of your property?”
Forlornly, the voice said,
“I had. . .a lot. . .from the river. . .to here.”
Later I checked this statement with Mrs. Leroy
Campbell, curator of the Morris-Jumel mansion, and a
professional historian who knew the period well.
“Yes, this is true,” Mrs. Campbell confirmed, “Burr’s
property extended from the river and Varick Street east-
ward.”
“But the lot from the river to here does not belong to
a Bertram Delmar,” I said to the communicator. “Why do
you wish to fool me with names that do not exist?”
I launched this as a trial balloon. It took off.
"She calls me Bertram,” the communicator admitted
now. "I’m not ashamed of my name.”
I nodded. “I’m here to help you right old wrongs,
but you must help me do this. I can’t do it alone.”
I didn t kill. . .got rid of her ” he added, appar-
ently willing to talk.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
96
“You mean, your wife?”
“Had to.”
"Did you kill anyone ?” I continued the line of
discussion.
“Killed. . .to protect. ..not wrong!”
“How did you kill?”
"A rifle. ...”
Was he perhaps referring to his service in the Revo-
lutionary War? He certainly did some shooting then.
But I decided to return to the “Bertram Delmar”
business once more. Constant pressure might yield results.
“Truthfully, will you tell us who you are?”
Deliberately, almost as if he were reading an official
communique, the voice replied, “lam Bertram Delmar and
I shall not say that name . . . . ”
“You must say ‘that name’ if you wish to see Theo
again. I had put it on the line. Either cooperate with me,
or I won t help you. Sometimes this is the only way you
can get a recalcitrant spirit to “come across” — when this
cooperation is essential both to his welfare and liberation
and to the kind of objective proof required in science.
There was a moment of ominous quiet. Then, almost
inaudibly, the communicator spoke.
“An awful name... Arnot.”
After the investigation I played the sound tapes back
to make sure of what I had heard so faintly. It was quite
clear. The communicator had said “Arnot."
My first reaction was, perhaps he is trying to say
Aaron Burr and pronounce Aaron with a broad ah. But on
checking this out with both Mrs. Campbell and Dr. Burr I
found that such a pronunciation was quite impossible. The
night after the seance I telephoned Dr. Burr at his Wash-
ington home and read the salient points of the transcript to
him.
When I came to the puzzling name given by the
communicator I asked whether Arnot meant anything,
inasmuch as I could not find it in the published biogra-
phies of Burr. There was a moment of silence on the other
end of the line before Dr. Burr spoke.
‘Quite so,” he began. “It is not really generally
known, but Burr did use a French cover name while
returning from France to the United States, in order to
avoid publicity. That name was Arnot."
But back to the Cafe Bizarre and our investigation.
Having not yet realized the importance of the word
Arnot, I continued to insist on proper identification.
“You must cleanse yourself of ancient guilt,” I
prodded.
“It is awful... awful....”
“Is Theo related to you?”
“She’s mine.”
“Are you related to her?”
“Lovely. . .little one. ..daughter."
Finally, the true relationship had come to light.
“If Theo is your daughter, then you are not
‘Bertram.
“You tricked me. . .go away . . .or else I’ll kill you!”
The voice sounded full of anger again.
“If you’re not ashamed of your name, then I want to
hear it from your lips.”
Again, hesitatingly, the voice said,
“Arnot.”
“Many years have gone by. Do you know what year
we’re in now?”
“Ten....”
“It is not 1810. A hundred fifty years have gone by.”
"You’re mad.”
“You’re using the body of a psychic to speak to
us....”
The communicator had no use for such outrageous
claims.
“I’m not going to listen....”
But I made him listen. I told him to touch the hair,
face, ears of the “body” he was using as a channel and to
see if it didn’t feel strange indeed.
Step by step, the figure of Sybil, very tensed and
angry a moment before, relaxed. When the hand found its
way to the chin, there was a moment of startled expression:
“No beard. . ..”
I later found that not a single one of the contempo-
rary portraits of Aaron Burr shows him with a chin beard.
Nevertheless, Alice McDermott had seen and drawn him
with a goatee, and now Sybil Leek, under the control of the
alleged Burr, also felt for the beard that was not there any
longer.
Was there ever a beard?
“Yes,” Dr. Burr confirmed, “there was, although this,
too, is almost unknown except of course to specialists like
myself. On his return from France, in 1812, Burr sported a
goatee in the French manner.”
* * *
By now I had finally gotten through to the person
speaking through Sybil Leek, that the year was 1967 and
not 1810.
His resistance to me crumbled.
“You’re a strange person,” he said, “I’m tired.”
“Why do you hide behind a fictitious name?”
“People. . .ask. . .too many . . .questions.”
“Will you help me clear your name, not Bertram, but
your real name?”
“I was betrayed.”
“Who is the President of the United States in 1810?”
I asked and regretted it immediately. Obviously this could
not be an evidential answer. But the communicator
wouldn’t mention the hated name of the rival.
“And who is Vice-President?” I asked.
“Politics. . are bad... they kill you... I would not
betray anyone. ... I was wronged. . .politics. . .are bad. ...”
How true!
“Did you ever kill anyone?” I demanded.
“Not wrong. ..to kill to. ..preserve.. .. I’m alone.”
He hesitated to continue.
“What did you preserve? Why did you have to kill
another person?”
"Another. . .critical.. .I’m not talking!”
“You must talk. It is necessary for posterity.”
“I tried. . .to be. . .the best.... I’m not a traitor.. .sol-
diers. . .beat the drum. . .then you die. . .politics!!”
As I later listened to this statement again and again, I
understood the significance of it, coming, as it did, from a
person who had not yet admitted he was Aaron Burr and
through a medium who didn’t even know where she was at
the time.
* * *
He killed to preserve his honor — the accusations made
against him in the campaign of 1804 for the governorship
of New York were such that they could not be left unchal-
lenged. Another was indeed critical of him, Alexander
Hamilton being that person, and the criticisms such that
Burr could not let them pass.
He “tried to the best” also — tried to be President of
the United States, got the required number of electoral
votes in 1800, but deferred to Jefferson, who also had the
same number.
No, he was not a traitor, despite continued inference
in some history books that he was. The treason trial of
1807 not only exonerated the former Vice-President of any
wrongdoing, but heaped scorn and condemnation on those
who had tried him. The soldiers beating the drum prior to
an execution could have become reality if Burr’s enemies
had won; the treason incident under which he was seized
by soldiers on his return from the West included the death
penalty if found guilty. That was the intent of his political
enemies, to have this ambitious man removed forever from
the political scene.
“Will you tell the world that you are not guilty?” I
asked.
“I told them. . .trial. . .1 am not a traitor, a mur-
derer. .
I felt it important for him to free himself of such
thoughts if he were to be released from his earthbound
status.
“I.. .want to die. the voice said, breathing
heavily.
“Come, I will help you find Theo," I said, as
promised.
But there was still the matter of the name. I felt it
would help “clear the atmosphere” if I could get him to
admit he was Burr.
I had already gotten a great deal of material, and the
seance would be over in a matter of moments. I decided to
gamble on the last minute or two and try to shock this
The Vindication of Aaron Burr
97
entity into either admitting he was Burr or reacting to the
name in some telling fashion.
I had failed in having him speak those words even
though he had given us many incidents from the life of
Aaron Burr. There was only one more way and I took it.
“Tell the truth,” I said, “are you Aaron Burr?”
It was as if I had stuck a red hot poker into his face.
The medium reeled back, almost upsetting the chair in
which she sat. With a roar like a wounded lion, the voice
came back at me,
“Go away. . .GO AWAY!! . . .or I’ll kill you!”
You will not kill me,” I replied calmly. "You will
tell me the truth.”
"I will kill you to preserve my honor!!”
“I’m here to preserve your honor. I’m your friend.”
The voice was like cutting ice.
"You said that once before.”
"You are Aaron Burr, and this is part of your place.”
“I’m Bertram!”
I did not wish to continue the shouting match.
“Very well,” I said, “for the world, then, let it be
Bertram, if you’re not ready to face it that you’re Burr.”
I m Bertram. . . ” the entity whispered now.
Then go from this place and join your Theo. Be
Bertram for her.”
Bertram. . .you won’t tell?” The voice was pleading.
Very well.” He would soon slip across the veil, I
felt, and there were a couple of points I wanted to clear up
first. I explained that he would soon be together with his
daughter, leaving here after all this time, and I told him
again how much time had elapsed since his death.
I tarried. . .1 tarried. . . ” he said, pensively.
“What sort of a place did you have?” I asked.
It was a big place. . .with a big desk. . .famous
house. ...” But he could not recall its name.
Afterward, I checked the statement with Mrs. Camp-
bell, the curator at the Morris-Jumel mansion. "That desk
in the big house,” she explained,” is right here in our Burr
room. It was originally in his law office.” But the restless
one was no longer interested in talking to me.
I m talking to Theo. . .” he said, quietly now, "in
the garden. ... I’m going for a walk with Theo. . .go
away.”
Within a moment, the personality who had spoken
through Sybil Leek for the past hour was gone. Instead,
Mrs. Leek returned to her own self, remembering
absolutely nothing that had come through her entranced
lips.
Lights are bright,” was the first thing she said, and
she quickly closed her eyes again.
But a moment later, she awoke fully and complained
only that she felt a bit tired.
I wasn’t at all surprised that she did.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
98
* * *
Almost immediately after I had returned home, I
started my corroboration. After discussing the most impor-
tant points with Dr. Samuel Engle Burr over the telephone,
I arranged to have a full transcript of the seance sent to
him for his comments.
So many things matched the Burr personality that
there could hardly be any doubt that it was Burr we had
contacted. “I’m not a traitor and a murderer,” the ghostly
communicator had shouted. “Traitor and murderer” were
the epithets thrown at Burr in his own lifetime by his ene-
mies, according to Professor Burr, as quoted by Larry
Chamblin in the Allentown Call-Chronicle.
Although he is not a direct descendant of Aaron
Burr, the Washington educator is related to Theodosia
Barstow Burr, the Vice-President’s first wife. A much-
decorated officer in both world wars, Professor Burr is a
recognized educator and the definitive authority on his
famous namesake. In consulting him, I was getting the best
possible information.
Aaron Burr’s interest in Mexico, Professor Burr
explained, was that of a liberator from Spanish rule, but
there never was any conspiracy against the United States
government. “That charge stemmed from a minor incident
on an island in Ohio. A laborer among his colonists
pointed a rifle at a government man who had come to
investigate the expedition.”
Suddenly, the words about the rifle and the concern
the communicator had shown about it became clear to me:
It had led to more serious trouble for Burr.
Even President Wilson concurred with those who felt
Aaron Burr had been given a "raw deal” by historical tra-
dition. Many years ago he stood at Burr’s grave in Prince-
ton and remarked, “How misunderstood. . .how maligned!”
It is now 132 years since Burr’s burial, and the false-
hoods concerning Aaron Burr are still about the land,
despite the two excellent books by Dr. Samuel Engle Burr
and the discreet but valiant efforts of the Aaron Burr Asso-
ciation, which the Washington professor heads.
In piecing together the many evidential bits and
pieces of the trance session, it was clear to me that Aaron
Burr had at last said his piece. Why had he not pro-
nounced a name he had been justly proud of in his life-
time? He had not hesitated to call repeatedly for Theo,
identify her as his daughter, speak of his troubles in France
and of his political career — why this insistence to remain
the fictitious Bertram Delmar in the face of so much proof
that he was indeed Aaron Burr?
All the later years of his life, Burr had encountered
hostility, and he had learned to be careful whom he chose
as friends, whom he could trust. Gradually, this bitterness
became so strong that in his declining years he felt himself
to be a lonely, abandoned old man, his only daughter gone
forever, and no one to help him carry the heavy burden of
his life. Passing across into the nonphysical side of life in
such a state of mind, and retaining it by that strange quirk
of fate that makes some men into ghostly images of their
former selves, he would not abandon that one remaining
line of defense against his fellow men: his anonymity.
Why should he confide in me, a total stranger, whom
he had never met before, a man, moreover, who spoke to
him under highly unusual conditions, conditions he himself
neither understood nor accepted? It seemed almost natural
for Burr’s surviving personality to be cautious in admitting
his identity.
But this ardent desire to find Theo was stronger than
his caution; we therefore were able to converse more or less
freely about this part of his life. And so long as he needed
not say he was Burr, he felt it safe to speak of his career
also, especially when my questions drove him to anger, and
thus lessened his critical judgment as to what he could say
and what he should withhold from me.
Ghosts are people, too, and they are subject to the
same emotional limitations and rules that govern us all.
Mrs. Leek had no way of obtaining the private, spe-
cific knowledge and information that had come from her
entranced lips in this investigation; I myself had almost
none of it until after the seance had ended, and thus could
not have furnished her any of the material from my own
unconscious mind. And the others present during the
seance — my wife, Mrs. Allmen, and the television people
— knew even less about all this.
Neither Dr. Burr nor Mrs. Campbell were present at
the Cafe Bizarre, and their minds, if they contained any of
the Burr information, could not have been tapped by the
medium either, if such were indeed possible.
Coincidence cannot be held to account for such rare
pieces of information as Burr’s cover name Arnot, the date,
the goatee, and the very specific character of the one speak-
ing through Mrs. Leek, and his concern for the clearing of
his name from the charges of treason and murder.
That we had indeed contacted the restless and unfree
spirit of Aaron Burr at what used to be his stables, now the
only physical building still extant that was truly his own, I
do not doubt in the least.
The defense rests, and hopefully, so does a happier
Aaron Burr, now forever reunited with his beloved daugh-
ter Theodosia.
* 9
Assassination of a President:
Lincoln, Booth, and the
Traitors Within
FIVE YEARS AFTER the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy we are still not sure of his murderer or murder-
ers, even though the deed was done in the cold glare of a
public parade, under the watchful eyes of numerous police
and security guards, not to mention admirers in the streets.
While we are still arguing the merits of various theo-
ries concerning President Kennedy’s assassination, we
sometimes forget that an earlier crime of a similar nature is
equally unresolved. In fact, there are so many startling par-
allels between the two events that one cannot help but
marvel.
One of the people who marveled at them in a particu-
larly impressive way recently is a New York psychiatrist
named Stanley Krippner, attached to Maimonides Medical
Center, Brooklyn, who has set down his findings in the
learned Journal of Parapsychology. Among the facts
unearthed by Dr. Krippner is the remarkable "death circle”
of presidential deaths: Harrison, elected in 1840, died in
1841; Lincoln, elected twenty years later, in 1860, died in
1865; Garfield, elected in 1880, was assassinated in 1881;
McKinley, elected in 1900, died by a murderer’s hand in
1901 ; Harding, elected just twenty years after him, died in
office in 1923; Roosevelt, re-elected in 1940, did likewise in
1945; and finally, Kennedy, elected to office in 1960, was
murdered in 1963. Since 1840, every President voted into
office in a year ending with a zero has died or been injured
in office.
Dr. Krippner speculates that this cycle is so far out of
the realm of coincidence that some other reason must be
found. Applying the principle of synchronicity or meaning-
ful coincidence established first by the late Professor Carl
G. Jung, Dr. Krippner wonders if perhaps this principle
might not hold an answer to these astounding facts. But
the most obvious and simplest explanation of all should not
be expected from a medical doctor: fate. Is there an over-
riding destiny at work that makes these tragedies occur at
certain times, whether or not those involved in them try to
avoid them? And if so, who directs this destiny — who, in
short, is in charge of the store?
Dr. Krippner also calls attention to some amazing
parallels between the two most noted deaths among U.S.
Presidents, Kennedy’s and Lincoln’s, Both names have
seven letters each, the wives of both lost a son while their
husbands were in office, and both Presidents were shot in
the head from behind on a Friday and in the presence of
their wives. Moreover, Lincoln’s killer was John Wilkes
Booth, the letters of whose name, all told, add up to fif-
teen; Lee Harvey Oswald’s name, likewise, had fifteen let-
ters. Booth’s birth year was 1829; Oswald’s, 1939. Both
murderers were shot down deliberately in full view of their
captors, and both died two hours after being shot. Lincoln
Assassination of a President:
Lincoln, Booth, and the Traitors Within
99
was elected to Congress in 1847 and Kennedy in 1947;
Lincoln became President in 1860 and Kennedy in 1960.
Both were involved in the question of civil rights for
African-Americans. Finally, Lincoln’s secretary, named
Kennedy, advised him not to go to the theater on the fate-
ful day he was shot, and Kennedy’s secretary, named Lin-
coln, urged him not to go to Dallas. Lincoln had a
premonitory dream seeing himself killed and Kennedy’s
assassination was predicted by Jeane Dixon as early as
1952, by A1 Morrison in 1957, and several other seers in
1957 and 1960, not to forget President Kennedy’s own
expressed feelings of imminent doom.
But far be it from me to suggest that the two Presi-
dents might be personally linked, perhaps through reincar-
nation, if such could be proved. Their similar fates must be
the result of a higher order of which we know as yet very
little except that it exists and operates as clearly and delib-
erately as any other law of nature.
But there is ample reason to reject any notion of Lin-
coln s rebirth in another body, if anyone were to make such
a claim. Mr. Lincoln's ghost has been observed in the
White House by competent witnesses.
According to Arthur Krock of the New York Times,
the earliest specter at the White House was not Lincoln
but Dolley Madison. During President Wilson’s adminis-
tration, she appeared to a group of workers who were about
to move her precious rose garden. Evidently they changed
their minds about the removal, for the garden was not
touched.
It is natural to assume that in so emotion-laden a
building as the White House there might be remnants of
people whose lives were very closely tied to the structure. I
have defined ghosts as the surviving emotional memories of
people who are not aware of the transition called death and
continue to function in a thought world as they did at the
time of their passing, or before it. In a way, then, they are
psychotics unable or unwilling to accept the realities of the
nonphysical world into which they properly belong, but
which is denied them by their unnatural state of “hanging
on” in the denser, physical world of flesh and blood. I am
sure we don't know all the unhappy or disturbed individu-
als who are bound up with the White House, and some of
them may not necessarily be from the distant past, either.
But Abigail Adams was seen and identified during the
administration of President Taft. Her shade was seen to
pass through the doors of the East Room, which was later
to play a prominent role in the White House’s most
famous ghost story.
That Abraham Lincoln would have excellent cause to
hang around his former center of activity, even though he
died across town, is obvious: he had so much unfinished
business of great importance.
Furthermore, Lincoln himself, during his lifetime,
had on the record shown an unusual interest in the psychic.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
100
The Lincoln family later vehemently denied that
seances took place in the White House during his adminis-
tration. Robert Lincoln may have burned some important
papers of his father’s bearing on these sittings, along with
those concerning the political plot to assassinate his father.
According to the record, he most certainly destroyed many
documents before being halted in this foolish enterprise by
a Mr. Young. This happened shortly before Robert Lin-
coln s death and is attested to by Lincoln authority
Emanuel Hertz in The Hidden Lincoln.
The spiritualists even go so far as to claim the Presi-
dent as one of their own. This may be extending the facts,
but Abraham Lincoln was certainly psychic, and even dur-
ing his term in the White House his interest in the occult
was well known. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, about to
write of Lincoln’s interest in this subject, asked the Presi-
dent s permission to do so, or, if he preferred, that he deny
the statements made in the article linking him to these
activities. Far from denying it, Lincoln replied, “The only
falsehood in the statement is that half of it has not been
told. The article does not begin to tell the things I have
witnessed.”
The seances held in the White House may well have
started when Lincoln s little boy Willie followed another
son, Eddie, into premature death, and Mrs. Lincoln’s mind
gave way to a state of temporary insanity. Perhaps to
soothe her feelings, Lincoln decided to hold seances in the
White House. It is not known whether the results were
positive or not, but Willie s ghost has also been seen in the
White House. During Grant’s administration, according to
Arthur Krock, a boy whom they recognized as the appari-
tion of little Willie “materialized” before the eyes of some
of his household.
The medium Lincoln most frequently used was one
Nettie Colburn Maynard, and allegedly the spirit of Daniel
Webster communicated with him through her. On that
occasion, it is said, he was urged to proclaim the emancipa-
tion of the slaves. That proclamation, as everybody knows,
became Lincoln s greatest political achievement. What is
less known is the fact that it also laid the foundation for
later dissension among his Cabinet members and that, as
we shall see, it may indirectly have caused his premature
death. Before going into this, however, let us make clear
that on the whole Lincoln apparently did not need any
mediums, for he himself had the gift of clairvoyance, and
this talent stayed with him all his life. One of the more
remarkable premonitory experiences is reported by Philip
van Doren Stern in The Man Who Killed Lincoln, and also
in most other sources dealing with Lincoln.
It happened in Springfield in 1860, just after Lincoln
had been elected. As he was looking at himself in a mirror,
he suddenly saw a double image of himself. One, real and
lifelike, and an etheric double, pale and shadowy. He was
convinced that it meant he would get through his first term
safely, but would die before the end of the second. Today,
psychic researchers would explain Lincoln’s mirror experi-
ence in less fanciful terms. What the President saw was a
brief “out-of-body experience,” or astral projection, which
is not an uncommon psychic experience. It merely means
that the bonds between conscious mind and the uncon-
scious are temporarily loosened and that the inner or true
self has quickly slipped out. Usually, these experiences take
place in the dream state, but there are cases on record
where the phenomenon occurs while awake.
The President's interpretation of the experience is of
course another matter; here we have a second phenomenon
come into play, that of divination; in his peculiar interpre-
tation of his experience, he showed a degree of precogni-
tion, and future events, unfortunately, proved him to be
correct.
This was not, by far, the only recorded dream experi-
enced in Lincoln’s life. He put serious stock in dreams and
often liked to interpret them. William Herndon, Lincoln’s
onetime law partner and biographer, said of him that he
always contended he was doomed to a sad fate, and quotes
the President as saying many times, "I am sure I shall
meet with some terrible end.”
It is interesting to note also that Lincoln’s fatalism
made him often refer to Brutus and Caesar, explaining the
events of Caesar’s assassination as caused by laws over
which neither had any control; years later, Lincoln’s mur-
derer, John Wilkes Booth, also thought of himself as the
new Brutus slaying the American Caesar because destiny
had singled him out for the deed!
Certainly the most widely quoted psychic experience
of Abraham Lincoln was a strange dream he had a few
days before his death. When his strangely thoughtful mien
gave Mrs. Lincoln cause to worry, he finally admitted that
he had been disturbed by an unusually detailed dream.
Urged, over dinner, to confide his dream, he did so in the
presence of Ward Hill Lamon, close friend and social sec-
retary as well as a kind of bodyguard. Lamon wrote it
down immediately afterward, and it is contained in his
biography of Lincoln:
“About ten days ago,” the President began, “I retired
very late. I had been up waiting for important dis-
patches from the front. I could not have been long in
bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon
began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like still-
ness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a num-
ber of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and
wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by
the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisi-
ble. I went from room to room; no living person was in
sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me
as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms; every
object was familiar to me; but where were all the people
who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was
puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all
this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so
mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at
the East Room, which I entered.
“There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me
was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in
funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers
who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of
people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose
face was covered, others weeping pitifully.
‘“Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of
one of the soldiers. ‘The President,’ was his answer; ‘he
was killed by an assassin!’ Then there came a loud burst
of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my
dream. I slept no more that night. ...”
Lincoln always knew he was a marked man, not only
because of his own psychic hunches, but objectively, for he
kept a sizable envelope in his desk containing all the
threatening letters he had received. That envelope was sim-
ply marked “Assassination,” and the matter did not
frighten him. A man in his position is always in danger, he
would argue, although the Civil War and the larger ques-
tion of what to do with the South after victory had split the
country into two factions, made the President’s position
even more vulnerable. Lincoln therefore did not take his
elaborate dream warning seriously, or at any rate, he pre-
tended not to. When his friends remonstrated with him,
asking him to take extra precautions, he shrugged off their
warnings with the lighthearted remark, “Why, it wasn’t me
on that catafalque. It was some other fellow!”
But the face of the corpse had been covered in his
dream and he really was whistling in the dark.
Had fate wanted to prevent the tragedy and give him
warning to avoid it?
Had an even higher order of things decided that he
was to ignore that warning?
Lincoln had often had a certain dream in which he
saw himself on a strange ship, moving with great speed
toward an indefinite shore. The dream had always preceded
some unusual event. In effect, he had dreamed it precisely
in the same way preceding the events at Fort Sumter, the
Battles of Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Stone River,
Vicksburg, and Wilmington. Now he had just dreamed it
again on the eve of his death. This was April 13, 1865, and
Lincoln spoke of his recurrent dream in unusually opti-
mistic tones. To him it was an indication of impending
good news. That news, he felt, would be word from Gen-
eral Sherman that hostilities had ceased. There was a Cabi-
net meeting scheduled for April 14 and Lincoln hoped the
news would come in time for it. It never occurred to him
that the important news hinted at by this dream was his
own demise that very evening, and that the strange vessel
carrying him to a distant shore was Charon’s boat ferrying
him across the Styx into the nonphysical world.
But had he really crossed over?
Rumors of a ghostly President in the White House
kept circulating. They were promptly denied by the gov-
Assassination of a President:
Lincoln, Booth, and the Traitors Within
101
ernment, as would be expected. President Theodore Roo-
sevelt, according to Bess Furman in White House Profile,
often fancied that he felt Lincoln’s spirit, and during the
administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, in the 1930s, a
female secretary saw the figure of Abraham Lincoln in his
onetime bedroom. The ghost was seated on the bed,
pulling on his boots, as if he were in a hurry to go some-
where. This happened in mid-afternoon. Eleanor Roosevelt
had often felt Lincoln’s presence and freely admitted it.
Now it had been the habit of the administration to
put important visitors into what was formerly Lincoln’s
bedroom. This was not done out of mischief, but merely
because the Lincoln room was among the most impressive
rooms of the White House. We have no record of all those
who slept there and had eerie experiences, for people, espe-
cially politically highly placed people, don’t talk about such
things as ghosts.
Yet, the late Queen Wilhelmina did mention the con-
stant knockings at her door followed by footsteps — only to
find the corridor outside deserted. And Margaret Truman,
who also slept in that area of the White House, often heard
knocking at her bedroom door at 3 A.M. Whenever she
checked, there was nobody there. Her father, President
Truman, a skeptic, decided that the noises had to be due
to “natural” causes, such as the dangerous settling of the
floors. He ordered the White House completely rebuilt,
and perhaps this was a good thing: It would surely have
collapsed soon after, according to the architect, General
Edgerton. Thus, if nothing else, the ghostly knockings had
led to a survey of the structure and subsequent rebuilding.
Or was that the reason for the knocks? Had Lincoln tried
to warn the later occupants that the house was about to fall
down around their ears?
Not only Lincoln's bedroom, but other old areas of
the White House are evidently haunted. There is, first of
all, the famous East Room, where the lying -in -state took
place. By a strange quirk of fate, President Kennedy also
was placed there after his assassination. Lynda Bird John-
son’s room happened to be the room in which Willie Lin-
coln died, and later on, Truman’s mother. It was also the
room used by the doctors to perform the autopsy on Abra-
ham Lincoln. It is therefore not too surprising that Presi-
dent Johnson’s daughter did not sleep too well in the room.
She heard footsteps at night, and the phone would ring and
no one would be on the other end. An exasperated White
House telephone operator would come on again and again,
explaining she did not ring her!
But if Abraham Lincoln’s ghost roams the White
House because of unfinished business, it is apparently a
ghost free to do other things as well, something the average
specter can’t do, since it is tied only to the place of its
untimely demise.
Mrs. Lincoln lived on for many more years, but ulti-
mately turned senile and died not in her right mind at the
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
102
home of her sister. Long before she became unbalanced,
however, she journeyed to Boston in a continuing search
for some proof of her late husband’s survival of bodily
death. This was in the 1880s, and word had reached her
that a certain photographer named William Mumler had
been able to obtain the likenesses of dead people on his
photographic plates under strict test conditions. She
decided to try this man, fully aware that fraud might be
attempted if she were recognized. Heavily veiled in mourn-
ing clothes, she sat down along with other visitors in
Mumler ’s experimental study. She gave the name of Mrs.
Tyndall; all Mumler could see was a widow in heavy veils.
Mumler then proceeded to take pictures of all those present
in the room. When they were developed, there was one of
“Mrs. Tyndall.” In back of her appears a semi-solid figure
of Abraham Lincoln, with his hands resting upon the
shoulders of his widow, and an expression of great compas-
sion on his face. Next to Lincoln was the figure of their
son Willie, who had died so young in the White House.
Mumler showed his prints to the assembled group, and
before Mrs. Lincoln could claim her print, another woman
in the group exclaimed. “Why, that looks like President
Lincoln!” Then Mrs. Lincoln identified herself for the first
time.
There is, by the way, no photograph in existence
showing Lincoln with his son in the manner in which they
appeared on the psychic photograph.
Another photographic likeness of Lincoln was
obtained in 1937 in an experiment commemorating the
President’s one-hundredth birthday. This took place at
Cassadaga, Florida, with Horace Hambling as the psychic
intermediary, whose mere presence would make such a
phenomenon possible.
Ralph Pressing, editor of the Psychic Observer, was to
supply and guard the roll of film to be used, and the expo-
sures were made in dim light inside a seance room. The
roll of film was then handed to a local photographer for
developing, without telling him anything. Imagine the
man’s surprise when he found a clearly defined portrait of
Abraham Lincoln, along with four other, smaller faces,
superimposed on the otherwise black negative.
I myself was present at an experiment in San Fran-
cisco, when a reputable physician by the name of Andrew
von Salza demonstrated his amazing gift of psychic photog-
raphy, using a Polaroid camera. This was in the fall of
1966, and several other people witnessed the proceedings,
which I reported in my book Psychic Photography — Thresh-
old of a New Science?
After I had examined the camera, lens, film, and
premises carefully, Dr. von Salza took a number of pictures
with the Polaroid camera. On many of them there appeared
various “extras,” or faces of people superimposed in a
manner excluding fraud or double exposure completely.
The most interesting of these psychic impressions was a
picture showing the face of President Lincoln, with Presi-
dent Kennedy next to him!
Had the two men, who had suffered in so many simi-
lar ways, found a bond between them in the nonphysical
world? The amazing picture followed one on which Presi-
dent Kennedy’s face appeared alone, accompanied by the
word “War” written in white ectoplasm. Was this their
way to warn us to "mend our ways”?
Whatever the meaning, I am sure of one thing: The
phenomenon itself, the experiment, was genuine and in no
way the result of deceit, accident, self-delusion, or halluci-
nation. I have published both pictures for all to see.
There are dozens of good books dealing with the
tragedy of Abraham Lincoln’s reign and untimely death.
And yet I had always felt that the story had not been told
fully. This conviction was not only due to the reported
appearances of Lincoln’s ghost, indicating restlessness and
unfinished business, but also to my objective historical
training that somehow led me to reject the solutions given
of the plot in very much the same way many serious peo-
ple today refuse to accept the findings of the Warren Com-
mission as fined in the case of President Kennedy’s death.
But where to begin?
Surely, if Lincoln had been seen at the White House
in recent years, that would be the place to start. True, he
was shot at Ford’s Theatre and actually died in the Parker
House across the street. But the White House was his
home. Ghosts often occur where the “emotional center” of
the person was, while in the body, even though actual
death might have occurred elsewhere. A case in point is
Alexander Hamilton, whose shade has been observed in
what was once his personal physician’s house; it was there
that he spent his final day on earth, and his unsuccessful
struggle to cling to life made it his “emotional center”
father than the spot in New Jersey where he received the
fatal wound.
Nell Gwyn’s spirit, as we shall see in a later chapter
appeared in the romantic apartment of her younger years
rather than in the staid home where she actually died.
Even though there might be imprints of the great
tragedy at both Ford’s Theatre and the Parker House, Lin-
coln himself would not, in my estimation, "hang around”
there!
My request for a quiet investigation in the White
House went back to 1963 when Pierre Salinger was still in
charge and John F. Kennedy was President. I never got an
answer, and in March 1965 I tried again. This time, Bess
Abell, social secretary to Mrs. Johnson, turned me down
“for security reasons.” Patiently, I wrote back explaining I
merely wanted to spend a half hour or so with a psychic,
probably Mrs. Leek, in two rarely used areas: Lincoln's
bedroom and the East Room. Bess Abell had referred to
the White House policy of not allowing visitors into the
President’s private living quarters.” I pointed out that the
President, to my knowledge, did not spend his nights in
Lincoln’s bedroom, nor was the East Room anything but
part of the ceremonial or official government rooms and
hardly “private living quarters,” especially as tourists are
taken through it every hour or so. As for security, why, I
would gladly submit anything I wrote about my studies for
their approval.
Back came another pensive missive from Bess Abell.
The President and Mrs. Johnson’s “restrictive schedules”
would not permit my visit.
I offered, in return, to come at any time, day or
night, when the Johnsons were out of town.
The answer was still no, and I began to wonder if it
was merely a question of not wanting anything to do with
ESP?
But a good researcher never gives up hope. I subse-
quently asked Senator Jacob Javits to help me get into the
White House, but even he couldn’t get me in. Through a
local friend I met James Kerchum, the curator of the State
rooms. Would he give me a privately conducted tour
exactly like the regular tourist tour, except minus tourists
to distract us?
The answer remained negative.
On March 6, 1967, Bess Abell again informed me
that the only individuals eligible for admission to the two
rooms I wanted to see were people invited for State visits
and close personal friends. On either count, that left us
out.
I asked Elizabeth Carpenter, whom I knew to be
favorably inclined toward ESP, to intervene. As press secre-
tary to Mrs. Johnson, I thought she might be able to give
me a less contrived excuse, at the very least. “An impossi-
ble precedent,” she explained, if I were to be allowed in. I
refused to take the tourist tour, of course, as it would be a
waste of my time, and dropped the matter for the time
being.
But I never lost interest in the case. To me, finding
the missing link between what is officially known about
Lincoln’s murderer and the true extent of the plot would
be an important contribution to American history.
The events themselves immediately preceding and
following that dark day in American history are known to
most readers, but there are, perhaps, some details which
only the specialist would be familiar with and which will
be found to have significance later in my investigation. I
think it therefore useful to mention these events here,
although they were not known to me at the time I under-
took my psychic investigation. I try to keep my uncon-
scious mind free of all knowledge so that no one may
accuse my psychics of “reading my mind,” or suggest simi-
lar explanations for what transpires. Only at the end of this
amazing case did I go through the contemporary record of
the assassination.
* * *
The War between the States had been going on for
four years, and the South was finally losing. This was obvi-
Assassination of a President:
Lincoln, Booth, and the Traitors within
103
ous even to diehard Confederates, and everybody wanted
only one thing to get it over with as quickly as possible
and resume a normal life once again.
While the South was, by and large, displaying apathy,
there were still some fanatics who thought they could
change the course of events by some miracle. In the North,
it was a question of freeing the slaves and restoring the
Union. In the South, it was not only a question of main-
taining the economic system they had come to consider the
only feasible one, but also one of maintaining the feudal,
largely rural system their ancestors had known in Europe
and which was being endangered by the industrialized
North with its intellectuals, labor forces, and new values.
To save the South from such a fate seemed a noble cause
to a handful of fanatics, among them John Wilkes Booth,
the man who was to play so fateful a role. Ironically, he
was not even a true Southerner, but a man born on the
fringe of the South, in Maryland, and his family, without
exception, considered itself to be of the North.
John Wilkes Booth was, of course, the lesser known
of the Booth brothers, scions of a family celebrated in the
theater of their age, and when Edwin Booth, “the Prince of
Players," learned of the terrible crime his younger brother
had committed, he was genuinely shocked, and immedi-
ately made clear his position as a longtime supporter of
Abraham Lincoln.
But John Wilkes Booth did not care whether his peo-
ple were with him or not. Still in his early twenties, he was
not only politically immature but also romantically
inspired. He could not understand the economic changes
that were sure to take place and which no bullet could
stop.
And so, while the War between the States was drawing
to a close, Booth decided to become the savior of his
adopted Dixie, and surrounded himself with a small and
motley band of helpers who had their secret meetings at
Mrs. Mary Surratt’s boarding house in Washington.
At first, they were discussing a plot to abduct Presi-
dent Lincoln and to deliver him to his foes at the Confed-
erate capital in Richmond, but the plot never came into
being. Richmond fell to the Yankees, and time ran out for
the cause of the Confederacy. As the days crept by and
Booth’s fervor to “do something drastic” for his cause
increased, the young actor started thinking in terms of
killing the man whom he blamed for his country’s defeat.
To Booth, Lincoln was the center of all he hated, and he
believed that once the man was removed all would be well.
Such reasoning, of course, is the reasoning of a
demented mind. Had Booth really been an astute politician,
he would have realized that Lincoln was a moderate com-
pared to some members of his Cabinet, that the President
was indeed, as some Southern leaders put it when news of
the murder reached them, “the best friend the South had
ever had.”
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
104
Had he appraised the situation in Washington cor-
rectly, he would have realized that any man taking the
place of Abraham Lincoln was bound to be far worse for
Southern aspirations than Lincoln, who had deeply regret-
ted the war and its hardships and who was eager to receive
the seceded states back into the Union fold with as little
punishment as possible.
Not so the war party, principally Stanton, the Secre-
tary of War, and Seward, the Secretary of State. Theirs was
a harsher outlook, and history later proved them to be the
winners — but also the cause of long years of continuing
conflict between North and South, conflict and resentment
that could have been avoided had Lincoln’s conciliatory
policies been allowed to prevail.
The principal fellow conspirators against Lincoln
were an ex-Confederate soldier named Lewis Paine; David
Herold, a druggist’s clerk who could not hold a job;
George Atzerodt, a German born carriagemaker; Samuel
Arnold, a clerk; Michael O’Laughlin, another clerk; Mrs.
Mary Surratt, the Washington boarding house keeper at
whose house they met; and finally, and importantly, John
Harrison Surratt, her son, by profession a Confederate spy
and courier. At the time of the final conspiracy Booth was
only twenty-six, Surratt twenty-one, and Herold twenty-
three, which perhaps accounts for the utter folly of their
actions.
The only one, besides Booth, who had any qualities
of leadership was young Surratt. His main job at the time
was traveling between Washington and Montreal as a
secret courier for the Washington agents of the Confeder-
acy and the Montreal, Canada headquarters of the rebels.
Originally a clerk with the Adams Express Company,
young Surratt had excellent connections in communications
and was well known in Washington government circles,
although his undercover activities were not.
When Booth had convinced Surratt that the only way
to help the Confederacy was to murder the President, they
joined forces. Surratt had reservations about this course,
and Mrs. Surratt certainly wanted no part of violence or
murder. But they were both swept up in the course of
events that followed.
Unfortunately, they had not paid enough attention to
the presence in the Surratt boarding house on H Street of a
young War Department clerk named Louis Weichmann.
Originally intending to become a priest, young Weichmann
was a witness to much of the coming and going of the con-
spirators, and despite his friendship for John Surratt, which
had originally brought him to the Surratt boarding house,
he eventually turned against the Surratts. It was his testi-
mony at Mrs. Surratt’s trial that ultimately led to her
hanging.
Originally, Mrs. Surratt had owned a tavern in a
small town thirteen miles south of Washington then called
Surrattsville and later, for obvious reasons, renamed Clin-
ton, Maryland. When business at the tavern fell off, she
leased it to an innkeeper named John Lloyd, and moved to
Washington, where she opened a boarding house on H
Street, between Sixth and Seventh Streets, which house still
stands.
Certainly she was present when the plans for Lin-
coln’s abduction were made, but she never was part of the
conspiracy to kill him. That was chiefly Booth’s brain
child, and all of his confederates were reluctant, in varying
degrees, to go along with him; nevertheless, such was his
ability to impress men that they ultimately gave in to his
urgings. Then, too, they had already gotten into this con-
spiracy so deeply that if one were caught they’d all hang.
So it seemed just as well that they did it together and
increased their chances of getting away alive.
Booth himself was to shoot the President. And when
he discovered that the Lincolns would be in the State box
at Ford’s Theatre, Washington, on the evening of April 14,
1865, it was decided to do it there. Surratt was to try to
"fix the wires” so that the telegraph would not work during
the time following the assassination. He had the right con-
nections, and he knew he could do it. In addition, he was
to follow General Grant on a train that was to take the
general and his wife to New Jersey. Lewis Paine was to kill
Secretary Seward at the same time.
Booth had carefully surveyed the theater beforehand,
making excellent use of the fact that as an actor he was
known and respected there. This also made it quite easy to
get inside the strategic moment. The play on stage was
“Our American Cousin” starring Laura Keene. Booth’s
plans were furthermore helped by a stroke of luck — or fate,
if you prefer, namely, one of the men who was supposed to
guard the President’s box was momentarily absent from his
post.
The hour was shortly after 10 P.M. when Booth
quickly entered the box, killed Lincoln with a small Der-
ringer pistol, struggled with a second guard and then,
according to plan, jumped over the box rail onto the stage
below.
Lincoln lived through the night but never regained
consciousness. He expired in the Parker House across from
Ford’s theatre, where he had been brought. Booth caught
his heel on an American flag that adorned the stage box,
and fell, breaking his leg in the process. Despite intense
pain, he managed to escape in the confusion and jump on
the horse he had prepared outside.
When he got to the Navy Yard bridge crossing the
Anacostia River, the sentry on this road leading to the
South stopped him. What was he doing out on the road
that late? In wartime Washington, all important exits from
the city were controlled. But Booth merely told the man his
name and that he lived in Charles County. He was let
through, despite the fact that a nine o’clock curfew was
being rigidly enforced at that moment. Many later histori-
ans have found this incident odd, and have darkly pointed
to a conspiracy; It may well be that Surratt did arrange for
Lthe easy passage, as they had all along planned to use the
road over the Anacostia River bridge to make good their
escape.
A little later, Booth was joined on the road by David
Herold. Together they rode out to the Surratt tavern,
where they arrived around midnight. The purpose of their
visit there at that moment became clear to me only much
later. The tavern had of course been a meeting place for
Booth and Surratt and the others before Mrs. Surratt
moved her establishment to Washington. Shortly after, the
two men rode onward and entered the last leg of their jour-
ney. After a harrowing escape interrupted by temporary
stays at Dr. Mudd’s office at Bryantown — where Booth
had his leg looked after — and various attempts to cross the
Potomac, the two men holed up at Garrett’s farm near Port
Royal, Virginia. It was there that they were hunted down
like mad dogs by the Federal forces. Twelve days after
Lincoln’s murder, on April 26, 1865, Booth was shot
down. Even that latter fact is not certain: Had he commit-
ted suicide when he saw no way out of Garrett’s burning
barn, with soldiers all around it? Or had the avenger’s bul-
let of Sergeant Boston Corbett found its mark, as the sol-
dier had claimed?
It is not my intent here to go into the details of the
flight and capture, as these events are amply told else-
where. The mystery is not so much Booth’s crime and
punishment, about which there is no doubt, but the ques-
tion of who really plotted Lincoln’s death. The State
funeral was hardly over when all sorts of rumors and leg-
ends concerning the plot started to spring up.
Mrs. Surratt was arrested immediately, and she, along
with Paine, Atzerodt, and Herold were hanged after a trial
marked by prejudice and the withholding of vital informa-
tion, such as Booth’s own diary, which Secretary of War
Stanton had ordered confiscated and which was never
entered as an exhibit at the trial. This, along with the fact
that Stanton was at odds politically with Lincoln, gave rise
to various speculations concerning Stanton’s involvement in
the plot. Then, too, there was the question of the role John
Surratt had played, so much of it covered by secrecy, like
an iceburg with only a small portion showing above the
surface!
After he had escaped from the United States and
gone to Europe and then to Egypt, he was ultimately cap-
tured and extradited to stand trial in 1867. But a jury of
four Northerners and eight Southerners allowed him to go
free, when they could not agree on a verdict of guilty. Sur-
ratt moved to Baltimore, where he went into business and
died in 1916. Very little is known of his activities beyond
these bare facts. The lesser conspirators, those who merely
helped the murderer escape, were convicted to heavy prison
terms.
There was some to do about Booth’s body also. After
it had been identified by a number of people who knew
Assassination of a President:
Lincoln, Booth, and the Traitors Within
105
him in life, it was buried under the stone floor of the Arse-
nal Prison in Washington, the same prison where the four
other conspirators had been executed. But in 1867, the
prison was torn down and the five bodies exhumed. One of
them, presumed to be Booth’s, was interred in the family
plot in Greenmount Cemetery, Baltimore. Yet a rumor
arose, and never ceased, that actually someone else lay in
Booth’s grave and, though most historians refuse to take
this seriously, according to Philip Van Doren Stern, “the
question of whether or not the man who died at Garrett’s
Farm was John Wilkes Booth is one that doubtless will
never be settled.”
No accounts of any psychic nature concerning Booth
have been reported to date, and Booth’s ghost does not
walk the corridors of Ford’s Theatre the way Lincoln’s
does in the White Flouse. The spot where Garrett’s farm
used to stand is no longer as it was, and a new building
has long replaced the old barn.
If I were to shed new light or uncover fresh evidence
concerning the plot to kill Lincoln, I would have to go to a
place having emotional ties to the event itself. But the con-
stant refusal of the White Flouse to permit me a short visit
made it impossible for me to do so properly.
The questions that, to me, seem in need of clarifica-
tion concerned, first of all, the strange role John H. Surratt
had played in the plot; secondly, was Booth really the one
who initiated the murder, and was he really the leader of
the plot? One notices the close parallel between this case
and the assassination of President Kennedy.
As I began this investigation, my own feelings were
that an involvement of War Secretary Stanton could be
shown and that there probably was a northern plot to kill
Lincoln as well as a southern desire to get rid of him. But
that was pure speculation on my part, and I had as yet
nothing to back up my contention. Then fate played a let-
ter into my hands, out of left field, so to speak, that gave
me new hope for a solution to this exciting case.
A young girl by the name of Phyllis Amos, of Wash-
ington, Pennsylvania, had seen me on a television show in
the fall of 1967. She contacted me by letter, and as a con-
sequence I organized an expedition to the Surratt tavern,
the same tavern that had served as home to Mrs. Mary
Surratt and as a focal point of the Lincoln conspiracy prior
to the move to H Street in Washington.
Phyllis’ connection with the old tavern goes back to
1955. It was then occupied by a Mrs. Ella Curtain and by
Phyllis’ family, who shared the house with this elderly
lady. Mrs. Curtain’s brother B. K. Miler, a prosperous
supermarket owner nearby, was the actual owner of the
house, but the let his sister live there. Since it was a large
house, they subleased to the Amos family, which then con-
sisted of Mr. and Mrs. Amos and their two girls, about two
years apart in age.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
106
Phyllis, who is now in her twenties, occupied a room
on the upper floor; across the narrow hall from her room
was Ella Curtain’s room — once the room where John
Wilkes Booth had hidden his guns. To the right of Phyllis’
bedroom and a few steps down was a large room where the
conspirators met regularly. It was shielded from the curious
by a small anteroom through which one would have to go
to reach the meeting room. Downstairs were the parents’
room and a large reception room. The house stood almost
directly on the road, surrounded by dark green trees. A
forlorn metal sign farther back was the sole indication that
this was considered a historical landmark: If you didn’t
know the sign was there, you wouldn’t find it unless you
were driving by at very slow speed.
Mrs. Amos never felt comfortable in the house from
the moment they moved in, and after eight months of
occupancy the Amos family left. But during those eight
months they experienced some pretty strange things. One
day she was alone in the house when it suddenly struck her
that someone was watching her intently. Terrified, she ran
to her bedroom and locked the door, not coming out until
her husband returned. The smaller of the two girls kept
asking her mother who the strange men were she saw sit-
ting on the back stairs. She would hear them talk in whis-
pers up there.
The other occupant of the house, Mrs. Curtain, was
certainly not a steadying influence on them. On one occa-
sion she saw the figure of a woman “float” down the front
steps. That woman, she felt sure, was Mary Surratt. The
house had of course been Mary Surratt’s true home, her
only safe harbor. The one she later owned in Washington
was merely a temporary and unsafe abode. Mightn’t she
have been drawn back here after her unjust execution to
seek justice, or at the very least to be among surroundings
she was familiar with?
The floating woman returned several times more, and
ultimately young Phyllis was to have an experience herself.
It was in April of 1955 and she was in bed in her room,
wide awake. Her bed stood parallel to the room where the
conspirators used to meet, separated from it only by a thin
wall, so that she might have heard them talk had she been
present at the time. Suddenly, she received several blows
on the side of her face. They were so heavy that they
brought tears to her eyes. Were the ghosts of the conspira-
tors trying to discourage her from eavesdropping on their
plans?
Both Phyllis and her mother have had ESP experi-
ences all their lives, ranging from premonitions to true
dreams and other forms of precognition.
I decided to contact the present owner and ask for
permission to visit with a good medium. Thomas Miller,
whose parents had owned the Surratt tavern and who now
managed it prior to having it restored, at great cost, to the
condition it was in a hundred years ago, readily assented.
So it was that on a very chilly day in November of 1967,
Sybil Leek and I flew down to Washington for a look at
the ghosts around John Wilkes Booth: If I couldn’t inter-
view the victim, Lincoln, perhaps I could have a go at the
murderer?
A friend, Countess Gertrude d’Amecourt, volun-
teered to drive us to Clinton. The directions the Millers
had given us were not too clear, so it took us twice as long
as it should have to get there. I think we must have taken
the wrong turn off the highway at least six times and in the
end got to know them all well, but got no nearer to Clinton.
Finally we were stopped by a little old woman who
wanted to hitch a ride with us. Since she was going in the
same direction, we let her come with us, and thanks to her
we eventually found Miller’s supermarket, about two hours
later than planned. But ghosts are not in a hurry, even
though Gertrude had to get back to her real estate office,
and within minutes we set out on foot to the old Surratt
tavern, located only a few blocks from the supermarket.
Phyllis Amos had come down from Pennsylvania to join
us, and as the wind blew harder and harder and our teeth
began to chatter louder and louder in the unseasonable
chill of the late afternoon, we pushed open the dusty, pad-
locked door of the tavern, and our adventure into the past
began.
Before I had a chance to ask Sybil Leek to wait until
I could put my tape recording equipment into operating
condition, she had dashed past us and was up the stairs as
if she knew where she was headed. She didn't, of course,
for she had no idea why she had been brought here or
indeed where she was. All of us — the Millers, Phyllis,
Gertrude d’Amecourt, and myself — ran up the stairs after
Sybil. We found her staring at the floor in what used to be
the John Wilkes Booth bedroom. Staring at the hole in the
floor where the guns had been hidden, she mumbled some-
thing about things being hidden there. . . not budging from
the spot. Thomas Miller, who had maintained a smug,
skeptical attitude about the whole investigation until now,
shook his head and mumbled, "But how would she know?”
It was getting pretty dark now and there was no elec-
tric light in the house. The smells were pretty horrible, too,
as the house had been empty for years, with neighborhood
hoodlums and drunks using it for "parties” or to sleep off
drunken sprees. There is always a broken back window in
those old houses, and they manage to get in.
We were surrounding Sybil now and shivering in
unison. “This place is different from the rest of the house,”
Sybil explained, “cold, dismal atmosphere. . . this is where
something happened.”
"What sort of thing do you think happened here?”
"A chase.”
How right she was! The two hunted men were indeed
on a chase from Washington, trying to escape to the South.
But again, Sybil would not know this consciously.
“This is where someone was a fugitive,” she contin-
ued now, "for several days, but he left this house and went
to the woodland.”
Booth hiding out in the woods for several days after
passing the tavern!
“Who is the man?” I asked, for I was not at all sure
who she was referring to. There were several men con-
nected with “the chase,” and for all we knew, it could have
been a total stranger somehow tied up with the tavern.
Lots of dramatic happenings attach themselves to old tav-
erns, which were far cries from Hilton hotels. People got
killed or waylaid in those days, and taverns, on the whole,
had sordid reputations. The good people stayed at each
other’s homes when traveling.
"Foreign . . . can’t get the name . . . hiding for several
days here . . . then there is ... a brother ... it is very
confusing.”
* * *
The foreigner might well have been Atzerodt, who
was indeed hiding at the tavern at various times. And the
brother?
* * *
“A man died suddenly, violently.” Sybil took up the
impressions she seemed to be getting now with more
depth. We were still standing around in the upstairs room,
near the window, with the gaping hole in the floor.
“How did he die?” I inquired.
“Trapped in the woods. . . hiding from soldiers, I
think.”
That would only fit Booth. He was trapped in the
woods and killed by soldiers.
“Why?”
“They were chasing him. . . he killed someone.”
“Who did he kill?”
“I don’t know. . .birthday . . .ran away to hide. . .1 see
a paper. . .invitation. . .there is another place we have to go
to, a big place. . .a big building with a gallery. . .”
Was she perhaps describing Ford’s Theatre now?
“Whose place is it?” I asked.
Sybil was falling more and more under the spell of
the place, and her consciousness bordered now on the
trance state.
“No one’s place. . .to see people. ..I’m confused. . .
lot of people go there. . .watching. . .a gathering. . .with
music. ..I’m not going there!!”
* * *
“Who is there?” I interjected. She must be referring
to the theater, all right. Evidently what Sybil was getting
here was the entire story, but jumbled as psychic impres-
sions often are, since they do not obey the ordinary laws of
time and space.
“My brother and I,” she said now. I had gently led
her toward another corner of the large room where a small
Assassination of a President:
Lincoln, Booth, and the Traitors Within
107
chair stood, in the hope of having her sit in it. But she was
already too deeply entranced to do it, so I let her lean
toward the chair, keeping careful watch so she would not
topple over.
“My brother is mad. . she said now, and her voice
was no longer the same, but had taken on a harder, metallic
sound. I later wondered about this remark: Was this
Edwin Booth, talking about his renegade brother John who
was indeed considered mad by many of his contempo-
raries? Edwin Booth frequently appeared at Ford’s Theatre,
and so did John Wilkes Booth.
"Why is he mad?” I said. I decided to continue the
questioning as if I were agreeing with all she — or he — was
saying, in order to elicit more information.
* * *
"Madman in the family . . . , ” Sybil said now, “killed
— a — friend. . ..”
“Whom did he kill?”
“No names. ..he was mad. ...”
"Would I know the person he killed?”
“Everybody — knows. ...”
“What is your brother’s name?”
“John.”
“What is your name?”
"Rory.”
At first it occurred to me this might be the name of a
character Edwin Booth had played on the stage and he was
hiding behind it, if indeed it was Edwin Booth who was
giving Sybil this information. But I have not found such a
character in the biographies of Edwin Booth. I decided to
press further by reiterating my original question.
"Whom did John kill?”
An impatient, almost impertinent voice replied, "I
won’t tell you. You can read!”
“What are you doing in this house?”
"Helping J ohn . . . escape ....’’
"Are you alone?”
“No... Trevor....”
"How many of you are there here?”
"Four.”
"Who are the others?”
“Traitors....”
"But what are their names?”
"Trevor. . .Michael. . .John. . ..”
These names caused me some concern afterward: I
could identify Michael readily enough as Michael
O’Laughlin, school chum of Booth, who worked as a livery
stable worker in Baltimore before he joined forces with his
friend. Michael O’Laughlin was one of the conspirators,
who was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment. But on
Stanton’s orders he and the other three “lesser” conspira-
tors were sent to the Dry Tortugas, America’s own version
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
108
of Devil’s Island, off Florida, and it was there that Michael
O’Laughlin died of yellow fever in 1868.
* * *
John? Since the communicator had referred to his
brother’s name as John, I could only surmise this to mean
John Wilkes Booth. But Trevor I could not identify. The
only conspirator whose middle name we did not know was
Samuel Arnold, also an ex-classmate of Booth. Was Trevor
perhaps the familiar name by which the conspirators
referred to this Maryland farmhand and Confederate
deserter?
I pressed the point further with Sybil.
“Who is in the house?”
“Go away ”
I explained my mission: to help them all find peace
of mind, freedom, deliverance.
“I'm going to the city — ” the communicator said.
"Which city?”
"The big city.”
“Why?”
"To stop him. . .he’s mad. . .take him away. . .to the
country to rest. . .to help him. . .give him rest. ...”
“Has he done anything wrong?”
“He. . .he’s my brother!"
“Did he kill anyone?”
“Killed that man. ...”
“Why did he kill him?”
Shouting at me, the entranced medium said, “He was
unjust!”
"Toward whom?”
“He was unjust toward the Irish people.”
Strange words, I thought. Only Michael O’Laughlin
could be considered a "professional” Irishman among the
conspirators, and one could scarcely accuse Lincoln of hav-
ing mistreated the Irish.
“What did he do?” I demanded to know.
"He did nothing.. ..”
"Why did he kill him then?”
“He was mad.”
“Do you approve of it?”
“Yes! ! He did not like him because he was unjust. . .
the law was wrong. . .his laws were wrong. . .free people. . .he
was confused....”
Now if this were indeed Edwin Booth’s spirit talking,
he would most certainly not have approved of the murder.
The resentment for the sake of the Irish minority could
only have come from Michael O’Laughlin. But the entity
kept referring to his brother, and only Edwin Booth had a
brother named John, connected with this house and story!
The trance session grew more and more confusing.
"Who else was in this?” I started again. Perhaps we
could get more information on the people behind the plot.
After all, we already knew the actual murderer and his
accomplices.
“Trevor... four....”
“Did you get an order from someone to do this?”
There was a long pause as the fully entranced psychic
kept swaying a little, with eyes closed, in front of the rick-
ety old chair.
I explained again why I had come, but it did not
help. "I don’t believe you,” the entity said in great agita-
tion, “Traitors....”
“You’ve long been forgiven,” 1 said, “but you must
speak freely about it now. What happened to the man he
killed?”
“My brother — became — famous. . . .”
This was followed by bitter laughter.
“What sort of work did your brother do?”
“ Writing ... acting .... ”
“Where did he act?”
“Go away. . .don’t search for me. ...”
“I want to help you.”
"Traitor. ..shot like a dog. . .the madman. . ..”
Sybil’s face trembled now as tears streamed freely
from her eyes. Evidently she was reliving the final mo-
ments of Booth’s agony. I tried to calm the communicator.
“Goaway...” the answer came, “goaway!”
But I continued the questioning. Did anyone put him
up to the deed?
“He was mad,” the entity explained, a little calmer
now.
“But who is guilty?”
“The Army.”
“Who in the Army?”
“He was wild. . .met people. . .they said they were
Army people . . . Major General ... Gee ... I ought to go
now!!”
Several things struck me when I went over this con-
versation afterward. To begin with, the communicator felt
he had said too much as soon as he had mentioned the per-
son of Major General Gee, or G., and wanted to leave.
Why? Was this something he should have kept secret?
Major General G.? Could this refer to Grant? Up to
March 1864 Grant was indeed a major general; after that
time Lincoln raised him to the rank of lieutenant general.
The thought seemed monstrous on the face of it, that
Grant could in any way be involved with a plot against
Lincoln. Politically, this seemed unlikely, because both
Grant and Lincoln favored the moderate treatment of the
conquered South as against the radicals, who demanded
stern measures. Stanton was a leading radical, and if any-
one he would have had a reason to plot against Lincoln.
And yet, by all appearances, he served him loyally and
well. But Grant had political aspirations of a personal
nature, and he succeeded Lincoln after Johnson’s unhappy
administration.
I decided to pursue my line of questioning further to
see where it might lead.
I asked Sybil’s controlling entity to repeat the name
of this Army general. Faintly but clear enough it came
from her entranced lips:
" Gee ... G - E - E - ... Maj or General Robert Gee . ”
Then it wasn't Grant, I thought. But who in blazes
was it? If there existed such a person I could find a record,
but what “if it was merely a cover name?”
“Did you see this man yourself?”
“No.”
“Then did your brother tell you about him?”
“Yes.”
“Where did they meet?”
Hesitatingly, the reply came.
“In the city. This city. In a club. ...”
I decided to change my approach.
“What year is this?” I shot at him.
“Forty-nine.”
“What does forty-nine mean to you?"
“Forty-nine means something important. ...”
“How old are you now?”
“Thirty-four.”
He then claimed to have been born in Lowell, Vir-
ginia, and I found myself as puzzled as ever: It did not fit
Edwin, who was born in 1833 on the Booth homestead at
Belair, Maryland. Confusion over confusion!
“Did anyone else but the four of you come here?” I
finally asked.
"Yes. . .Major. . .Robert Gee. ...”
"What did he want?”
"Bribery.”
“What did he pay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he give him any money?”
"Yes."
"What was he supposed to do?”
“Cause a disturbance. In the gallery. Then plans
would be put into operation. To hold up the law.”
“Did your brother do what he was supposed to do?”
“He was mad. . .he killed him.”
“Then who was guilty?”
“Gee. ...”
“Who sent Gee? For whom did he speak?”
We were getting close to the heart of the matter and
the others were grouping themselves closely around us, the
better to hear. It was quite dark outside and the chill of the
November afternoon crept into our bones with the result
that we started to tremble with the wet cold. But nobody
moved or showed impatience. American history was being
relived, and what did a little chill matter in comparison?
“He surveyed.
“Who worked with him?”
“The government.”
“Who specifically?”
“I don’t know.”
It did not sound convincing. Was he still holding out
on us?
Assassination of a President:
Lincoln, Booth, and the Traitors Within
109
“Were there others involved? Other men? Other
women?”
A derisive laughter broke the stillness.
“Jealous. . .jealousy. . .his wife. ...”
“Whose wife?”
“The one who was killed. . .shot.”
* * *
That I found rather interesting, for it is a historical
fact that Mrs. Lincoln was extremely jealous and, accord-
ing to Carl Sandburg, perhaps the most famous Lincoln
biographer, never permitted her husband to see a woman
alone — for any reason whatever. The Lincolns had fre-
quent spats for that reason, and jealousy was a key charac-
teristic of the President’s wife.
“Why are we in this room?” I demanded.
“Waiting for. . .what am I waiting for?” the commu-
nicator said, in a voice filled with despair.
"I’d like to know that myself,” I nodded. “Is there
anything of interest for you here?”
“Yes. . .1 have to stay here until John comes back.
Where’s John?”
“And what will you do when he comes back?”
“Take him to Lowell. . .my home. ...”
“Whom do you live with there?”
“Julia. . .my girl. . .take him to rest there.”
“Where is John now?”
"In the woods. . .hiding.”
“Is anyone with him?”
"Two. . .they should be back soon.”
Again the entity demanded to know why I was asking
all those questions and again I reassured him that I was a
friend. But I have to know everything in order to help him.
Who then was this Major General Gee?
“Wants control,” the voice said, "1 don't understand
the Army. . .politics. . .he’s altering the government. ...”
"Altering the government?” I repeated, “On whose
side is he?”
"Insurgent side.”
“Is he in the U. S. Government?”
“My brother knows them. . .they have the
government.”
"But who are they? What are their names?”
“They had numbers. Forty-nine. It means the area.
The area they look after.”
"Is anyone in the government involved with these
insurgents?”
“John knows. . .John’s dead. . .knew too much. . .the
names. . .he wasn’t all. ..he’s mad!”
“Who killed him?”
"Soldier.”
“Why did he kill him?” I was now referring to John
Wilkes Booth and the killing of the presidential assassin by
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
Sergeant Boston Corbett, allegedly because “God told him
to,” as the record states.
“Hunted him.”
“But who gave the order to kill him?”
“The government.”
“You say, he knew too much. What did he know?”
“I don’t know the names, I know only I wait for
John. John knows the names. He was clever.”
“Was anyone in this government involved?”
“Traitors. . .in the head of the Army.. . . Sher. . .must
not tell you, John said not to speak. ...”
“You must speak!” I commanded, almost shouting.
"Sherman. . .Colonel. . .he knows Sherman. . . . John
says to say nothing
"Does Sherman know about it?”
“I don’t know. ..I am not telling you any more.
he said, trembling again with tears, “Everybody asks ques-
tions. You are not helping me.”
“I will try to help you if you don’t hold back,” I
promised. "Who paid your brother?”
“Nothing. . .promised to escape. . .look after
him... promised a ticket....”
“How often did your brother see this officer?”
“Not too often. Here. John told me. . .some things.
John said not to talk. He is not always mad.”
“Who is the woman with him?” I tried to see if it
would trick him into talking about others.
“She's a friend,” the communicator said without
hesitation.
“What is her name?”
"Harriet.”
“Where does she live?”
"In the city.”
"How does he know her?”
“He went to play there. . .he liked her. .
Evidently this was some minor figure of no impor-
tance to the plot. I changed directions again. “You are free
to leave here now, John wants you to go,” I said, slowly.
After all, I could not let this poor soul, whoever he was,
hang on here for all eternity!
"Where are we?” he asked, sounding as confused as
ever.
“A house....”
"My house?... No, Melville’s house....”
“Who is Melville?”
"Friend of Gee. Told me to come here, wait for
John.”
“You are free to go, free!” I intoned.
“Free?” he said slowly. “Free country?”
“A hundred years have gone by. Do you understand
me?”
“No.”
The voice became weaker as if the entity were drift-
ing away. Gradually Sybil’s body seemed to collapse and I
was ready to catch her, should she fall. But in time she
“came back” to herself. Awakening, as if she had slept a
110
long time, she looked around herself, as completely con-
fused as the entity had been. She remembered absolutely
nothing of the conversation between the ghost and myself.
For a moment none of us said anything. The silence
was finally broken by Thomas Miller, who seemed visibly
impressed with the entire investigation. He knew very well
that the hole in the floor was a matter he was apt to point
out to visitors in the house, and that no visitors had come
here in a long time, as the house had been in disrepair for
several years. How could this strange woman with the Eng-
lish accent whom he had never met before in his life, or for
that matter, how could I, a man he only knew by corre-
spondence, know about it? And how could she head
straight for the spot in the semi-darkness of an unlit house?
That was the wedge that opened the door to his acceptance
of what he had witnessed just now.
* * *
“It’s cold,” Sybil murmured, and wrapped herself
deeper into her black shawl. But she has always been a
good sport, and did not complain. Patiently, she waited
further instructions from me. I decided it was time to
introduce everybody formally now, as I had of course not
done so on arrival in order to avoid Sybil’s picking up any
information or clues.
Phyllis Amos then showed us the spot where she had
been hit by unseen hands, and pointed out the area where
her younger sister Lynn, seven at the time and now nine-
teen, had heard the voices of a group of men whom she
had also seen huddled together on the back stairs.
"I too thought I heard voices here,” Phyllis Amos
commented. "It sounded like the din of several voices but I
couldn’t make it out clearly.”
I turned to Thomas Miller, who was bending down
now toward the hole in the floor.
“This is where John Wilkes Booth hid his guns,” he
said, anticlimactically. “The innkeeper, Lloyd, also gave
him some brandy, and then he rode on to where Dr. Mudd
had his house in Bryan town.”
“You heard the conversation that came through my
psychic friend, Mr. Miller,” I said. “Do you care to com-
ment on some of the names? For instance, did John Wilkes
Booth have a brother along those lines?”
“My father bought this property from John Wilkes’
brother,” Miller said, “the brother who went to live in Bal-
timore after John Wilkes was killed; later he went to
England.”
That, of course, would be Edwin Booth, the "Prince
of Players,” who followed his sister Asia’s advice to try his
luck in the English theater.
* * *
I found this rather interesting. So Surratt’s tavern had
once belonged to Edwin Booth — finger of fate!
Mr. Miller pointed out something else of interest to
me. While I had been changing tapes, during the interro-
gation of the communicator speaking through Sybil, I had
missed a sentence or two. My question had been about the
ones behind the killing.
“S-T-.. .” the communicator had whispered. Did it
mean Stanton?
“John Wilkes Booth was very familiar with this
place, of course,” Miller said in his Maryland drawl. "This
is where the conspirators used to meet many times. Mary
Surratt ran this place as a tavern. Nothing has changed in
this house since then.”
* * *
From Thomas Miller I also learned that plans were
afoot to restore the house at considerable cost, and to make
it into a museum.
* * *
We thanked our host and piled into the car. Sud-
denly I remembered that I had forgotten my briefcase
inside the house, so I raced back and recovered it. The
house was now even colder and emptier, and I wondered if
I might hear anything unusual — but I didn’t. Rather than
hang around any longer, I joined the others in the car and
we drove back to Washington.
I asked Countess d’Amecourt to stop once more at a
house I felt might have some relationship with the case.
Sybil, of course, had no idea why we got out to look at an
old house on H Street. It is now a Chinese restaurant and
offers no visible clues to its past.
“I feel military uniforms, blue colors here,” Sybil said
as we all shuddered in the cold wind outside. The house
was locked and looked empty. My request to visit it had
never been answered.
"What period?”
“Perhaps a hundred years. . .nothing very strong
here. . .the initial S. ..a man. . .rather confusing.. .a meet-
ing place more than a residence. . .not too
respectable. . .meeting house for soldiers. . .Army. ...”
"Is there a link between this house and where we
went earlier this afternoon?”
“The Army is the link somehow. ...”
* * *
After I had thanked the Countess d’Amecourt for her
help, Sybil and I flew back to New York.
For days afterward I pondered the questions arising
from this expedition. Was the “S” linking the house on H
Street — which was Mary Surratt’s Washington boarding
house — the same man as the "S-T- ... ” Sybil had whis-
pered to me at Mary Surratt’s former country house? Were
both initials referring to Secretary Stanton and were the
rumors true after all?
Assassination of a President:
Lincoln, Booth, and the Traitors Within
111
* * *
The facts of history, in this respect, are significant.
Lincoln’s second term was actively opposed by the forces
of the radical Republicans. They thought Lincoln too soft
on the rebels and feared that he would make an easy peace
with the Confederacy. They were quite right in this
assumption, of course, and all through Lincoln’s second
term of office, his intent was clear. That is why, in mur-
dering Abraham Lincoln, Booth actually did the South a
great disservice.
In the spring of 1864, when the South seemed to be
on its last legs, the situation in Washington also came to a
point where decisions would have to be made soon. The
“hawks," to use a contemporary term, could count on the
services of Stanton, the War Secretary, and of Seward, Sec-
retary of State, plus many lesser officials and officers, of
course. The “doves” were those in actual command, how-
ever— Lincoln himself, Grant, and Vice President Johnson,
himself a Southerner. Logically, the time of crisis would be
at hand the moment Grant had won victory in his com-
mand and Sherman, the other great commander, on his end
of the front. By a strange set of circumstances, the assassi-
nation took place precisely at that moment: Both Grant
and Sherman had eminently succeeded and peace was at
hand.
* * *
Whenever Booth's motive in killing Lincoln has been
described by biographers, a point is made that it was both
Booth’s madness and his attempt to avenge the South that
caused him to commit the crime. Quite so, but the assassi-
nation made a lot more sense in terms of a northern plot by
conveniently removing the chief advocate of a soft peace
treaty just at the right moment!
This was not a trifling matter. Lincoln had proposed
to go beyond freeing the slaves: to franchise the more intel-
ligent ones among them to vote. But he had never envi-
sioned general and immediate equality of newly freed
blacks and their former masters. To the radicals, however,
this was an absolute must as was the total takeover of
southern assets. While Lincoln was only too ready to
accept any southern state back into the Union fold that was
willing to take the oath of loyalty, the radicals would hear
of no such thing. They foresaw a long period of military
government and rigid punishment for the secessionist
states.
Lincoln often expressed the hope that Jefferson Davis
and his chief aides might just leave the country to save him
the embarrassment of having to try them. Stanton and his
group, on the other hand, were pining for blood, and it was
on Stanton’s direct orders that the southern conspirators
who killed Lincoln were shown no mercy; it was Stanton
who refused to give in to popular sentiment against the
CHAPTER FIVE^Famous Ghosts
112
hanging of a woman and who insisted that Mrs. Surratt
share the fate of the other principal conspirators.
Stanton’s stance at Lincoln’s death — his remark that
“now he belongs to the ages” and his vigorous pursuit of
the murderers in no way mitigates a possible secret
involvement in a plot to kill the President. According to
Stefan Lorant, he once referred to his commander -in -chief
Lincoln as “the original gorilla.” He frequently refused to
carry out Lincoln’s orders when he thought them “too
soft.” On April 11, three days prior to the assassination,
Lincoln had incurred not only Stanton’s anger but that of
the entire Cabinet by arranging to allow the rebel Virginia
legislature to function as a state government. “Stanton and
the others were in a fury,” Carl Sandburg reports, and the
uproar was so loud Lincoln did not go through with his
intent. But it shows the deep cleavage that existed between
the liberal President and his radical government on the
very eve of his last day!
* * *
Then, too, there was the trial held in a hurry and
under circumstances no modern lawyer would call proper
or even constitutional. Evidence was presented in part,
important documents — such as Booth’s own diary — were
arbitrarily suppressed and kept out of the trial by order of
Secretary Stanton, who also had impounded Booth’s per-
sonal belongings and any and all documents seized at the
Surratt house on H Street, giving defense attorneys for the
accused, especially Mrs. Mary Surratt, not the slightest
opportunity to build a reasonable defense for their clients.
That was as it should be, from Stanton’s point of
view: fanning the popular hatred by letting the conspirators
appear in as unfavorable a light as possible, a quick convic-
tion and execution of the judgment, so that no sympathy
could rise among the public for the accused. There was
considerable oppostion to the hanging of Mrs. Surratt, and
committees demanding her pardon were indeed formed.
But by the time these committees were able to function
properly, the lady was dead, convicted on purely circum-
stantial evidence: Her house had been the meeting place for
the conspirators, but it was never proven that she was part
of the conspiracy. In fact, she disapproved of the murder
plot, according to the condemned, but the government
would not accept this view. Her own son John H. Surratt,
sitting the trial out in Canada, never lifted a hand to save
his mother — perhaps he thought Stanton would not dare
execute her.
* * *
Setting aside for the moment the identity of the spirit
communicator at the Surratt tavern, 1 examined certain
aspects of this new material: Certainly Sherman himself
could not have been part of an anti-Lincoln plot, for he
was a “dove,” strictly a Lincoln man. But a member of his
staff — perhaps the mysterious colonel — might well have
been involved. Sybil’s communicator had stated that Booth
knew all about those Army officers who were either using
him or were in league with him, making, in fact, the assas-
sination a dual plot of southern avengers and northern
hawks. If Booth knew these names, he might have put the
information into his personal diary. This diary was written
during his fight, while he was hiding from his pursuers in
the wooded swamplands of Maryland and Virginia.
At the conspiracy trial, the diary was not even men-
tioned, but at the subsequent trial of John H. Surratt, two
years later, it did come to light. That is, Lafayette Baker,
head of the Secret Service at the time of the murder, men-
tioned its existence, and it was promptly impounded for
the trial. But when it was produced as evidence in court,
only two pages were left in it — the rest had been torn out
by an unknown hand! Eighteen pages were missing. The
diary had been in Stanton’s possession from the moment of
its seizure until now, and it was highly unlikely that Booth
himself had so mutilated his own diary the moment he had
finished writing it! To the contrary, the diary was his
attempt to justify himself before his contemporaries, and
before history. The onus of guilt here falls heavily upon
Secretary Stanton again.
It is significant that whoever mutilated the diary had
somehow spared an entry dated April 21, 1865:
"Tonight I will once more try the river, with the
intention to cross; though I have a greater desire and
almost a mind to return to Washington, and in a measure
clear my name, which I feel I can do.”
* * *
Philip Van Doren Stern, author of The Man Who
Killed Lincoln, quite rightfully asks, how could a self-
confessed murderer clear his name unless he knew some-
thing that would involve other people than himself and his
associates? Stern also refers to David Herold’s confession in
which the young man quotes Booth as telling him that
there was a group of thirty-five men in Washington involved
in the plot.
Sybil's confused communicator kept saying certain
numbers, "forty-nine” and "thirty-four.” Could this be the
code for Stanton and a committee of thirty-four men?
Whoever they were, not one of the northern conspira-
tors ever confessed their part in the crime, so great was
the popular indignation at the deed.
John H. Surratt, after going free as a consequence of
the inability of his trial jury to agree on a verdict, tried his
hand at lecturing on the subject of the assassination. He
only gave a single lecture, which turned out a total failure.
Nobody was interested. But a statement Surratt made at
that lecture fortunately has come down to us. He admitted
that another group of conspirators had been working inde-
pendently and simultaneously to strike a blow at Lincoln.
That Surratt would make such a statement fits right
in with the facts. He was a courier and undercover man for
the Confederacy, with excellent contacts in Washington. It
was he who managed to have the telegraph go out of order
during the murder and to allow Booth to pass the sentry at
the Navy Yard bridge without difficulty. But was the com-
municator speaking through Mrs. Leek not holding back
information at first, only to admit finally that John Wilkes
knew the names of those others, after all?
This differs from Philip Van Doren Stern’s account,
in which Booth was puzzled about the identities of his
“unknown” allies. But then, Stern didn’t hold a trance ses-
sion at the Surratt tavern, either. Until our visit in Novem-
ber of 1967, the question seemed up in the air.
Surratt had assured Booth that “his sources” would
make sure that they all got away safely. In other words,
Booth and his associates were doing the dirty work for the
brain trust in Washington, with John Surratt serving both
sides and in a way linking them together in an identical
purpose — though for totally opposite reasons.
Interestingly enough, the entranced Sybil spoke of a
colonel who knew Sherman, and who would look after
him. . .he would supply a ticket. . . ! That ticket might have
been a steamer ticket for some foreign ship going from
Mexico to Europe, where Booth could be safe. But who
was the mysterious Major General Gee? Since Booth’s
group was planning to kill Grant as well, would he be
likely to be involved in the plot on the northern end?
Lincoln had asked Grant and Mrs. Grant to join him
at Ford’s Theatre the fateful evening; Grant had declined,
explaining that he wished to join his family in New Jersey
instead. Perhaps that was a natural enough excuse to turn
down the President’s invitation, but one might also con-
strue it differently: Did he know about the plot and did he
not wish to see his President shot?
Booth’s choice of the man to do away with Grant had
fallen on John Surratt, as soon as he learned of the change
in plans. Surratt was to get on the train that took Grant to
New Jersey. But Grant was not attacked; there is no evi-
dence whatever that Surratt ever took the train, and he
himself said he didn’t. Surratt, then, the go-between of the
two groups of conspirators, could easily have warned Grant
himself: The Booth group wanted to kill Lincoln and his
chief aides, to make the North powerless; but the northern
conspirators would have only wanted to have Lincoln
removed and certainly none of their own men. Even
though Grant was likely to carry out the President’s "soft”
peace plans while Lincoln was his commander-in-chief, he
was a soldier accustomed to taking orders and would carry
out with equal loyalty the hard-line policies of Lincoln’s
successor! Everything here points to Surratt as having been,
in effect, a double agent.
But was the idea of an involvement of General Grant
really so incredible?
Wilson Sullivan, author of a critical review of a
recently published volume of The Papers of Andrew
Assassination of a President:
Lincoln. Booth, and the Traitors Within
113
Johnson, has this to say of Grant, according to the Saturday
Review of Literature, March 16, 1968:
"Despite General Grant’s professed acceptance of
Lincoln’s policy of reconciliation with the Southern whites,
President Grant strongly supported and implemented the
notorious Ku Klux Act in 1871
This was a law practically disenfranchising Southern-
ers and placing them directly under federal courts rather
than local and state authorities.
It was Grant who executed the repressive policies of
the radical Republican Congress and who reverted to the
hard-line policies of the Stanton clique after he took politi-
cal office, undoing completely whatever lenient measures
President Johnson had instituted following the assassina-
tion of his predecessor.
But even before Grant became President, he was the
man in power. Since the end of the Civil War, civil admin-
istrations had governed the conquered South. In March
1867, these were replaced by military governments in five
military districts. The commanders of these districts were
directly responsible to General Grant and disregarded any
orders from President Johnson. Civil rights and state laws
were broadly ignored. The reasons for this perversion of
Lincoln’s policies were not only vengeance on the Confed-
eracy, but political considerations as well: By delaying the
voting rights of Southerners, a Republican Congress could
keep itself in office that much longer. Sullivan feels that
this attitude was largely responsible for the emergence of
the Ku Klux Klan and other racists organizations in the
South.
Had Lincoln lived out his term, he would no doubt
have implemented a policy of rapid reconciliation, the
South would have regained its political privileges quickly,
and the radical Republican party might have lost the next
election.
That party was led by Secretary Stanton and General
Grant!
What a convenient thing it was to have a southern
conspiracy at the proper time! All one had to do is get
aboard and ride the conspiracy to the successful
culmination — then blame it all on the South, thereby doing
a double job, heaping more guilt upon the defeated Con-
federacy and ridding the country of the one man who could
forestall the continuance in power of the Stanton-Grant
group!
That Stanton might have been the real leader in the
northern plot is not at all unlikely. The man was given to
rebellion when the situation demanded it. President
Andrew Johnson had tried to continue the Lincoln line in
the face of a hostile Congress and even a Cabinet domi-
nated by radicals. In early 1868, Johnson tried to oust Sec-
retary Stanton from his Cabinet because he realized that
Stanton was betraying his policies. But Stanton defied his
chief and barricaded himself in the War Department. This
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
intolerable situation led to Johnson’s impeachment pro-
ceedings, which failed by a single vote.
There was one more tragic figure connected with the
events that seemed to hold unresolved mysteries: Mrs.
Mary Surratt, widow of a Confederate spy and mother of
another. On April 14, 1865, she invited her son’s friend,
and one of her boarders, Louis Weichman, to accompany
her on an errand to her old country home, now a tavern, at
Surrattsville. Weichmann gladly obliged Mrs. Surratt and
went down to hire a buggy. At the tavern, Mrs. Surratt
went out carrying a package which she described to Weich-
mann as belonging to Booth. This package she handed to
tavernkeeper John Lloyd inside the house to safekeep for
Booth. It contained the guns the fugitives took with them
later, after the assassination had taken place.
Weichmann ’s testimony of this errand, and his
description of the meetings at the H Street house, were
largely responsible for Mrs. Surratt’s execution, even
though it was never shown that she had anything to do
with the murder plot itself. Weichmann ’s testimony
haunted him all his life, for Mrs. Surratt’s “ghost,” as
Lloyd Lewis puts it in Myths After Lincoln, “got up and
walked” in 1868 when her "avengers” made political capital
of her execution, charging Andrew Johnson with having
railroaded her to death.
Mrs. Surratt’s arrest at 1 1:15 P.M., April 17, 1865,
came as a surprise to her despite the misgivings she had
long harbored about her son’s involvement with Booth and
the other plotters. Lewis Paine’s untimely arrival at the
house after it had already been raided also helped seal her
fate. At the trial that followed, none of the accused was
ever allowed to speak, and their judges were doing every-
thing in their power to link the conspiracy with the confed-
erate government, even to the extent of producing false
witnesses, who later recanted their testimonies.
If anyone among the condemned had the makings of a
ghost, it was Mary Surratt.
Soon after her execution and burial, reports of her
haunting the house on H Street started. The four bodies of
the executed had been placed inside the prison walls and
the families were denied the right to bury them.
When Annie Surratt could not obtain her mother's
body, she sold the lodging house and moved away from the
home that had seen so much tragedy. The first buyer of
the house had little luck with it, however. Six weeks later
he sold it again, even though he had bought it very
cheaply. Other tenants came and went quickly, and accord-
ing to the Boston Post, which chronicled the fate of the
house, it was because they saw the ghost of Mrs. Surratt
clad in her execution robe walking the corridors of her
home! That was back in the 1860s and 1870s. Had Mary
Surratt found peace since then? Her body now lies buried
underneath a simple gravestone at Mount Olivet Cemetery.
The house at 604 H Street, N.W. still stands. In the
early 1900s, a Washington lady dined at the house. During
dinner, she noticed the figure of a young girl appear and
114
walk up the stairs. She recognized the distraught girl as the
spirit of Annie Surratt, reports John McKelway in the
Washington Star. The Chinese establishment now occupy-
ing the house does not mind the ghosts, either mother or
daughter. And Ford Theatre has just been restored as a
legitimate theatre, to break the ancient jinx.
Both Stern and Emanuel Hertz quote an incident in
the life of Robert Lincoln, whom a Mr. Young discovered
destroying many of his father’s private papers. When he
remonstrated with Lincoln, the son replied that "the papers
he was destroying contained the documentary evidence of
the treason of a member of Lincoln’s Cabinet, and he
thought it best for all that such evidence be destroyed.”
Mr. Young enlisted the help of Nicholas Murray
Butler, later head of Columbia University, New York, to
stop Robert Lincoln from continuing this destruction. The
remainder of the papers were then deposited in the Library
of Congress, but we don’t know how many documents
Robert Lincoln had already destroyed when he was halted.
There remains only the curious question as to the
identity of our communicator at the Surratt tavern in
November 1967.
“Shot down like a dog,” the voice had complained
through the psychic.
“Hunted like a dog,” Booth himself wrote in his
diary. Why would Edwin Booth, who had done everything
in his power to publicly repudiate his brother’s deed, and
who claimed that he had little direct contact with John
Wilkes in the years before the assassination — why would
he want to own this house that was so closely connected
with the tragedy and John Wilkes Booth? Who would
think that the “Prince of Players,” who certainly had no
record of any involvement in the plot to kill Lincoln,
should be drawn back by feelings of guilt to the house so
intimately connected with his brother John Wilkes?
But he did own it, and sell it to B. K. Miller,
Thomas Miller’s father!
I couldn’t find any Lowell, Virginia on my maps, but
there is a Laurel, Maryland not far from Surrattsville, or
today’s Clinton.
Much of the dialogue fits Edwin Booth, owner of the
house. Some of it doesn’t, and some of it might be deliber-
ate coverup.
Mark you, this is not a "ghost” in the usual sense,
for nobody reported Edwin Booth appearing to them at
this house. Mrs. Surratt might have done so, both here and
at her town house, but the principal character in this fasci-
nating story has evidently lacked the inner torment that is
the basis for ghostly manifestations beyond time and space.
Quite so, for to John Wilkes Booth the deed was the work
of a national hero, not to be ashamed of at all. If anything,
the ungrateful Confederacy owed him a debt of thanks.
No, I decided, John Wilkes Booth would not make a
convincing ghost. But Edwin? Was there more to his rela-
tionship with John Wilkes than the current published
record shows? "Ah, there’s the rub. . . ” the Prince of Play-
ers would say in one of his greatest roles.
Then, too, there is the peculiar mystery of John Sur-
ratt’s position. He had broken with John Wilkes Booth
weeks before the murder, he categorically stated at his trial
in 1867. Yes, he had been part of the earlier plot to abduct
Lincoln, but murder, no. That was not his game.
* * *
It was my contention, therefore, that John Surratt's
role as a dual agent seemed highly likely from the evidence
available to me, both through objective research and psy-
chic contacts. We may never find the mysterious colonel
on Sherman’s staff, nor be able to identify with certainty
Major General “Gee.” But War Secretary Stanton’s role
looms ominously and in sinister fashion behind the gener-
ally accepted story of the plot.
* * *
If Edwin Booth came through Sybil Leek to tell us
what he knew of his brother’s involvement in Lincoln’s
death, perhaps he did so because John Wilkes never got
around to clear his name himself. Stanton may have seen to
that, and the disappearing diary and unseeming haste of
the trial all fall into their proper places.
* * *
It is now over a hundred years after the event. Will
we have to wait that long before we know the complete
truth about another President’s murder?
Assassination of a President:
Lincoln, Booth, and the Traitors Within
115
* 10
A Visit with Woodrow Wilson
The Washington Post may have published an occa-
sional phantom story over the years, but not too many
ghost stories. Thus it was with a degree of skepticism that
I picked up a copy of that ebullient newspaper dated May
4, 1969. It had been sent to me by a well-meaning friend
and fan living in Washington. Mrs. Charles Marwick, her-
self a writer and married to a medical writer, is of Scottish
ancestry and quite prone to pick up a ghost story here and
there.
The piece in question had attracted her attention as
being a little bit above the usual cut of the journalistic
approach to that sort of material. Generally, my newspaper
colleagues like to make light of any psychic report, and if
the witnesses are respectable, or at least rational on the sur-
face of it, they will report the events but still add a funny
tag line or two to make sure that no one takes their own
attitude toward the supernatural too seriously.
Thus, when I saw the headline, “Playing Host to
Ghosts?" I was wormed. This looked like one of those
light-hearted, corny approaches to the psychic. I thought,
but when I started to read the report by Phil Casey I real-
ized that the reporter was trying to be fair to both his edi-
tor and the ghosts.
The Woodrow Wilson House at 2340 S St. NW is a
quiet, serene place most of the time, with only about
1 50 visitors a week but sometimes at night there’s more
noise than Jose Vasquez, the house man, can stand.
Vasquez has been hearing queer, and sometimes
loud, noises in the night a couple of times a year for the
past four years, but they didn't bother him much until
the stroke of midnight, Saturday, April 5.
“It was depressing,” he said. “If I were a nervous
man, it would be very bad.”
Vasquez, who is 32, is from Peru, speaks four lan-
guages, plays the piano and is a student at D.C. Teach-
ers College, where he intends to major in psychology.
He doesn't believe in ghosts, but he’s finding it hard to
hold that position the way things are going around that
house.
He was downstairs playing the piano that night, he
said, and he was all alone (his wife, a practical nurse,
was at work at the National Institute of Health).
"I felt that someone was behind me, watching me,"
he said. "My neck felt funny. You know? But there was
no one there. I looked."
Later, Vasquez was walking up to his fourth-floor
apartment when he heard something behind him on the
third floor, near the bedrooms of the World War I Pres-
ident and his wife.
“The steps were loud,” he said, “and heavy, like a
man.”
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
The footsteps went into Mrs. Wilson’s bedroom, and
Vasquez went in, too. He kept hearing the steps in the
room, and was in a state of almost total unhappiness.
“I go to this comer,” he said, going to the corner,
“and I stand here and wait. I waited a long time and
then I hear the steps again, going into the hall and to
Mr. Wilson's bedroom. I follow.”
At that point, listening to the heavy footsteps at the
foot of the President’s four-poster bed, Vasquez decided
to hurry upstairs.
"And when I do, the steps they came running behind
me," he said, "and they follow me, bump, bump, bump,
up the stairs. I am very nervous.”
The back stairway is iron, and noisy, which didn’t
help any, Vasquez said, but he went on up to his
apartment.
And then, he heard no more footsteps and he was
glad about that.
Once, some time back, Vasquez was in his tub when
he heard some knocking noises on the tub.
“I knock right back, like this," he said, thumping the
tub, "and the noise stops."
His wife has never heard the footsteps or the tub
knocking, but she hears an occasional noise and some-
times she wakes up in the night under the impression
that someone is standing at the foot of the bed. There
never is anyone she can see.
I talked to Mr. Vasquez, and he sounded like a very
nice, rational fellow. He had nothing to add to the story
that had appeared in the Post, but he referred me to the
curator of the Wilson House for permission to visit.
I contacted Ruth Dillon and patiently explained the
purpose of my investigation. As much as I tried to stress
the historic aspects of it, she already knew from my name
what I was after, and to my surprise did not object; so long
as I did not publish anything untrue, she did not mind my
talking about any specters that might be on the premises,
famous or otherwise.
I knew very little about the late Woodrow Wilson
myself, except what one generally knows of any President
of the United States, and I made it a point not to read up
on him. Instead I called Ethel Johnson Meyers, my good
friend and many times my medium, and arranged for her
to accompany me to Washington in the near future. Due
to a sudden cancellation in Mrs. Meyers’ busy schedule,
the date we were able to set was May 6, 1969, three days
after the reporter had written his article. A good friend of
mine, Mrs. Nicole Jackson, offered to drive us around
since I do not drive a car, and the three of us arrived at the
Woodrow Wilson House at the appointed hour.
That hour was 1 1 A. M., on a sunny and very warm
May 6. The house was majestic, even from the outside. It
looked the very essence of a presidential mansion. It looked
that way to me today, although I gather that in the days
when this house was built, such houses were not consid-
ered ostentatious but rather ordinary elegant town houses
for those who could afford them.
116
Now the property of the National Trust, the house
has been turned into a museum, and visitors are admitted
at certain hours of the day. Four stories high, it also boasts
a magnificent garden in the back and offers the privacy of a
country estate along with the convenience of a town house.
It is difficult to accurately describe the style of this build-
ing. Built for Henry Parker Fairbanks in 1915, the red-
brick Georgian house was designed by the architect Waddy
B. Wood. Late in 1920, as President Wilson's second term
neared its end, Mrs. Wilson searched for an appropriate
residence. She happened to be passing the house on
S Street, which she is later quoted as describing as “an
unpretentious, comfortable, dignified house, fitted to the
needs of a gentleman.” On December 14 of that year,
according to the brochure published by the National Trust
about the Woodrow Wilson House, Mr. Wilson insisted
that his wife attend a concert, and when she returned, pre-
sented her with the deed to the property. The next day
they visited the house, where Mr. Wilson gave her a piece
of sod, representing the land, and the key to one of the
doors, representing the house — telling her this was an old
Scottish custom.
The Wilsons made certain changes, such as the
installation of an elevator and the addition of a billiard
room. They also constructed a brick garage and placed iron
gates at the entrance to the drive. Some of the rooms were
changed, and a large library was constructed to hold Mr.
Wilson’s eight thousand books. Today the library contains
a large collection of items connected with President Wilson
and his contemporaries. These are mainly presentation
copies of books and documents.
President Wilson lived in the house with his second
wife, Edith Bolling Wilson. She was a devoted companion
to him during his last years, went to Europe with him to
attend peace conferences, and generally traveled with the
President. She liked to read to him and he, conversely,
liked to read to her, and in general they were a very close
and devoted couple.
At the end of his second term he retired to this
house, and died here three years later on February 3, 1924.
Mrs. Wilson, who later presented the house to the Ameri-
can people under the guardianship of the National Trust,
also lived and died there on December 28, 1961 , which
happened to be the 105th anniversary of President Wil-
son's birth.
By and large the rooms have been kept as they were
during their tenancy, with the sole addition of certain items
such as furniture, antiquities, and documents pertaining to
the Wilsons’ careers and lifetimes. If the house is a
museum, it doesn’t look like one. It is more like a shrine —
but not an ostentatious one — to what many consider a
great American.
As is my custom, I let Ethel Meyers — who did not
know she was in the Wilson House — roam the premises
under investigation at will, so that she could get her psy-
chic bearings. She walked to and fro, puzzled here, sure of
something or other there, without saying anything. I fol-
lowed her as close as I could. Finally, she walked up the
stairs and came down again in a hurry, pointing up
towards the top floors.
“What is it?” I asked Ethel.
"Someone up there,” she mumbled, and looked at
me.
“Let us go in here,” I suggested, as some visitors
were coming in through the front door. I did not want to
create a sensation with my investigation, as I had promised
to do the whole thing quietly and unobtrusively.
We stepped into a parlor to one side of the main
entrance. There I asked Ethel to take a seat in one of the
old chairs and try to give me her impressions of what she
had just experienced upstairs.
At this point, the medium’s control personality,
Albert, took over.
“So many detached things are coming in. I’m getting
the presence of an individual here. I haven’t had an impres-
sion like this before, it seems. Heed kindly the light which
we throw on this to you now. That is a hymn — ‘Lead,
Kindly Light.’”
"Is there anything in this house that is causing
disturbances?”
“There is restlessness, where those who remember
certain things. They are like fertile fields, to create over a
past that is not understood.”
“Who is the communicator, do you think?”
Albert replied: “I would say it is himself , in the pic-
ture on the mantelpiece.”
“What does he want you to do, or say?”
“I heard him distinctly say that the family rows
should not be made public. That those are thought levels
in the house. Angry voices sometimes rise. There are also
others who have things to say for themselves, beyond
that.”
“What is the row?”
“Let them speak for themselves.”
“What is there that he wants to do — is there any-
thing specific he would like us to know?”
“That the world going forward is more pleasant now
than going for me backwards, because true statements are
coming forth to make wider reach for man when he shakes
his hands across oceans with his neighbors. So now they are,
not before; they were in your back yard so to speak under
the shade of other trees.”
The "resident spirit” was now talking directly to us.
“I want to say, if you will give me audience while I
am here, that this is my pleasurable moment, to lift the
curtain to show you that the mortal enemy will become the
great friend, soon now. That my puny dream of yesteryear
has been gradually realized — the brotherhood of man. And
it becomes clearer, closer to the next century. It is here, for
us on our side. I see it more clearly from here. I am not
A Visit with Woodrow Wilson
117
sure about that designated time. But it is the brotherhood
of man, when the religious problem is lifted and the truth
is seen, and all men stand equal to other men, neighbors,
enemies.”
“Who are you referring to?”
“I come back again to tell you, that the hands that
will reach over the mighty ocean will soon clasp! Hands
lean forward to grasp them. My puny dream, my puny
ideal, takes form, and I look upon it and I am proud as a
small part but an integral part of that. It will bloom, the
period of gestation is about over, when this will come to
light. And I give great thanks to the withinness that I have
had so small a part in the integral whole. I tell you it is all a
part of the period of gestation before the dawn.”
"When will the dawn come?”
“Just before the turn of the century. Eighty-eight,
— nine.”
“And until then?”
“The period of gestation must go through its tortu-
ous ways. But it will dawn, it will dawn and not only on
this terra firma. It will dawn even over this city, and it will
be more a part of world -state as I saw it in my very close
view of the world. I was given this dream, and I have lived
by it.”
“Do you want us to do anything about your family,
or your friends? Tell them anything specifically?”
"That my soul lives on, and that it will return when
I see the turn of the century, and that I may look face to
face with that which I saw; that which was born within my
consciousness.”
"Whom should we give this message to?”
"The one living member of my family.”
"What is this member’s name?”
“Alice.”
“Anything else?”
“Just mundane moments of the lives of many fallible
mortals are inconsequential. Posterity has no need for it. It
has only the need for that which is coming — the bright
new dawn. We live to tell you this too. God rest the soul
of man; it will win. Science will win. Man’s soul will be
free to know its own importance. I have forgotten the
future; I look upon it all, here, as my integral part of the
world.”
"We will then go and have a look at that which was
your house. Thank you for telling me what you did.”
“God bless you — that is, the God that is your own
true God.”
“Thank you.”
“Hello — Albert.”
“Albert — is everything alright?”
“She’s fine. 1 will release her.”
“Thank you.”
"I guess you know with whom you were speaking.”
“Yes.”
CHAPTER FIVE; Famous Ghosts
“It was difficult for him to take over.”
Now Ethel came out of trance, none the worse for it.
I questioned her about the room we were in.
“Deals have been made in this room.”
“What kind of deals?”
"Political deals. There is a heavy-set man with side-
burns here.”
“Is he somebody of importance?”
”1 would say so. He has not too much hair up here.
Could have a beard.”
“What would he be doing here?”
“Well he seems to take over the room. To make a
deal, of some kind.”
"What kind of deal?”
"I don’t think he’s an American.”
“If you saw him would you recognize him?”
“I think I would, yes.”
I walked Ethel into the huge room with the fireplace,
pointing at various photographs lined up on top of it.
“Would this be the man?”
“Oh, that’s George isn’t it?”
“No. Could this be the man?”
“That’s Richard then.”
"No, it’s not Richard and it’s not George, but is it the
man that you saw?”
“He’s a little more gray here than he was when I — if
that’s the man. But it could be, yes.” She had just identi-
fied a world-famous statesman of World War I vintage.
We had now arrived on the third floor. A guide took
us around and pointed out the elevator and the iron stairs.
We walked down again and stopped at the grand piano.
“Ethel,” I asked, “do you think that this piano has
been used recently?”
"I would say it has. Ghostly, too. I think this is a
whirlpool right here. I don’t know whether Wilson was a
good pianist or not, but he has touched it.”
“Do you feel he is the one that is in the house?”
“I don’t think that he is haunting it, but present,
yes.”
* * *
\
I carefully checked into the history of the house, to
see whether some tragedy or other unusual happenings
might have produced a genuine ghost. There was nothing
in the background of the house to indicate that such an
event had ever taken place. How then was one to explain
the footsteps? What about the presence Mr. Vasquez had
felt? Since most of the phenomena occurred upstairs, one is
led to believe that they might be connected with some of
the servants or someone living at that level of the house.
At the period when the Wilsons had the house, the top
floor was certainly used as servants’ quarters. But the
Wilsons’ own bedroom and living quarters were also
upstairs, and the footsteps and the feeling of a presence
was not restricted to the topmost floor, it would appear.
118
Then, too, the expressions used by the entranced
medium indicate a person other than an ordinary servant.
There are several curious references in the transcript of the
tape taken while Ethel Johnson Meyers was in trance, and
afterwards when she spoke to me clairvoyantly. First of all,
the reference to a hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light,” would
indeed be in character for President Wilson. He was a son
of a Presbyterian minister, and certainly grew up under the
influence of his father as far as religion and expressions
were concerned. The references to “hands across the sea”
would be unimportant if Ethel Johnson Meyers had known
that she was in the Wilson House. However, she did not
connect the house with President Wilson at the time she
made the statement. The “puny dream” referred to of unit-
ing the world was certainly President Wilson’s uppermost
thought and desire. Perhaps Woodrow Wilson will be
known as the "Peace President” in future history books —
even though he was in office during a war, he went into
that war with a genuine and sincere desire to end all wars.
"To make the world safe for democracy” was one of his
best-known slogans. Thus, the expressions relayed by the
medium seem to me to be entirely in keeping with that
spirit.
True, the entity speaking through the medium did
not come forward and say, “I am Woodrow Wilson.” I
would not have expected it. That would have been ostenta-
tious and entirely out of character for the quiet, soft-
spoken gentleman Wilson was.
* * *
Is the Woodrow Wilson House haunted? Is the rest-
less spirit of the “Peace President” once more about,
because of what is transpiring in his beloved Washington?
Is he aroused by the absence of peace even in his own
homeland, let alone abroad? Truly, the conditions to cause
a restless entity to remain disturbed are all present.
Why is he trying to make contact with the physical
world at this time? The man who reported his experiences
to the Washington Post evidently is mediumistic. There are
very few people staying overnight in the house at the pre-
sent time. Very likely the restless spirit of President
Wilson — if indeed it is his spirit — found it convenient to
contact this man, despite his comparatively unimportant
position. But because he was psychic he presented a chan-
nel through which the President — if it was indeed he —
could express himself and reach the outer world, the world
that seems to be so much in need of peace today.
In a sense he has succeeded in his efforts. Because of
the experiences of Mr. Vasquez I became aware of the
hauntings at the Wilson House. My visit and the trance
condition into which I placed Ethel Johnson Meyers
resulted in a certain contact. There is every reason to
believe that this contact was the President himself.
As we left the house, I questioned Mrs. Meyers once
again about the man she had clairvoyantly seen walking
about the house. Without thinking, she described the tall
dignified figure of Woodrow Wilson. It may not constitute
absolute proof in terms of parapsychology, of course, but I
have the feeling that we did indeed make contact with the
restless and truly perturbed spirit of Woodrow Wilson,
and that this spirit somehow wants me to tell the world
how concerned he is about the state it is in.
» 11
Ring Around the White House
I DON’T THINK ANYONE has had more trouble getting
into the White House for a specific purpose than I except,
perhaps, some presidential aspirants such as Thomas E.
Dewey. Mr. Dewey’s purpose was a lot easier to explain
than mine, to begin with. How do you tell an official at the
presidential mansion that you would like to go to the Lin-
coln Bedroom to see whether Lincoln’s ghost is still there?
How do you make it plain that you’re not looking for sen-
sationalism, that you’re not bringing along a whole covey
of newspaper people, all of which can only lead to unfavor-
able publicity for the inhabitants of the White House,
whoever they may be at the time?
Naturally, this was the very difficult task to which I
had put myself several years ago. Originally when I was
collecting material for Window to the Past, I had envisioned
myself going to the Lincoln Bedroom and possibly the East
Room in the White House, hoping to verify and authenti-
cate apparitions that had occurred to a number of people in
those areas. But all my repeated requests for permission to
visit the White House in the company of a reputable psy-
chic were turned down. Even when I promised to submit
my findings and the writings based on those findings to
White House scrutiny prior to publication, I was told that
my request could not be granted.
The first reason given was that it was not convenient
because the President and his family were in. Then it was
not convenient because they would be away. Once I was
turned down because my visit could not be cleared suffi-
ciently with Security and anyway, that part of the White
House I wanted to visit was private.
I never gave up. Deep down I had the feeling that
the White House belongs to the people and is not a piece
of real estate on which even the presidential family may
hang out a sign, “No Trespassers.” I still think so. How-
Ring Around the White House
119
ever, I got nowhere as long as the Johnsons were in the
White House.
I tried again and again. A colonel stationed in the
White House, whom I met through Countess Gertrude
d’Amecourt, a mutual friend, tried hard to get permission
for me to come and investigate. He too failed.
Next, I received a letter, quite unexpectedly, from the
Reverend Thomas W. Dettman of Niagara, Wisconsin. He
knew a number of very prominent men in the federal gov-
ernment and offered to get me the permission I needed.
These men, he explained, had handled government investi-
gations for him before, and he was sure they would be
happy to be of assistance if he asked them. He was even
sure they would carry a lot of weight with the President.
They knew him well, he asserted. Mr. Dettman had been
associated with the Wisconsin Nixon for President Com-
mittee, and offered to help in any way he could.
After thanking Mr. Dettman for his offer, I heard
nothing further for a time. Then he wrote me again
explaining that he had as yet not been able to get me into
the Lincoln Bedroom, but that he was still working on it.
He had asked the help of Representative John Byrnes of
Wisconsin in the matter, and I would hear further about it.
Then Mr. Dettman informed me that he had managed to
arrange for me to be given “a special tour” of the White
House, and, to the best of his knowledge, that included the
East Room. He then asked that I contact William E. Tim-
mons, Assistant to the President, for details.
I was, of course, elated. Imagine, a special tour of the
White House! What could be better than that?
With his letter, Mr. Dettman had included a letter
from Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin, in which the
Senator noted that I would not be able to do research in
the Lincoln Bedroom, but that I would be given the special
tour of the White House.
I hurriedly wrote a thank-you note to Mr. Dettman,
and started to make plans to bring a medium to Washing-
ton with me. A few days later Mr. Dettman wrote me
again.
He had received a call from the White House con-
cerning the tour. He could, he explained, in no way guar-
antee what kind of tour I would be given, nor what I would
see. He had done everything possible to help me and
hoped I would not be disappointed.
Whether my own sixth sense was working or not, 1
suddenly thought I had better look into the nature of that
“special tour” myself. I wrote and asked whether I would
be permitted to spend half an hour in the East Room, since
the Lincoln Bedroom had been denied me. Back came a
letter dated May 14, 1970, on White House stationery, and
signed by John S. Davies, Special Assistant to the Presi-
dent, Office White House Visitors.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
Senator Proxmire’s recent letter to Mr. William Tim-
mons concerning your most recent request to visit the
White House has been referred to me, as this office is
responsible for White House visitors. Unfortunately, as
we have pointed out, we are unable to arrange for you to
visit the Lincoln Bedroom, as this room is in the Presi-
dent’s personal residence area, which is not open to visi-
tors. If you wish to arrange an early-morning special
tour, I suggest you contact Senator Proxmire 's office.
You are also most welcome to come to the White House
any time during the regular visiting hours.
I decided to telephone Mr. Davies since the day of
my planned visit was close at hand. It was only then that I
realized what that famous “special tour” really was. It
meant that I, along with who else might be present at the
time at the White House gates, would be permitted to walk
through the part of the White House open to all visitors. I
couldn’t bring a tape recorder. I could not sit down or tarry
along the way. I had to follow along with the group,
glance up at whatever might be interesting, and be on my
way again like a good little citizen. What, then, was so spe-
cial about that tour, I inquired? Nothing really, I was told,
but that is what it is known as. It is called a special tour
because you have to have the request of either a Senator or
a Representative from your home state.
I canceled my visit and dismissed the medium. But
my reading public is large, and other offers to help me
came my way.
Debbie Fitz is a teenage college student who wanted
me to lecture at her school. In return, she offered to get me
into the White House, or at least try to. I smiled at her
courage, but told her to go right ahead and try. She wrote a
letter to Miss Nixon, whom she thought would be favor-
able to her request, being of the same age group and all
that. After explaining her own interest in ESP research and
the importance this field has in this day and age for the
young, she went on to explain who I was and that I had
previously been denied admittance to the White House
areas I wished to do research in. She wrote:
All he wants to do is take a psychic medium into the
room and scientifically record any phenomena that may
exist. This will not involve staying overnight; it can be
done during the day at your convenience. All investiga-
tions are conducted in a scientific manner and are fully
documented. It is well known that Lincoln himself was
psychic and held seances in the White House. Wouldn’t
you, as a student of White House history and a member
of the young, open-minded generation, like to find out
whether or not this room is really haunted? This will
also provide an opportunity for young people who are
interested in other things besides riots and demonstra-
tions to benefit intellectually from Mr. Holzer’s efforts.
Debbie Fitz never received a reply or an acknowledg-
ment. I, of course, never heard about the matter again.
Try as I would, I was rebuffed. Just the same, interest
in the haunted aspects of the nation’s Executive Mansion
120
remains at a high level. Several Washington newspapers
carried stories featuring some of the psychic occurrences
inside the White House, and whenever I appeared
on Washington television, I was invariably asked about the
ghosts at the White House. Perhaps the best account of the
psychic state of affairs at number 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue was written by the Washington Post reporter,
Jacqueline Lawrence.
“The most troubled spirit of 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue is Abraham Lincoln, who during his own lifetime
claimed to receive regular visits from his two dead sons,
Pat and Willie.” After reporting the well-known premoni-
tory dream in which Lincoln saw himself dead in a casket
in the East Room, Miss Lawrence goes on to report that
Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s servant, Mary Evan, had
reported seeing Lincoln on the bed in the northwest bed-
room, pulling on his boots. “Other servants said they had
seen him lying quietly in his bed, and still others vowed
that he periodically stood at the oval window over the main
entrance of the White House. Mrs. Roosevelt herself never
saw Lincoln, but she did admit that when working late she
frequently felt a ghostly sort of presence.”
Amongst the visitors to the White House who had
experienced psychic occurrences was the late Queen Wil-
helmina of the Netherlands. Asleep in the Queen’s Bed-
room, she heard someone knock at her door, got up,
opened it, and saw the ghost of President Lincoln standing
there looking at her. She fainted, and by the time she had
come to he was gone.
“According to the legend, the spirit of Lincoln is
especially troubled and restless on the eve of national
calamities such as war.” Under the circumstances, one
should expect the shade of President Lincoln to be in
around-the-clock attendance these days and nights.
* * *
But Lincoln is not the only ghost at the White
House. Household members of President Taft have
observed the ghost of Abigail Adams walking right through
the closed doors of the East Room with her arms out-
stretched. And who knows what other specters reside in
these ancient and troubled walls?
That all is not known about the White House may
be seen from a dispatch of the New York Daily News dated
November 25, 1969, concerning two new rooms unearthed
at the White House. “Two hitherto unknown rooms,
believed to date back to the time of Thomas Jefferson,
have been unearthed in the White House a few yards away
from the presidential swimming pool. The discovery was
made as excavation continued on the larger work area for
the White House press corps. The subterranean rooms,
which White House curator James Ketchum described as
storage or coal bins, were believed among the earliest built
at the White House. Filled with dirt, they contained bro-
ken artifacts believed to date back to President Lincoln’s
administration.”
When I discussed my difficulties in receiving permis-
sion for a White House investigation with prominent peo-
ple in Washington, it was suggested to me that I turn my
attention to Ford’s Theatre, or the Parker House — both
places associated with the death of President Lincoln. I
have not done so, for the simple reason that in my estima-
tion the ghost of Lincoln is nowhere else to be found but
where it mattered to him: in the White House. If there is a
transitory impression left behind at Ford’s Theatre, where
he was shot, or the Parker House, where he eventually died
some hours later, it would only be an imprint from the
past. I am sure that the surviving personality of President
Lincoln is to a degree attached to the White House
because of unfinished business. I do not think that this is
unfinished only of his own time. So much of it has never
been finished to this very day, nor is the present adminis-
tration in any way finishing it. To the contrary. If there
ever was any reason for Lincoln to be disturbed, it is now.
The Emancipation Proclamation, for which he stood and
which was in a way the rebirth of our country, is still only
in part reality. Lincoln's desire for peace is hardly met in
these troubled times. I am sure that the disturbances at the
White House have never ceased. Only a couple of years
ago, Lynda, one of the Johnson daughters, heard someone
knock at her door, opened it, and found no one outside.
Telephone calls have been put through to members of the
presidential family, and there has been no one on the other
end of the line. Moreover, on investigating, it was found
that the White House operators had not rung the particular
extension telephones.
It is very difficult to dismiss such occurrences as
products of imagination, coincidence, or “settling of an old
house.” Everyone except a moron knows the difference
between human footsteps caused by feet encased with boots
or shoes, and the normal noises of an old house settling
slowly and a little at a time on its foundation.
Ring Around the White House
121
» 12
The Ill-fated Kennedys:
From Visions to Ghosts
“When are you going to go down to Dallas and find out
about President Kennedy?” the pleasant visitor inquired.
He was a schoolteacher who had come to me to seek advice
on how to start a course in parapsychology in his part of
the country.
The question about President Kennedy was hardly
new. I had been asked the same question in various forms
ever since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, as if I and
my psychic helpers had the duty to use our combined tal-
ents to find out what really happened at the School Book
Depository in Dallas. I suppose similar conditions pre-
vailed after the death of Abraham Lincoln. People’s curios-
ity had been aroused, and with so many unconfirmed
rumors making the rounds the matter of a President’s sud-
den death does become a major topic of conversation and
inquiry.
I wasn’t there when Lincoln was shot; I was around
when President Kennedy was murdered. Thus I am in a
fairly good position to trace the public interest with the
assassination from the very start.
I assured my visitor that so far I had no plans to go
down to Dallas with a medium and find out what “really”
happened. I have said so on television many times. When I
was reminded that the Abraham Lincoln murder also left
some unanswered questions and that I had indeed investi-
gated it and come up with startlingly new results in my
book Window to the Past, I rejoined that there was one
basic difference between the Kennedy death and the assas-
sination of President Lincoln: Lincoln’s ghost has been
seen repeatedly by reliable witnesses in the White House;
so far I have not received any reliable reports of ghostly
sightings concerning the late President Kennedy. In my
opinion, this meant that the restlessness that caused Lin-
coln to remain in what used to be his working world has
not caused John F. Kennedy to do likewise.
But I am not a hundred per cent sure any longer.
Having learned how difficult it is to get information about
such matters in Washington, or to gain admission to the
White House as anything but a casual tourist — or, of
course, on official business — I am also convinced that
much may be suppressed or simply disregarded by those to
whom experiences have happened simply because we live
in a time when psychic phenomena can still embarrass
those to whom they occur, especially if they have a position
of importance.
But even if John Fitzgerald Kennedy is not walking
the corridors of the White House at night, bemoaning his
untimely demise or trying to right the many wrongs that
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
have happened in this country since he left us, he is appar-
ently doing something far better. He communicates, under
special conditions and with special people. He is far from
“dead and gone,” if I am to believe those to whom these
experiences have come. Naturally, one must sift the fantasy
from the real thing — even more so when we are dealing
with a famous person. I have done so, and I have looked
very closely at the record of people who have reported to
me psychic experiences dealing with the Kennedy family. I
have eliminated a number of such reports simply because I
could not find myself wholly convinced that the one who
reported it was entirely balanced. I have also eliminated
many other reports, not because I had doubts about the
emotional stability of those who had made the reports, but
because the reports were far too general and vague to be
evidential even in the broadest sense. Material that was
unsupported by witnesses, or material that was presented
after the fact, was of course disregarded.
With all that in mind, I have come to the conclusion
that the Kennedy destiny was something that could not
have been avoided whether or not one accepts the old Irish
Kennedy curse as factual.
Even the ghostly Kennedys are part and parcel of
American life at the present. Why they must pay so high a
price in suffering, I cannot guess. But it is true that the
Irish forebears of the American Kennedys have also suf-
fered an unusually high percentage of violent deaths over
the years, mainly on the male side of the family. There is,
of course, the tradition that way back in the Middle Ages a
Kennedy was cursed for having incurred the wrath of some
private local enemy. As a result of the curse, he and all his
male descendants were to die violently one by one. To dis-
miss curses as fantasies, or at the very best workable only
because of fear symptoms, would not be accurate. I had
great doubts the effectiveness of curses until I came across
several cases that allowed of no other explanation. In par-
ticular, I refer back to the case of the Wurmbrand curse
reported by me in Ghosts of the Golden West. In that case
the last male descendant of an illustrious family died under
mysterious circumstances quite unexpectedly even while
under the care of doctors in a hospital. Thus, if the
Kennedy curse is operative, nothing much can be done
about it.
Perhaps I should briefly explain the distinction
between ghosts and spirits here, since so much of the
Kennedy material is of the latter kind rather than the for-
mer. Ghosts are generally tied to houses or definite places
where their physical bodies died tragically, or at least in a
state of unhappiness. They are unable to leave the
premises, so to speak, and can only repeat the pattern of
their final moments, and are for all practical purposes not
fully cognizant of their true state. They can be compared
with psychotics in the physical state, and must first be
freed from their own self-imposed delusions to be able to
answer, if possible through a trance medium, or to leave
and become free spirits out in what Dr. Joseph Rhine of
122
Duke University has called “the world of the mind,” and
which I generally refer to as the non-physical world.
Spirits, on the other hand, are really people, like you
and me, who have left the physical body but are very much
alive in a thinner, etheric body, with which they are able to
function pretty much the same as they did in the physical
body, except that they are now no longer weighed down by
physical objects, distances, time, and space. The majority
of those who die become free spirits, and only a tiny frac-
tion are unable to proceed to the next stage but must
remain behind because of emotional difficulties. Those who
have gone on are not necessarily gone forever, but to the
contrary they are able and frequently anxious to keep a
hand in situations they have left unfinished on the earth
plane. Death by violence or under tragic conditions does
not necessarily create a ghost. Some such conditions may
indeed create the ghost syndrome, but many others do not.
I should think that President Kennedy is in the latter
group — that is to say, a free spirit capable of continuing an
interest in the world he left behind. Why this is so, I will
show in the next pages.
* * *
The R. Lumber Company is a prosperous firm spe-
cializing in the manufacture and wholesale of lumber. It is
located in Georgia and the owners, Mr. and Mrs. Bernard
R., are respected citizens in their community. It was in
April of 1970 that Mrs. R. contacted me. "I have just fin-
ished reading your book, Life After Death, and could not
resist your invitation to share a strange experience with
you,” she explained, “hoping that you can give me some
opinion regarding its authenticity.
"I have not had an opportunity to discuss what hap-
pened with anyone who is in any way psychic or clairvoy-
ant. I have never tried to contact anyone close to the
Kennedy s about this, as of course I know they must have
received thousands of letters. Many times I feel a little
guilty about not even trying to contact Mrs. Kennedy and
the children, if indeed it could have been a genuine last
message from the President. It strikes me as odd that we
might have received it or imagined we received it. We were
never fans of the Kennedys, and although we were cer-
tainly sympathetic to the loss of our President, we were not
as emotionally upset as many of our friends were who were
ardent admirers.
"I am in no way psychic, nor have I ever had any
supernatural experience before. I am a young homemaker
and businesswoman, and cannot offer any possible explana-
tion for what happened.
“On Sunday night, November 24, 1963, following
John F. Kennedy’s assassination, my family and I were at
home watching on television the procession going through
the Capitol paying their last respects. I was feeling very
depressed, especially since that afternoon Lee Oswald had
also been killed and I felt we would never know the full
story of the assassination. For some strange reason, I sud-
denly thought of the Ouija board, although I have never
taken the answers seriously and certainly have never before
consulted it about anything of importance. I asked my
teenage daughter to work the board with me, and we went
into another room. I had never tried to ‘communicate with
the dead.’ I don’t know why I had the courage to ask the
questions I did on that night, but somehow, I felt com-
pelled to go on:
Question: Will our country be in danger without Kennedy?
Answer: Strong with, weak without Kennedy, plot — stop.
Question: Will Ruby tell why President was killed?
Answer: Ruby does not know, only Oswald and I know.
Sorry.
Question: Will we ever know why Kennedy was killed?
Answer: Underground and Oswald know, Ruby does not
know, gangland leader caught in plot.
Question: Who is gangland leader?
Answer: Can’t tell now.
Question: Why did Oswald hate President?
Answer: Negroes, civil rights bill.
Question: Flave Oswald’s and Kennedy's spirits met?
Answer: Yes. No hard feelings in Fleaven.
Question: Are you in contact with Kennedy?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Does Kennedy have a message he would send
through us?
Answer: Yes, yes, yes, tell J., C., and J.J. about this.
Thanks, JFK.
Question: Can Kennedy give us some nickname to authen-
ticate this?
Answer: Only nickname ‘John John.’
Question: Do you really want us to contact someone?
Answer: Yes, but wait ‘til after my funeral.
Question: Flow can we be sure Jackie will see our letter?
Answer: Write personal, not sympathy business.
Question: Is there something personal you could tell us to
confirm this message?
Answer: Prying public knows all.
Question: Just one nickname you could give us?
Answer: J.J. (John John) likes to swim lots, called ‘Daddy’s
little swimmer boy.’ Does that help? JFK.
Question: Anything else?
Answer: J.J. likes to play secret game and bunny.
Question: What was your Navy Serial number?
The Ill-fated Kennedys:
From Visions to Ghosts
123
Answer: 109 P.T. (jg) Skipper — 5905. [seemed confused]
Question: Can we contact you again?
Answer: You, JFK, not JFK you.
Question: Give us address of your new home.
Answer: Snake Mountain Road.
Question: Will Mrs. Kennedy believe this, does she believe
in the supernatural?
Answer: Some — tired — that’s all tonight.
"At this point the planchette slid off the bottom of
the board marked ‘Good-by’ and we attempted no further
questions that night.
“The board at all times answered our questions
swiftly and deliberately, without hesitation. It moved so
rapidly, in fact, that my daughter and I could not keep up
with the message as it came. We called out the letters to my
eleven -year -old daughter who wrote them down, and we
had to unscramble the words after we had received the
entire message. We had no intention of trying to communi-
cate directly with President Kennedy. I cannot tell you how
frightened I was when I asked if there was a message he
would send and the message came signed ‘JFK.’
“For several days after, I could not believe the mes-
sage was genuine. I have written Mrs. Kennedy several let-
ters trying to explain what happened, but have never had
the courage to mail them.
“None of the answers obtained are sensational, most
are things we could have known or guessed. The answers
given about ‘John John’ and ‘secret game’ and ‘bunny’
were in a magazine which my children had read and 1 had
not. However, the answer about John John being called
‘Daddy’s little swimmer boy’ is something none of us have
ever heard or read. I have researched numerous articles
written about the Kennedys during the last two years and
have not found any reference to this. I could not persuade
my daughter to touch the board again for days. We tried
several times in December 1963, but were unsuccessful.
One night, just before Christmas, a friend of mine per-
suaded my daughter to work the board with her. Perhaps
the most surprising message came at this time, and it was
also the last one we ever received. We are all Protestant
and the message was inconsistent with our religious beliefs.
When they asked if there was a message from President
Kennedy, the planchette spelled out immediately “Thanks
for your prayers while I was in Purgatory, JFK.”‘
* * *
%
I have said many times in print and.on television that
I take a dim view of Ouija boards in general. Most of the
material obtained from the use of this instrument merely
reflects the unconscious of one or both sitters. Occasion-
ally, however, Ouija boards have been able to tap the psy-
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
chic levels of a person and come up with the same kind of
veridical material a clairvoyant person might come up with.
Thus, to dismiss the experiences of Mrs. R. merely because
the material was obtained through a Ouija board would not
be fair. Taking into account the circumstances, the back-
ground of the operators, and their seeming reluctance to
seek out such channels of communication, I must dismiss
ulterior motives such as publicity-seeking reasons or idle
curiosity as being the causative factor in the event. On the
other hand, having just watched a television program deal-
ing with the demise of President Kennedy, the power of
suggestion might have come into play. Had the material
obtained through the Ouija board been more specific to a
greater extent, perhaps I would not have to hesitate to label
this a genuine experience. While there is nothing in the
report that indicates fraud — either conscious or
unconscious — there is nothing startling in the information
given. Surely, if the message had come from Kennedy, or if
Kennedy himself had been on the other end of the psychic
line, there would have been certain pieces of information
that would have been known only to him and that could
yet be checked out in a way that was accessible. Surely,
Kennedy would have realized how difficult it might have
been for an ordinary homemaker to contact his wife. Thus,
it seems to me that some other form of proof of identity
would have been furnished. This, however, is really only
speculation. Despite the sincerity of those reporting the
incident, I feel that there is reasonable doubt as to the gen-
uineness of the communication.
* * *
By far the majority of communications regarding
President Kennedy relate to his death and are in the nature
of premonitions, dreams, visions, and other warnings prior
to or simultaneous with the event itself. The number of
such experiences indicates that the event itself must have
been felt ahead of its realization, indicating that some sort
of law was in operation that could not be altered, even if
President Kennedy could have been warned. As a matter of
fact, I am sure that he was given a number of warnings,
and that he chose to disregard them. I don’t see how he
could have done otherwise — both because he was the Presi-
dent and out of a fine sense of destiny that is part and par-
cel of the Kennedy make-up. Certainly Jeane Dixon was in
a position to warn the President several times prior to the
assassination. Others, less well connected in Washington,
might have written letters that never got through to the
President. Certainly one cannot explain these things away
merely by saying that a public figure is always in danger of
assassination, or that Kennedy had incurred the wrath of
many people in this country and abroad. This simply does-
n’t conform to the facts. Premonitions have frequently been
very precise, indicating in great detail the manner, time,
and nature of the assassination. If it were merely a matter
of vaguely foretelling the sudden death of the President,
then of course one could say that this comes from a study
124
of the situation or from a general feeling about the times in
which we live. But this is not so. Many of the startling
predictions couldn’t have been made by anyone, unless
they themselves were in on the planning of the
assassination.
Mrs. Rose LaPorta lives in suburban Cleveland,
Ohio. Over the years she has developed her ESP faculties —
partially in the dream state and partially while awake. Some
of her premonitory experiences are so detailed that they
cannot be explained on the basis of coincidence, if there is
such a thing, or in any other rational terms. For instance,
on May 10, 1963, she dreamed she had eaten something
with glass in it. She could even feel it in her mouth, so
vividly that she began to spit it out and woke up. On
October 4 of the same year, after she had forgotten the
peculiar dream, she happened to be eating a cookie. There
was some glass in it, and her dream became reality in every
detail. Fortunately, she had told several witnesses of her
original dream, so she was able to prove this to herself on
the record.
At her place of work there is a superintendent named
Smith, who has offices in another city. There never was
any close contact with that man, so it was rather startling
to Mrs. LaPorta to hear a voice in her sleep telling her,
"Mr. Smith died at home on Monday.” Shocked by this
message, she discussed it with her coworkers. That was on
May 18, 1968. On October 8 of the same year, an
announcement was made at the company to the effect that
"Mr. Smith died at home on Monday, October 7.”
Mrs. LaPorta’s ability to tune in on future events
reached a national subject on November 17, 1963. She
dreamed she was at the White Flouse in Washington on a
dark, rainy day. There were beds set up in each of the por-
ticoes. She found herself, in the dream, moving from one
bed to another, because she wanted to shelter herself from
the rain. There was much confusion going on and many
men were running around in all directions. They seemed to
have guns in their hands and pockets. Finally, Mrs.
LaPorta, in the dream, asked someone what was happen-
ing, and they told her they were Secret Service men. She
was impressed with the terrible confusion and atmosphere
of tragedy when she awoke from her dream. That was five
days before the assassination happened on November 22,
1963. The dream is somewhat reminiscent of the famed
Abraham Lincoln dream, in which he himself saw his own
body on the catafalque in the East Room, and asked who
was dead in the White House. I reported on that dream in
Window to the Past.
* * *
Marie Howe is a Maryland housewife, fifty-two years
old, and only slightly psychic. The night before the assassi-
nation she had a dream in which she saw two brides with
the features of men. Upon awakening she spoke of her
dream to her husband and children, and interpreted it that
someone was going to die very soon. She thought that two
persons would die close together. The next day, Kennedy
and Oswald turned into the "brides of death” she had seen
in her dream.
* * *
Bertha Zelkin lives in Los Angeles. The morning of
the assassination she suddenly found herself saying, “What
would we do if President Kennedy were to die?” That
afternoon the event took place.
* * *
Marion Confalonieri, a forty-one-year-old housewife
and a native of Chicago, has worked as a secretary, and
lives with her husband, a draftsman, and two daughters in
a comfortable home in California. Over the years she has
had many psychic experiences, ranging from deja vu feel-
ings to psychic dreams. On Friday, November 22, the
assassination took place and Oswald was captured the same
day. The following night, Saturday, November 23, Mrs.
Confalonieri went to bed exhausted and in tears from all
the commotion. Some time during the night she dreamed
that she saw a group of men, perhaps a dozen, dressed in
suits and some with hats. She seemed to be floating a little
above them, looking down on the scene, and she noticed
that they were standing very close in a group. Then she
heard a voice say, “Ruby did it.” The next morning she
gave the dream no particular thought. The name Ruby
meant absolutely nothing to her nor, for that matter, to
anyone else in the country at that point. It wasn’t until she
turned her radio on and heard the announcement that
Oswald had been shot by a man named Ruby that she
realized she had had a preview of things to come several
hours before the event itself had taken place.
* * *
Another one who tuned in on the future a little ahead
of reality was the famed British author, Pendragon, whose
real name was L. T. Ackerman. In October 1963, he
wrote, “I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of attempted
assassination or worse if caught off guard.” He wrote to
President Kennedy urging him that his guard be strength-
ened, especially when appearing in public.
* * *
Dr. Robert G. is a dentist who makes his home in
Rhode Island. He has had psychic experiences all his life,
some of which I have described elsewhere. At the time
when Oswald was caught by the authorities, the doctor’s
wife wondered out loud what would happen to the man.
Without thinking what he was saying, Dr. G. replied, “He
will be shot in the police station.” The words just popped
out of his mouth. There was nothing to indicate even a
remote possibility of such a course of action.
The Ill-fated Kennedys:
From Visions to Ghosts
125
He also had a premonition that Robert Kennedy
would be shot, but he thought that the Senator would live
on with impaired faculties. We know, of course, that Sena-
tor Kennedy died. Nevertheless, as most of us will remem-
ber, for a time after the announcement of the shooting
there was hope that the Senator would indeed continue to
live, although with impaired faculties. Not only did the
doctors think that might be possible, but announcements
were made to that effect. Thus, it is entirely feasible that
Dr. G. tuned in not only on the event itself but also on the
thoughts and developments that were part of the event.
As yet we know very little about the mechanics of
premonitions, and it is entirely possible that some psychics
cannot fine-tune their inner instruments beyond a general
pickup of future material. This seems to relate to the
inability of most mediums to pinpoint exact time in their
predictions.
* * *
Cecilia Fawn Nichols is a writer who lives in
Twenty-nine Palms, California. All her life she has had
premonitions that have come true and has accepted the
psychic in her life as a perfectly natural element. She had
been rooting for John F. Kennedy to be elected President
because she felt that his Catholic religion had made him a
kind of underdog. When he finally did get the nod, Miss
Nichols found herself far from jubilant. As if something
foreboding were preying heavily on her mind, she received
the news of his election glumly and with a feeling of disas-
ter. At the time she could not explain to herself why, but
the thought that the young man who had just been elected
was condemned to death entered her mind. “When the
unexpected passes through my mind, I know I can expect
it,” she explained. “I generally do not know just how or
when or what. In this case I felt some idiot was going to
kill him because of his religion. I expected the assassination
much sooner. Possibly because of domestic problems, I
wasn’t expecting it when it did happen.”
On Sunday morning, November 24, she was starting
breakfast. Her television set was tuned to Channel 2, and
she decided to switch to Channel 7 because that station
had been broadcasting the scene directly from Dallas. The
announcer was saying that any moment now Oswald would
be brought out of jail to be taken away from Dallas. The
camera showed the grim faces of the crowd. Miss Nichols
took one look at the scene and turned to her mother.
“Mama, come in the living room. Oswald is going to be
killed in a few minutes, and I don’t want to miss seeing
it.”
There was nothing to indicate such a course of
action, of course, but the words just came out of her mouth
as if motivated by some outside force. A moment later, the
feared event materialized. Along with the gunshot, how-
ever, she distinctly heard words said that she was never
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
again to hear on any rerun of the televised action. The
words were spoken just as Ruby lifted his arm to shoot. As
he began pressing the trigger, the words and the gunshot
came close together. Afterwards Miss Nichols listened care-
fully to many of the reruns but never managed to hear the
words again. None of the commentators mentioned them.
No account of the killing mentions them. And yet Miss
Nichols clearly heard Ruby make a statement even as he
was shooting Oswald down.
The fact that she alone heard the words spoken by
Ruby bothered Miss Nichols. In 1968 she was with a
group of friends discussing the Oswald killing, and again
she reported what she had heard that time on television.
There was a woman in that group who nodded her head.
She too had heard the same words. It came as a great relief
to Miss Nichols to know that she was not alone in her per-
ception. The words Ruby spoke as he was shooting Oswald
were words of anger: “Take this, you son of a bitch!”
This kind of psychic experience is far closer to truth-
ful tuning in on events as they transpire, or just as they are
formulating themselves, than some of the more complicated
interpretations of events after they have happened.
* * *
Two Cincinnati amateur mediums by the names of
Dorothy Barrett and Virginia Hill, who have given out pre-
dictions of things to come to the newspapers from time to
time, also made some announcements concerning the
Kennedy assassination. I have met the two ladies at the
home of the John Straders in Cincinnati, at which time
they seemed to be imitating the Edgar Cayce readings in
that they pinpointed certain areas of the body subject to ill-
ness. Again, I met Virginia Hill recently and was con-
fronted with what she believes is the personality of Edgar
Cayce, the famous seer of Virginia Beach. Speaking
through her, I questioned the alleged Edgar Cayce entity
and took notes, which I then asked Cayce’s son, Hugh
Lynn Cayce, to examine for validity. Regrettably, most of
the answers proved to be incorrect, thus making the iden-
tity of Edgar Cayce highly improbable. Nevertheless, Vir-
ginia Hill is psychic and some of her predictions have come
true.
On December 4, 1967, the Cincinnati Inquirer pub-
lished many of her predictions for the following year. One
of the more startling statements is that there were sixteen
people involved in the Kennedy assassination, according to
Virginia’s spirit guide, and that the leader was a woman.
Oswald, it is claimed, did not kill the President, but a
policeman (now dead) did.
In this connection it is interesting to note that Sher-
man Skolnick, a researcher, filed suit in April of 1970
against the National Archives and Records Services to
release certain documents concerning the Kennedy assassi-
nation— in particular, Skolnick claimed that there had been
a prior Chicago assassination plot in which Oswald and an
accomplice by the name of Thomas Arthur Vallee and
126
three or four other men had been involved. Their plan to
kill the President at a ball game had to be abandoned when
Vallee was picked up on a minor traffic violation the day
before the game. Skolnick, according to Time magazine’s
article, April 20, 1970, firmly believes that Oswald and
Vallee and several others were linked together in the assas-
sination plot.
* * *
When it comes to the assassination of Senator Robert
Kennedy, the picture is somewhat different. To begin with,
very few people thought that Robert Kennedy was in mor-
tal danger, while John F. Kennedy, as President, was
always exposed to political anger — as are all Presidents.
The Senator did not seem to be in quite so powerful a
position. True, he had his enemies, as have all politicians.
But the murder by Sirhan Sirhan came as much more of a
surprise than the assassination of his brother. It is thus sur-
prising that so much premonitory material exists concern-
ing Robert Kennedy as well. In a way, of course, this
material is even more evidential because of the lesser likeli-
hood of such an event transpiring.
Mrs. Elaine Jones lives in San Francisco. Her husband
is a retired businessman; her brother-in-law headed
the publishing firm of Harper & Row; she is not given to
hallucinations. I have reported some of her psychic experi-
ences elsewhere. Shortly before the assassination of Robert
Kennedy she had a vision of the White House front. At
first she saw it as it was and is, and then suddenly the
entire front seemed to crumble before her eyes. To her this
meant death of someone connected with the White House.
A short time later, the assassination of the Senator took
place.
* * *
Months before the event, famed Washington seer
Jeane Dixon was speaking at the Hotel Ambassador in Los
Angeles. She said that Robert Kennedy would be the vic-
tim of a "tragedy right here in this hotel.” The Senator was
assassinated there eight months later.
* * *
A young Californian by the name of Lorraine
Caswell had a dream the night before the assassination of
Senator Kennedy. In her dream she saw the actual assassi-
nation as it later happened. The next morning, she
reported her nightmare to her roommate, who had served
as witness on previous occasions of psychic premonition.
* * *
Ellen Roberts works as a secretary and part-time vol-
unteer for political causes she supports. During the cam-
paign of Senator Robert Kennedy she spent some time at
headquarters volunteering her services. Miss Roberts is a
member of the Reverend Zenor’s Hollywood Spiritualist
Temple. Reverend Zenor, while in trance, speaks with the
voice of Agasha, a higher teacher, who is also able to fore-
tell events in the future. On one such occasion, long before
the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Agasha — through
Reverend Zenor — had said, “There will be not one assassi-
nation, but two. He will also be quite young. Victory will
be almost within his grasp, but he will die just before he
assumes the office, if it cannot be prevented.”
The night of the murder, Ellen Roberts fell asleep
early. She awakened with a scene of Robert Kennedy and
President Kennedy talking. John F. Kennedy was putting
his arm around his brother’s shoulders and she heard him
say, “Well, Bobby, you made it — the hard way.” With a
rueful smile they walked away. Miss Roberts took this to
mean the discomfort that candidate Robert Kennedy had
endured during the campaign — the rock -throwing, the
insults, name-callings, and his hands had actually become
swollen as he was being pulled. Never once did she accept
it as anything more sinister. The following day she realized
what her vision had meant.
* * *
A curious thing happened to Mrs. Lewis H. Mac-
Kibbel. She and her ten-year-old granddaughter were
watching television the evening of June 4, 1968. Suddenly
the little girl jumped up, clasped her hands to her chest,
and in a shocked state announced, "Robert Kennedy has
been shot. Shot down, Mama.” Her sisters and mother
teased her about it, saying that such an event would have
been mentioned on the news if it were true. After a while
the subject was dropped. The following morning, June 5,
when the family radio was turned on, word of the shooting
came. Startled, the family turned to the little girl, who
could only nod and say, “Yes I know. I knew it last night.”
* * *
Mrs. Dawn Chorley lives in central Ohio. A native of
England, she spent many years with her husband in South
Africa, and has had psychic experiences at various times in
her life. During the 1968 election campaign she and her
husband, Colin Chorley, had been working for Eugene
McCarthy, but when Robert Kennedy won the primary in
New Hampshire she was very pleased with that too. The
night of the election, she stayed up late. She was very
keyed up and thought she would not be able to sleep
because of the excitement, but contrary to her expectations
she fell immediately into a very deep sleep around mid-
night. That night she had a curious dream.
"I was standing in the central downstairs’ room of
my house. I was aware of a strange atmosphere around me
and felt very lonely. Suddenly I felt a pain in the left side
of my head, toward the back. The inside of my mouth
started to crumble and blood started gushing out of my
mouth. I tried to get to the telephone, but my arms and
The Ill-fated Kennedys:
From Visions to Ghosts
127
legs would not respond to my will; everything was disori-
ented. Somehow I managed to get to the telephone and
pick up the receiver. With tremendous difficulty I dialed
for the operator, and I could hear a voice asking whether I
needed help. I tried to say, ‘Get a doctor,’ but the words
came out horribly slurred. Then came the realization I was
dying and I said, 'Oh my God, I am dying,’ and sank into
oblivion. I was shouting so loud I awoke my husband, who
is a heavy sleeper. Shaking off the dream, I still felt terribly
depressed. My husband, Colin, noticed the time. Allowing
for time changes, it was the exact minute Robert Kennedy
was shot.”
* * *
Jill Taggart of North Hollywood, California, has been
working with me as a developing medium for several years
now. By profession a writer and model, she has been her
own worst critic, and in her report avoids anything that
cannot be substantiated. On May 14, 1968, she had meant
to go to a rally in honor of Senator Robert Kennedy in Van
Nuys, California. Since the parade was only three blocks
from her house, it was an easy thing for her to walk over.
But early in the evening she had resolved not to go. To
begin with, she was not fond of the Senator, and she hated
large crowds, but more than anything she had a bad feeling
that something would happen to the Senator while he was
in his car. On the news that evening she heard that the
Senator had been struck in the temple by a flying object
and had fallen to his knees in the car. The news also
reported that he was all right. Jill, however, felt that the
injury was more serious than announced and that the Sen-
ator’s reasoning faculties would be impaired henceforth.
“It’s possible that it could threaten his life,” she reported.
"I know that temples are tricky things.” When I spoke to
her further, pressing for details, she indicated that she had
then felt disaster for Robert Kennedy, but her logical mind
refused to enlarge upon the comparatively small injury the
candidate had suffered. A short time later, of course, the
Senator was dead — not from a stone thrown at him but
from a murderer’s bullet. Jill Taggart had somehow tuned
in on both events simultaneously.
* * *
Seventeen-year-old Debbie Gaurlay, a high school
student who also works at training horses, has had ESP
experiences for several years. Two days prior to the assassi-
nation of Robert Kennedy she remarked to a friend by the
name of Debbie Corso that the Senator would be shot very
shortly. At that time there was no logical reason to assume
an attempt upon the Senator's life.
* * *
John Londren is a machine fitter, twenty-eight years
old, who lives with his family in Hartford, Connecticut.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
Frequently he has had dreams of events that have later
transpired. In March 1968 he had a vivid dream in which
he saw Senator Robert Kennedy shot while giving his Inau-
gural Address. Immediately he told his wife and father
about the dream, and even wrote a letter to the Senator in
April but decided not to send it until after the election.
Even the correct names of the assassin and of two people
present occurred in his dream. But Mr. Londren dismissed
the dream since he knew that Roosevelt Grier and Rafe
Johnson were sports figures. He felt they would be out of
place in a drama involving the assassination of a political
candidate. Nevertheless, those were the two men who actu-
ally subdued the killer.
In a subsequent dream he saw St. Patrick’s Cathedral
in New York during Senator Kennedy’s funeral. People
were running about in a state of panic, and he had the feel-
ing that a bombing or shooting had taken place. So upset
was Mr. Londren by his second dream that he asked his
father, who had a friend in Washington, to make some
inquiries. Eventually the information was given to a Secret
Service man who respected extrasensory perception. The
New York City bomb squad was called in and the security
around the Cathedral was doubled. A man with an
unloaded gun was caught fifteen minutes before the Presi-
dent arrived for the funeral at the Cathedral. Mr. Lon-
dren 's second dream thus proved to be not only evidential
but of value in preventing what might have been another
crime.
* * *
Another amateur prophet is Elaine Morganelli, a Los
Angeles housewife. In May 1967 she predicted in writing
that President Johnson would be assassinated on June 4,
and sent this prediction along with others to her brother,
Lewis Olson. What she actually had heard was “President
assassination June 4.” Well, President Johnson was not
assassinated, but on June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy, a pres-
idential candidate, was shot to death.
A sixteen-year-old teen-ager from Tennessee named
John Humphreys experienced a vision late in 1963. This
happened while he was in bed but not yet fully asleep. As
he looked at the floor of his room he saw several disembod-
ied heads. One of the heads was that of President
Kennedy, who had just been assassinated. The others, he
did not recognize at the time. Later, he realized who they
had been. One was the head of Robert Kennedy; the other
of Martin Luther King. He had the feeling at the time of
the vision that all three men would be shot in the head. He
also remembered two other heads — that of a Frenchman
and of a very large Englishman — but no names.
* * *
On April 16, 1968, a Canadian by the name of Mrs.
Joan Holt wrote to the Evening Standard premonition
bureau conducted by Peter Fairley, their science editor,
128
"Robert Kennedy to follow in his brother’s footsteps and
face similar danger.”
“There is going to be a tragic passing in the Kennedy
family very soon,” said British medium Minie Bridges at a
public sitting the last week of May 1968.
* * *
It seems clear to me that even the death of Senator
Kennedy was part of a predestined master plan, whether
we like it or not. Frequently, those who are already on the
other side of life know what will happen on earth, and if
they are not able to prevent it, they are at least ready to
help those who are coming across make the transition as
painlessly as possible under the circumstances.
To many people of Ireland, the Kennedys are great
heroes. Both these thoughts should be kept in mind as I
report still another psychic experience concerning the death
of Robert Kennedy.
* * *
A fifty-three-year-old secretary by the name of Mar-
garet M. Smith of Chicago, Illinois, was watching the
Robert Kennedy funeral on television. As his casket was
being carried out of the church to the hearse, she noticed a
row of men standing at either side of the casket with their
backs to it. They were dressed in gray business suits, very
plain, and wore gray hats. These men looked very solemn
and kept their eyes cast down. To her they looked like
natives of Ireland. In fact, the suits looked homespun. As
the casket went past, one of the men in the line turned his
head and looked at the casket. Miss Smith thought that a
person in a guard of honor should not do that, for she had
taken the man in the gray suit as part of an honor guard.
Then it occurred to her that the two lines of men were a
little hazy, in a lighter gray. But she took this to be due to
the television set, although other figures were quite clear.
Later she discussed the funeral with a friend of hers in
another city who had also seen the same broadcast. She
asked her friend if she knew who the men in gray had
been. Her friend had not seen the men in gray, nor had
any of the others she then asked about them. Soon it
became clear to Miss Smith that she alone had seen the
spirit forms of what she takes to be the Kennedys’ Irish
ancestors, who had come to pay their last respects in a fit-
ting manner.
* * *
An Indiana amateur prognosticator with a long record
of predictions, some of which have already come true while
others are yet in the future, has also contributed to the
material about the Kennedys. On August 7, 1968, D.
McClintic stated that Jackie Kennedy would be married.
At the time no such event was in the offing. On September
21, 1968, Mr. McClintic stated that there would be an
attempted kidnapping of one of the Kennedy boys. At the
same time he also predicted that the heads of the FBI and
the draft would be replaced within a short time. “J. E.
Hoover is near the end of being director. Also the director
of the draft, Hershey, is on the way out.”
* * *
D. McClintic predicted on January 18, 1969, that
Edward Kennedy would not run for President in 1972
because he might still be worried about his nephews. Mr.
McClintic didn’t spell out why Senator Kennedy should be
concerned about his nephews.
* * *
Another amateur psychic, Robert E., however, did.
On March 10, 1970, the psychic schoolteacher stated, "I
mentioned before that around Easter another Kennedy, one
of Senator Robert Kennedy’s boys, will drown in a boating
accident off the coast of Virginia, and the body will be
found between April 1st and April 5th in a muddy shallow
near a place with the word 'mile' in it. However, within a
month or so it will come out that Senator Ted Kennedy
covered for his nephew, who was actually the one who was
in the car with the girl at Chappaquiddick Island. The
Senator was not involved, and when this evidence becomes
known Kennedy’s popularity will soar.” Naturally, the two
psychics do not know of each other, nor did they ever have
any contact with each other.
One cannot dismiss Mr. McClintic too lightly when
one considers that on January 18, 1969, he predicted that
at the next election in England, Labor would be kicked out
of office; that Joseph Kennedy would die — which he did
shortly afterward; that the war in Vietnam would go on
and some American troops would be withdrawn, but not
too many; that there would be more attacks on Israeli air-
planes carrying passengers; and that Jordan’s throne would
be shaky again.
* * *
A different kind of prognosticator is Fredric Stoessel.
A college graduate and former combat Naval officer, he
heads his own business firm in New York, specializing in
market analysis and financing. Mr. Stoessel is a student of
Christian Science and has had psychic experiences all his
life. I have written of his predictions concerning the future
of the world in a book entitled The Prophets Speak. How-
ever, his involvement with the Kennedy family especially
the future of Ted Kennedy, is somewhat more elaborate
than his predictions pertaining to other events. In May
1967 he wrote an article entitled, "Why Was President
Kennedy Shot?” In Mr. Stoessel’s opinion a Communist
plot was involved. Mr. Stoessel bases his views on a mix-
ture of logical deduction, evaluations of existing political
realities, and a good measure of intuition and personal
The Ill-fated Kennedys:
From Visions to Ghosts
129
insight ranging all the way to sixth sense and psychic
impressions.
“There is some growing evidence to indicate Senator
Ted Kennedy may have been set up for this incident. By
whom is not certain, but we suspect the fine hand of orga-
nized crime.” Thus stated Fredric Stoessel in February of
1970. 1 discussed this matter with him on April 3 of the
same year at my home. Some of the things he told me were
off the record and I must honor his request. Other details
may be told here. Considering Fredric Stoessel’s back-
ground and his very cautious approach when making state-
ments of importance at a time the Chappaquiddick incident
was still in the news, I felt that perhaps he might come up
with angles not covered by anyone else before.
"What then is your intuitive feeling about Kennedy
and the girl? Was it an accident?” I asked. I decided to use
the term "intuitive” rather than "psychic,” although that is
what I really meant.
Mr. Stoessel thought this over for a moment. "I don’t
think it was an accident. I think it was staged, shall we
say.”
“What was meant to happen?”
"What was meant to happen was political embarrass-
ment for Teddy Kennedy. They were just trying to knock
him out as a political figure.”
“Do you think that he was aware of what had hap-
pened— that the girl had drowned?”
“No, 1 do not. I think he was telling the truth when
he said that he was in a state of shock.”
“Flow did ‘they’ engineer the accident?”
“I assume that he may have been drinking, but
frankly it’s an assumption. I think they would just wait
until they had the right setup. Fm sure a man like that was
watched very carefully.”
"ffave you any feelings about Kennedy’s future?”
“I think Ted Kennedy will make a very strong bid
for the presidency in 1972. 1 do not think he will be
elected.”
“Do you have any instinctive feelings about any
attack upon him?”
"I have had an instinctive feeling that there would be
an attack on Ted Kennedy from the civil rights elements.
In other words, I think he would be attacked so that there
would be a commotion over civil rights. Undoubtedly Ted
Kennedy will be the civil rights candidate.”
“When you say ‘attack,’ can you be more specific?”
“I think it will be an assassination attempt; specific,
shot.”
“Successful or not?”
“No, unsuccessful. This is instinctive.”
“Flow much into the future will this happen?”
"I think it will happen by 1972. I'm not too sure
exactly when, but I think when he is being built up for a
candidate.”
“As far as the other Kennedys were concerned, did
you at any time have any visions, impressions, dreams, or
other feelings concerning either the President or Bobby
Kennedy?”
“Well, I had a very strong sensation — in fact I wrote
several people — that he would not be on the ticket in 1964.
I had a strong impression that John F. Kennedy would not
be around for some reason or another.”
"When did you write this?”
“That was written to Perkins Bass, who was a Con-
gressman in New Hampshire, in 1962.”
“Did you have any impressions concerning the true
murderer of John F. Kennedy and the entire plot, if any?”
“As soon as the assassination occurred, in those three
days when we were all glued to the television sets, I was
inwardly convinced that Oswald did not kill him. My
impression of that was immediately reinforced, because
Oswald was asking for an attorney named John Abt, who
was a lawyer for the Communist Party. My instinctive feel-
ing was that Castro had a lot to do with it.”
“Prior to the killing of Robert Kennedy, did you have
any inkling that this was going to happen?”
“My wife reminded me that I had always said Bobby
would be assassinated. I said that for several months after
John died.”
"Do you believe there is a Kennedy curse in
operation?”
"Yes. I think there are forces surrounding the
Kennedy family that will bring tragedy to most every one
of them.”
“Will we have another Kennedy President?”
"I don’t think so. Although I think Teddy will make
a strong bid for it this next time.”
* * *
Certainly if a direct pipeline could be established to
one of the Kennedys — those on the other side of life, that
is — even more interesting material could be obtained. But
to make such an attempt at communication requires two
very definite things: one, a channel of communication —
that is to say, a medium of the highest professional and
ethical reputation — and two, the kind of questions that
could establish, at least to the point of reasonable doubt,
that communication really did occur between the investiga-
tor and the deceased.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
130
* 13
Michie Tavern, Jefferson,
and the Boys
“This typical pre-Revolutionary tavern was a
favorite stopping place for travelers,” the official guide to
Charlottesville says. "With its colonial furniture and china,
its beamed and paneled rooms, it appears much the way it
did in the days when Jefferson and Monroe were visitors.
Monroe writes of entertaining Lafayette as his guest at din-
ner here, and General Andrew Jackson, fresh from his vic-
tory at New Orleans, stopped over on his way to
Washington.”
The guide, however, does not mention that the tavern
was moved a considerable distance from its original place
to a much more accessible location where the tourist trade
could benefit from it more. Regardless of this compara-
tively recent change of position, the tavern is exactly as it
was, with everything inside, including its ghosts, intact. At
the original site, it was surrounded by trees which framed
it and sometimes towered over it. At the new site, facing
the road, it looks out into the Virginia countryside almost
like a manor house. One walks up to the wooden structure
over a number of steps and enters the old tavern to the left
or, if one prefers, the pub to the right, which is nowadays a
coffee shop. Taverns in the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries were not simply bars or inns; they were meeting
places where people could talk freely, sometimes about
political subjects. They were used as headquarters for Rev-
olutionary movements or for invading military forces. Most
taverns of any size had ballrooms in which the social func-
tions of the area could be held. Only a few private individ-
uals were wealthy enough to have their own ballrooms
built into their manor houses.
What is fortunate about Michie Tavern is the fact
that everything is pretty much as it was in the eighteenth
century, and whatever restorations have been undertaken
are completely authentic. The furniture and cooking uten-
sils, the tools of the innkeeper, the porcelain, the china, the
metal objects are all of the period, whether they had been
in the house or not. As is customary with historical restora-
tions or preservations, whatever is missing in the house is
supplied by painstaking historical research, and objects of
the same period and the same area are substituted for those
presumably lost during the intervening period.
The tavern has three floors and a large number of
rooms, so we would need the two hours we had allowed
ourselves for the visit. After looking at the downstairs part
of the tavern, with its "common” kitchen and the over-long
wooden table where two dozen people could be fed, we
mounted the stairs to the second floor.
Ingrid, the medium, kept looking into various rooms,
sniffing out the psychic presences, as it were, while I fol-
lowed close behind. Horace Burr and Virginia Cloud kept a
respectable distance, as if trying not to “frighten” the
ghosts away. That was all right with me, because I did not
want Ingrid to tap the unconscious of either one of these
very knowledgeable people.
Finally we arrived in the third -floor ballroom of the
old tavern. I asked Ingrid what she had felt in the various
rooms below. “In the pink room on the second floor I felt
an argument or some sort of strife but nothing special in
any of the other rooms.”
"What about this big ballroom?”
“I can see a lot of people around here. There is a gay
atmosphere, and I think important people came here; it is
rather exclusive, this room. I think it was used just on spe-
cial occasions.”
By now I had waved Horace and Virginia to come
closer, since it had become obvious to me that they wanted
very much to hear what Ingrid was saying. Possibly new
material might come to light, unknown to both of these
historians, in which case they might verify it later on or
comment upon it on the spot.
"I’m impressed with an argument over a woman
here,” Ingrid continued. "It has to do with one of the dig-
nitaries, and it is about one of their wives.”
“How does the argument end?”
“I think they just had a quick argument here, about
her infidelity.”
“Who are the people involved?”
“I think Hamilton. I don’t know the woman’s name.”
“Who is the other man?”
“I think Jefferson was here.”
"Try to get as much of the argument as you can.”
Ingrid closed her eyes, sat down in a chair generally
off limits to visitors, and tried to tune in on the past. “I get
the argument as a real embarrassment,” she began. “The
woman is frail, she has a long dress on with lace at the top
part around the neck, her hair is light brown.”
“Does she take part in the argument?”
“Yes, she has to side with her husband.”
“Describe her husband.”
"I can’t see his face, but he is dressed in a brocade
jacket pulled back with buttons down the front and
breeches. It is a very fancy outfit.”
“How does it all end?”
“Well, nothing more is said. It is just a terrible
embarrassment.”
“Is this some sort of special occasion? Are there other
people here?”
“Yes, oh, yes. It is like an anniversary or something
of that sort. Perhaps a political anniversary of some kind.
There is music and dancing and candlelight."
While Ingrid was speaking, in an almost inaudible
voice, Horace and Virginia were straining to hear what she
was saying but not being very successful at it. At this point
Horace waved to me, and I tiptoed over to him. “Ask her
to get the period a little closer,” he whispered in my ear.
Michie Tavern, Jefferson, and the Boys
131
Michie Tavern —
Charlottesville, Virginia
I went back to Ingrid and put the question to her. “I
think it was toward the end of the war,” she said, “toward
the very end of it. For some time now I've had the figure
1781 impressed on my mind.”
Since nothing further seemed to be forthcoming from
Ingrid at this point, I asked her to relax and come back to
the present, so that we could discuss her impressions
freely.
“The name Hamilton is impossible in this connec-
tion,” Horace Burr began. But I was quick to interject that
the name Hamilton was fairly common in the late eigh-
teenth and early nineteenth centuries and that Ingrid need
not have referred to the Alexander Hamilton. "Jefferson
was here many times, and he could have been involved in
this,” Burr continued. “I think I know who the other man
might have been. But could we, just for once, try question-
ing the medium on specific issues?”
Neither Ingrid nor I objected, and Horace proceeded
to ask Ingrid to identify the couple she had felt in the ball-
room. Ingrid threw her head back for a moment, closed her
eyes, and then replied, “The man is very prominent in pol-
itics, one of the big three or four at the time, and one of
the reasons this is all so embarrassing, from what I get, is
that the other man is of much lower caliber. He is not one
of the big leaders; he may be an officer or something like
that."
While Ingrid was speaking, slowly, as it were, I again
felt the strange sense of transportation, of looking back in
time, which had been coming to me more and more often
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
132
recently, always unsought and usually only of fleeting dura-
tion. “For what it is worth,” I said, “while Ingrid is speak-
ing, I also get a very vague impression that all this has
something to do with two sisters. It concerns a rivalry
between two sisters.”
“The man’s outfit,” Ingrid continued her narrative,
“was sort of gold and white brocade and very fancy. He
was the husband. I don’t see the other man.”
Horace seemed unusually agitated at this. “Tell me,
did this couple live in this vicinity or did they come from
far away on a special anniversary?”
“They lived in the vicinity and came just for the
evening.”
“Well, Horace?" I said, getting more and more curi-
ous, since he was apparently driving in a specific direction.
“What was this all about?"
For once, Horace enjoyed being the center of attrac-
tion. “Well, it was a hot and heavy situation, all right. The
couple were Mr. and Mrs. John Walker — he was the son
of Dr. Walker of Castle Hill. And the man, who wasn’t
here, was Jefferson himself. Ingrid is right in saying that
they lived in the vicinity — Castle Hill is not far away from
here.”
“But what about the special festivity that brought
them all together here?”
Horace wasn’t sure what it could have been, but Vir-
ginia, in great excitement, broke in. “It was in this room
that the waltz was danced for the first time in America. A
young man had come from France dressed in very fancy
clothes. The lady he danced with was a closely chaperoned
girl from Charlottesville. She was very young, and she
danced the waltz with this young man, and everybody in
Charlottesville was shocked. The news went around town
that the young lady had danced with a man holding her,
and that was just terrible at the time. Perhaps that was the
occasion. Michie Tavern was a stopover for stagecoaches,
and Jefferson and the local people would meet here to get
their news. Downstairs was the meeting room, but up here
in the ballroom the more special events took place, such as
the introduction of the waltz."
I turned to Horace Burr. ‘‘How is it that this tavern
no longer stands on the original site? I understand it has
been moved here for easier tourist access.”
“Yes,” Horace replied. “The building originally stood
near the airport. In fact, the present airport is on part of
the old estate that belonged to Colonel John Henry, the
father of Patrick Henry. Young Patrick spent part of his
boyhood there. Later, Colonel Henry sold the land to the
Michies. This house was then their main house. It was on
the old highway. In turn, they built themselves an elabo-
rate mansion which is still standing and turned this house
into a tavern. All the events we have been discussing took
place while this building was on the old site. In 1926 it was
moved here. Originally, I think the ballroom we are stand-
ing in now was just the loft of the old Henry house. They
raised part of the roof to make it into a ballroom because
they had no meeting room in the tavern.”
In the attractively furnished coffee shop to the right
of the main tavern, Mrs. Juanita Godfrey, the manager,
served us steaming hot black coffee and sat down to chat
with us. Had anyone ever complained about unusual noises
or other inexplicable manifestations in the tavern? I asked.
“Some of the employees who work here at night do
hear certain sounds they can’t account for,” Mrs. Godfrey
replied. “They will hear something and go and look, and
there will be nothing there.”
"In what part of the building?”
“All over, even in this area. This is a section of the
slave quarters, and it is very old.”
Mrs. Godfrey did not seem too keen on psychic
experiences, I felt. To the best of her knowledge, no one
had had any unusual experiences in the tavern. “What
about the lady who slept here one night?” I inquired.
“You mean Mrs. Milton — yes, she slept here one
night.” But Mrs. Godfrey knew nothing of Mrs. Milton’s
experiences.
However, Virginia had met the lady, who was con-
nected with the historical preservation effort of the commu-
Monticello — Thomas Jefferson’s home
nity. “One night when Mrs. Milton was out of town,” Vir-
ginia explained, "I slept in her room. At the time she con-
fessed to me that she had heard footsteps frequently,
especially on the stairway down.”
"That is the area she slept in, yes,” Mrs. Godfrey
confirmed. “She slept in the ladies’ parlor on the first
floor.”
“What about yourself, Virginia? Did you hear
anything?”
"I heard noises, but the wood sometimes behaves
very funny. She, however, said they were definitely foot-
steps. That was in 1961.”
What had Ingrid unearthed in the ballroom of
Michie Tavern? Was it merely the lingering imprint of
America’s first waltz, scandalous to the early Americans
but innocent in the light of today? Or was it something
more — an involvement between Mrs. Walker and the illus-
trious Thomas Jefferson? My image of the great American
had always been that of a man above human frailties. But
my eyes were to be opened still further on a most intrigu-
ing visit to Monticello, Jefferson’s home.
Michie Tavern, Jefferson, and the Boys
133
» 14
A Visit with the Spirited Jefferson
‘You’re WELCOME TO visit Monticello to continue the
parapsychological research which you are conducting rela-
tive to the personalities of 1776,” wrote James A. Bear, Jr.,
of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, and he
arranged for us to go to the popular tourist attraction after
regular hours, to permit Ingrid the peace and tranquility
necessary to tune in on the very fragile vibrations that
might hang on from the past.
Jefferson, along with Benjamin Franklin, is a widely
popular historical figure: a play, a musical, and a musical
film have brought him to life, showing him as the shy,
dedicated, intellectual architect of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence. Jefferson, the gentle Virginia farmer, the man
who wants to free the slaves but is thwarted in his efforts
by other Southerners; Jefferson, the ardent but bashful
lover of his wife; Jefferson, the ideal of virtue and Ameri-
can patriotism — these are the images put across by the
entertainment media, by countless books, and by the
tourist authorities which try to entice visitors to come to
Charlottesville and visit Jefferson’s home, Monticello.
Even the German tourist service plugged itself into
the Jefferson boom. “This is like a second mother country
for me,” Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying while travel-
ing down the Rhine. “Everything that isn’t English in our
country comes from here.” Jefferson compared the German
Rhineland to certain portions of Maryland and Pennsylva-
nia and pointed out that the second largest ethnic group in
America at the time were Germans. In an article in the
German language weekly Aufbau, Jefferson is described as
the first prominent American tourist in the Rhineland. His
visit took place in April 1788. At the time Jefferson was
ambassador to Paris, and the Rhine journey allowed him to
study agriculture, customs, and conditions on both sides of
the Rhine. Unquestionably, Jefferson, along with Washing-
ton, Franklin, and Lincoln, represents one of the pillars of
the American edifice.
Virginia Cloud, ever the avid historian of her area,
points out that not only did Jefferson and John Adams
have a close relationship as friends and political contempo-
raries but there were certain uncanny “coincidences”
between their lives. For instance, Jefferson and Adams died
within hours of each other, Jefferson in Virginia and
Adams in Massachusetts, on July 4, 1826 — exactly fifty
years to the day they had both signed the Declaration of
Independence. Adams’s last words were, “But Jefferson
still lives.” At the time that was no longer true, for Jeffer-
son had died earlier in the day.
Jefferson’s imprint is all over Charlottesville. Not
only did the talented “Renaissance man” design his own
home, Monticello, but he also designed the Rotunda, the
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
134
focal point of the University of Virginia. Jefferson, Madi-
son, and Monroe were members of the first governing
board of the University, which is now famous for its school
of medicine — and which, incidentally, is the leading uni-
versity in the study of parapsychology, since Dr. Ian
Stevenson teaches there.
On our way to Monticello we decided to visit the old
Swan Tavern, which had some important links with Jeffer-
son. The tavern is now used as a private club, but the
directors graciously allowed us to come in, even the ladies,
who are generally not admitted. Nothing in the appoint-
ments reminds one of the old tavern, since the place has
been extensively remodeled to suit the requirements of the
private club. At first we inspected the downstairs and
smiled at several elderly gentlemen who hadn’t the slightest
idea why we were there. Then we went to the upper story
and finally came to rest in a room to the rear of the build-
ing. As soon as Ingrid had seated herself in a comfortable
chair in a corner, I closed the door and asked her what she
felt about this place, of which she had no knowledge.
"I feel that people came here to talk things over in a
lighter vein, perhaps over a few drinks.”
"Was there anyone in particular who was outstanding
among these people?”
"I keep thinking of Jefferson, and I’m seeing big
mugs; most of the men have big mugs in front of them.”
Considering that Ingrid did not know the past of the
building as a tavern, this was pretty evidential. I asked her
about Jefferson.
“I think he was the figurehead. This matter con-
cerned him greatly, but I don’t think it had anything to do
with his own wealth or anything like that.”
“At the time when this happened, was there a warlike
action in progress?”
"Yes, I think it was on the outskirts of town. I have
the feeling that somebody was trying to reach this place
and that they were waiting for somebody, and yet they
weren’t really expecting that person.”
Both Horace Burr and Virginia Cloud were visibly
excited that Ingrid had put her finger on it, so to speak.
Virginia had been championing the cause of the man about
whom Ingrid had just spoken. “Virginians are always
annoyed to hear about Paul Revere, who was actually an
old man with a tired horse that left Revere to walk home,”
Virginia said, somewhat acidly, “while Jack Jouett did far
more — he saved the lives of Thomas Jefferson and his leg-
islators. Yet, outside of Virginia, few have ever heard of
him.”
‘Perhaps Jouett didn’t have as good a press agent as
Paul Revere had in Longfellow, as you always say, Vir-
ginia,” Burr commented. I asked Virginia to sum up the
incident that Ingrid had touched on psychically.
“Jack Jouett was a native of Albemarle County and
was of French Huguenot origin. His father, Captain John
Jouett, owned this tavern.”
“We think there is a chance that he also owned the
Cuckoo Tavern in Louisa, forty miles from here,” Burr
interjected.
“Jouett had a son named Jack who stood six feet,
four inches and weighed over two hundred pounds. He was
an expert rider and one of those citizens who signed the
oath of allegiance to the Commonwealth of Virginia in
1779.
“It was June 3, 1781, and the government had fled to
Charlottesville from the advancing British troops. Most of
Virginia was in British hands, and General Cornwallis very
much wanted to capture the leaders of the Revolution,
especially Thomas Jefferson, who had authored the Decla-
ration of Independence, and Patrick Henry, whose motto,
‘Give me liberty or give me death,’ had so much con-
tributed to the success of the Revolution. In charge of two
hundred fifty cavalrymen was Sir Banastre Tarleton. His
mission was to get to Charlottesville as quickly as possible
to capture the leaders of the uprising. Tarleton was deter-
mined to cover the seventy miles’ distance between Corn-
wallis’ headquarters and Charlottesville in a single
twenty-four-hour period, in order to surprise the leaders of
the American independence movement.
“In the town of Louisa, forty miles distant from
Charlottesville, he and his men stopped into the Cuckoo
Tavern for a brief respite. Fate would have it that Jack
Jouett was at the tavern at that moment, looking after his
father’s business. It was a very hot day for June, and the
men were thirsty. Despite Tarleton’s orders, their tongues
loosened, and Jack Jouett was able to overhear their desti-
nation. Jack decided to outride them and warn Char-
lottesville. It was about 10 P.M. when he got on his best
horse, determined to take shortcuts and side roads, while
the British would have to stick to the main road. Fortu-
nately it was a moonlit night; otherwise he might not have
made it in the rugged hill country.
“Meanwhile the British were moving ahead too, and
around 1 1 o’clock they came to a halt on a plantation near
Louisa. By 2 A.M. they had resumed their forward march.
They paused again a few hours later to seize and burn a
train of twelve wagons loaded with arms and clothing for
the Continental troops in South Carolina. When dawn
broke over Charlottesville, Jouett had left the British far
behind. Arriving at Monticello, he dashed up to the front
entrance to rouse Jefferson; however, Governor Jefferson,
who was an early riser, had seen the rider tear up his dri-
veway and met him at the door. Ever the gentleman, Jef-
ferson offered the exhausted messenger a glass of wine
before allowing him to proceed to Charlottesville proper,
two miles farther on. There he roused the other members
of the government, while Jefferson woke his family. Two
hours later, when Tarleton came thundering into Char-
lottesville, the government of Virginia had vanished.”
“That’s quite a story, Virginia,” I said.
"Of course,” Burr added, “Tarleton and his men
might have been here even earlier if it hadn’t been for the
fact that they first stopped at Castle Hill. Dr. and Mrs.
Walker entertained them lavishly and served them a sump-
tuous breakfast. It was not only sumptuous but also delay-
ing, and Dr. Walker played the perfect host to the hilt,
showing Tarleton about the place despite the British com-
mander’s impatience, even to measuring Tarleton’s orderly
on the living-room doorjamb. This trooper was the tallest
man in the British army and proved to be 6’9 14” tall. Due
to these and other delaying tactics — the Walkers made Jack
Jouett ’s ride a complete success. Several members of the
legislature who were visiting Dr. Walker at the time were
captured, but Jefferson and the bulk of the legislature,
which had just begun to convene that morning, got away.
After Thomas Jefferson had taken refuge at the house
of Mr. Cole, where he was not likely to be found, Jouett
went to his room at his father’s tavern, the very house we
were in. He had well deserved his rest. Among those who
were hiding from British arrest was Patrick Henry. He
arrived at a certain farmhouse and identified himself by
saying, “I’m Patrick Henry.” But the farmer’s wife replied,
“Oh, you couldn’t be, because my husband is out there
fighting, and Patrick Henry would be out there too.”
Henry managed to convince the farmer’s wife that his life
depended on his hiding in her house, and finally she
understood. But it was toward the end of the Revolutionary
War and the British knew very well that they had for all
intents and purposes been beaten. Consequently, shortly
afterward, Cornwallis suggested to the Virginia legislators
that they return to Charlottesville to resume their offices.
It was time to proceed to Monticello; the afternoon
sun was setting, and we would be arriving just after the
last tourists had left. Monticello, which every child knows
from its representation on the American five-cent piece, is
probably one of the finest examples of American architec-
ture, designed by Jefferson himself, who lies buried there
in the family graveyerd. It stands on a hill looking down in
to the valley of Charlottesville. Carefully landscaped
grounds surround the house. Inside, the house is laid out
in classical proportions. From the entrance hall with its
famous clock, also designed by Jefferson, one enters a large,
round room, the heart of the house. On both sides of this
central area are rectangular rooms. To the left is a corner
room, used as a study and library from where Jefferson,
frequently in the morning before anyone else was up, used
to look out on the rolling hills ofVirginia. Adjacent to it is
a very small bedroom, almost a bunk. Thus, the entire
west wing of the building is a self-contained apartment in
which Jefferson could be active without interfering with the
rest of his family. In the other side of the round central
room is a large dining room leading to a terrace which, in
turn, continues into an open walk with a magnificent view
of the hillside. The furniture is Jefferson’s own, as are the
silver and china, some of it returned to Monticello by
A Visit with the Spirited Jefferson
135
history-conscious citizens of the area who had previously
purchased it.
The first room we visited was Jefferson’s bedroom.
Almost in awe herself, Ingrid touched the bedspread of
what was once Jefferson’s bed, then his desk, and the
books he had handled. “I feel his presence her,” she said,
"and I think he did a lot of his work in this room, a lot of
planning and working things out, till the wee hours of the
night.” I don’t think Ingrid knew that Jefferson was in the
habit of doing just that, in this particular room.
I motioned Ingrid to sit down in one of Jefferson’s
chairs and try to capture whatever she might receive from
the past. "I can see an awful lot of hard work, sleepless
nights, and turmoil. Other than that, nothing.”
We went into the library next to the study. “I don’t
think he spent much time here really, just for reference.”
On we went to the dining room to the right of the central
room. "I think this was his favorite room, and he loved to
meet people here socially.” Then she added, “I get the
words ‘plum pudding' and ‘hot liquor.”'
“Well,” Burr commented, "he loved the lighter
things of life. He brought ice cream to America, and he
squirted milk directly from the cow into a goblet to make it
froth. He had a French palate. He liked what we used to
call floating island, a very elaborate dessert.”
"I see a lot of people. It is a friendly gathering with
glittering glasses and candlelight.” Ingrid said. “They are
elegant but don’t have on overcoats. I see their white silken
shirts. I see them laughing and passing things around. Jef-
ferson is at the table with white hair pulled back, leaning
over and laughing.”
The sun was setting, since it was getting toward half
past six now, and we started to walk out the French glass
doors onto the terrace. From there an open walk led
around a sharp corner to a small building, perhaps twenty
or twenty -five yards in the distance. Built in the same clas-
sical American style as Monticello itself, the building con-
tained two fair-sized roooms, on two stories. The walk led
to the entrance to the upper story, barricaded by an iron
grillwork to keep tourists out. It allowed us to enter the
room only partially, but sufficiently for Ingrid to get her
bearings. Outside, the temperature sank rapidly as the
evening approached. A wind had risen, and so it was pleas-
ant to be inside the protective walls of the little house.
“Horace, where are we now?” I asked.
“We are in the honeymoon cottage where Thomas
Jefferson brought his bride and lived at the time when his
men were building Monticello. Jefferson and his family
lived here at the very beginning, so you might say that
whatever impressions there are here would be of the pre-
Revolutionary part of Jefferson’s life.”
I turned to Ingrid and asked for her impressions. "I
feel everything is very personal here and light, and I don’t
feel the tremendous starin in the planning of things I felt
in the Monticello building. As I close my eyes, I get a
funny feeling about a bouquet of flowers, some very strong
and peculiar exotic flowers. They are either pink or light
red and have a funny name, and I have a feeling that a
woman involved in this impression is particularly fond of a
specific kind of flower. He goes out of his way to get them
for her, and I also get the feeling of a liking for a certain
kind of china porcelain. Someone is a collector and wants
to buy certain things, being a connoisseur, and wants to
have little knick-knacks all over the place. I don’t know if
any of this makes any sense, but this is how I see it.”
“It makes sense indeed,” Horace Burr replied. “Jef-
ferson did more to import rare trees and rare flowering
shrubs than anyone else around here. In fact, he sent ship-
ments back from France while he stayed there and indi-
cated that they were so rare that if you planted them in one
place they might not succeed. So he planted only a third at
Monticello, a third at Verdant Lawn, which is an old estate
belonging to a friend of his, and a third somewhere else in
Virginia. It was his idea to plant them in three places to
see if they would thrive in his Virginia.”
"The name Rousseau comes to mind. Did he know
anyone by that name?” Ingrid asked.
“Of course, he was much influenced by Rousseau.”
“I also get the feeling of a flickering flame, a habit of
staying up to all hours of the morning. Oh, and is there
any historical record of an argument concerning this habit
of his, between his wife and himself and some kind of
peacemaking gesture on someone else’s part?”
“I am sure there was an argument," Horace said.
“but I doubt that there ever was a peacemaking gesture.
You see, their marriage was not a blissful one; she was very
wealthy and he spent her entire estate, just as he spent
Dabney Carr’s entire estate and George Short’s entire
estate. He went through estate after estate, including his
own. Dabney Carr was his cousin, and he married Jeffer-
son’s sister, Martha. He was very wealthy, but Jefferson
gathered up his sister and the children and brought them
here after Carr’s death. He then took over all the planta-
tions and effects of Mr. Carr.
“Jefferson was a collector of things. He wrote three
catalogues of his own collection, and when he died it was
the largest collection in America. You are right about the
porcelain, because it was terribly sophisticated at that time
to be up on porcelain. The clipper trade was bringing in
these rarities, and he liked to collect them.”
Since Ingrid had scored so nicely up to now, I asked
her whether she felt any particular emotional event con-
nected with this little house.
“Well, I think the wife was not living on her level,
her standard, and she was unhappy. It wasn’t what she was
used to. It wasn’t grand enough. I think she had doubts
about him and his plans.”
“In what sense?”
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
136
“I think she was dubious about what would happen.
She was worried that he was getting too involved, and she
didn’t like his political affiliations too well.”
I turned to Horace for comments. To my surprise,
Horace asked me to turn off my tape recorder since the
information was of a highly confidential nature. However,
he pointed out that the material could be found in Ameri-
can Heritage, and that I was free to tell the story in my
own words.
Apparently, there had always been a problem
between Jefferson and his wife concerning other women.
His associations were many and varied. Perhaps the most
lasting was with a beautiful young black woman, about the
same age as his wife. She was the illegitimate natural child
of W. Skelton, a local gentleman, and served as a personal
maid to Mrs. Jefferson. Eventually, Jefferson had a number
of children by this woman. He even took her to Paris. He
would send for her. This went on for a number of years
and eventually contributed to the disillusionment of this
woman. She died in a little room upstairs, and they took
the coffin up there some way, but when they put it
together and got her into the coffin, it wouldn’t come
downstairs. They had to take all the windows out and
lower her on a rope. And what was she doing up there in
the first place? All this did not contribute to Mrs. Jeffer-
son’s happiness. The tragedy is that, after Jefferson’s death,
two of his mulatto children were sent to New Orleans and
sold as prostitutes to pay his debts. There are said to be
some descendants of that liaison alive today, but you won’t
find any of this in American textbooks.
Gossip and legend intermingle in small towns and in
the countryside. This is especially true when important his-
torical figures are involved. So it is said that Jefferson did
not die a natural death. Allegedly, he committed suicide by
cutting his own throat. Toward the end of Jefferson’s life,
there was a bitter feud between himself and the Lewis fam-
ily. Accusations and counteraccusations are said to have
gone back and forth. Jefferson is said to have had Merri-
weather Lewis murdered and, prior to that, to have accused
Mr. Lewis of a number of strange things that were not
true. But none of these legends and rumors can be proved
in terms of judicial procedure; when it comes to patriotic
heroes of the American Revolution, the line between truth
and fiction is always rather indistinct.
* 15
Major Andre and the
Question of Loyalty
"MAJOR John Andre’s fateful excursion from General Sir
Henry Clinton’s headquarters at Number I Broadway to
the gallows on the hill at Tappan took less than a week of
the eighteenth century, exactly one hundred seventy years
ago at this writing. It seems incredible that this journey
should make memorable the roads he followed, the houses
he entered, the roadside wells where he stopped to quench
his thirst, the words he spoke. But it did.” This eloquent
statement by Harry Hansen goes a long way in describing
the relative importance of so temporary a matter as the fate
and capture of a British agent during the Revolutionary
War.
In the Tarrytowns, up in Westchester County, places
associated with Andre are considered prime tourist attrac-
tions. More research effort has been expended on the
exploration of even the most minute detail of the ill-fated
Andre's last voyage than on some far worthier (but less
romantic) historical projects elsewhere. A number of good
books have been written about the incident, every school-
boy knows about it, and John Andre has gone into history
as a gentlemanly but losing hero of the American Revolu-
tionary War. But in presenting history to schoolchildren as
well as to the average adult, most American texts ignore
the basic situation as it then existed.
To begin with, the American Revolutionary War was
more of a civil war than a war between two nations. Inde-
pendence was by no means desired by all Americans; in
fact, the Declaration of Independence had difficulty passing
the Continental Congress and did so only after much nego-
tiating behind the scenes and the elimination of a number
of passages, such as those relating to the issue of slavery,
considered unacceptable by Southerners. When the Decla-
ration of Independence did become the law of the land — at
least as far as its advocates were concerned — there were
still those who had not supported it originally and who felt
themselves put in the peculiar position of being disloyal to
their new country or becoming disloyal to the country they
felt they ought to be loyal to. Those who preferred contin-
ued ties with Great Britain were called Tories, and num-
bered among them generally were the more influential and
wealthier elements in the colonies. There were exceptions,
of course, but on the whole the conservatives did not sup-
port the cause of the Revolution by any means. Any notion
that the country arose as one to fight the terrible British is
pure political make-believe. The issues were deep and
manifold, but they might have been resolved eventually
through negotiations. There is no telling what might have
happened if both England and the United Colonies had
continued to negotiate for a better relationship. The recent
civil war in Spain was far more a war between two distinct
groups than was the American Revolutionary War. In the
latter, friends and enemies lived side by side in many areas,
Major Andre and the Question of Loyalty
137
the lines were indistinctly drawn, and members of the same
family might support one side or the other. The issue was
not between Britain, the invading enemy, and America, the
attacked; on the contrary, it was between the renunciation
of all ties with the motherland and continued adherence to
some form of relationship. Thus, it had become a political
issue far more than a purely patriotic or national issue.
After all, there were people of the same national back-
ground on both sides, and nearly everyone had relatives in
England.
Under the circumstances, the question of what con-
stituted loyalty was a tricky one. To the British, the
colonies were in rebellion and thus disloyal to the king. To
the Americans, anyone supporting the British government
after the Declaration of Independence was considered dis-
loyal. But the percentage of those who could not support
independence was very large all through the war, far more
than a few scattered individuals. While some of these
Tories continued to support Britain for personal or com-
mercial reasons, others did so out of honest political con-
viction. To them, helping a British soldier did not
constitute high treason but, to the contrary, was their nor-
mal duty. Added to this dilemma was the fact that there
were numerous cases of individuals crossing the lines on
both sides, for local business reasons, to remove women
and children caught behind the lines, or to parley about
military matters, such as the surrender of small detach-
ments incapable of rejoining their regiments, or the obtain-
ing of help for wounded soldiers. The Revolutionary War
was not savagely fought; it was, after all, a war between
gentlemen. There were no atrocities, no concentration
camps, and no slaughter of the innocent.
In the fall of 1780 the situation had deteriorated to a
standstill of sorts, albeit to the detriment of the American
forces. The British were in control of the entire South, and
they held New York firmly in their grip. The British sloop
Vulture was anchored in the middle of the Hudson River
opposite Croton Point. In this position, it was not too far
from that formidable bastion of the American defense sys-
tem, West Point. Only West Point and its multiple fortifi-
cations stood in the way of total defeat for the American
forces.
Picture, if you will, the situation in and around New
York. The British Army was in full control of the city, that
is to say, Manhattan, with the British lines going right
through Westchester County. The Americans were
entrenched on the New Jersey shore and on both sides of
the Hudson River from Westchester County upward. On
the American side were first of all, the regular Continental
Army, commanded by General Washington, and also vari-
ous units of local militia. Uniforms for the militia men ran
the gamut of paramilitary to civilian, and their training and
backgrounds were also extremely spotty. It would have
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
been difficult at times to distinguish a soldier of the Revo-
lutionary forces from a civilian.
The British didn’t call on the citizens of the area they
occupied for special services, but it lay in the nature of this
peculiar war that many volunteered to help either side. The
same situation which existed among the civilian population
in the occupied areas also prevailed where the Revolution
was successful. Tory families kept on giving support to the
British, and when they were found out they were charged
with high treason. Nevertheless, they continued right on
supplying aid. Moreover, the lines between British and
American forces were not always clearly drawn. They
shifted from day to day, and if anyone wanted to cross
from north of Westchester into New Jersey, for instance,
he might very well find himself in the wrong part of the
country if he didn't know his way around or if he hadn’t
checked the latest information. To make matters even more
confusing, Sir Henry Clinton was in charge of the British
troops in New York City, while Governor Clinton ruled
the state of New York, one of the thirteen colonies, from
Albany.
In the spring of 1779 Sir Henry Clinton received let-
ters from an unknown correspondent who signed himself
only “Gustavus.” From the content of these letters, the
British commander knew instantly that he was dealing with
a high-ranking American officer. Someone on the American
side wished to make contact in order to serve the British
cause. Clinton turned the matter over to his capable adju-
tant general, Major John Andre. Andre, whose specialty
was what we call intelligence today, replied to the letters,
using the pseudonym John Anderson.
Andre had originally been active in the business
world but purchased a commission as a second lieutenant
in the British Army in 1771. He arrived in America in
1774 and served in the Philadelphia area. Eventually he
served in a number of campaigns and by 1777 had been
promoted to captain. Among the wealthy Tory families he
became friendly with during the British occupation of
Philadelphia was the Shippen family. One of the daughters
of that family later married General Benedict Arnold.
Andre’s first major intelligence job was to make con-
tact with a secret body of Royalists living near Chesapeake
Bay. This group of Royalists had agreed to rise against the
Americans if military protection were sent to them. Essen-
tially, Andre was a staff officer, not too familiar with field
work and therefore apt to get into difficulties once faced
with the realities of rugged terrain. As the correspondence
continued, both Clinton and Andre suspected that the
Loyalist writing the letters was none other than General
Benedict Arnold, and eventually Arnold conceded this.
After many false starts, a meeting took place between
Major General Benedict Arnold, the commander of West
Point, and Major John Andre on the night of September
21, 1780, at Haverstraw on the Hudson. At the time,
Arnold made his headquarters at the house of Colonel Bev-
erley Robinson, which was near West Point.
138
The trip had been undertaken on Andre’s insistence,
very much against the wishes of his immediate superior, Sir
Henry Clinton. As Andre was leaving, Clinton reminded
him that under no circumstances was he to change his uni-
form or to take papers with him. It was quite sufficient to
exchange views with General Arnold and then to return to
the safety of the British lines.
Unfortunately, Andre disobeyed these commands.
General Arnold had with him six papers which he per-
suaded Andre to place between his stockings and his feet.
The six papers contained vital information about the forti-
fications at West Point, sufficient to allow the British to
capture the strongpoint with Arnold’s help. “The six
papers which Arnold persuaded Andre to place between his
stockings and his feet did not contain anything of value
that could not have been entrusted to Andre’s memory or
at most contained in a few lines in cipher that would not
have been intelligible to anyone else,” states Otto Hufeland
in his book Westchester County during the American Revolu-
tion. But it is thought that Andre still distrusted General
Arnold and wanted something in the latter's handwriting
that would incriminate him if there was any deception.
It was already morning when the two men parted.
General Arnold returned to his headquarters by barge,
leaving Andre with Joshua Smith, who was to see to his
safe return. Andre's original plan was to get to the sloop
Vulture and return to New York by that route. But some-
how Joshua Smith convinced him that he should go by
land. He also persuaded Andre to put on a civilian coat,
which he supplied. General Arnold had given them passes
to get through the lines, so toward sunset Andre, Smith,
and a servant rode down to King’s Ferry, crossing the river
from Stony Point to Verplanck’s Point and on into
Westchester County.
Taking various back roads and little-used paths
which made the journey much longer, Andre eventually
arrived at a spot not far from Philipse Castle. There he ran
into three militia men: John Paulding, Isaac Van Wart, and
David Williams. They were uneducated men in their early
twenties, and far from experienced in such matters as how
to question a suspected spy. The three fellows weren’t
looking for spies, however, but for cattle thieves which
were then plaguing the area. They were on the lookout
near the Albany Post Road when Van Wart saw Andre
pass on his horse. They stopped him, and that is where
Andre made his first mistake. Misinterpreting the Hessian
coat Paulding wore (he had obtained it four days before
when escaping from a New York prison) and thinking that
he was among British Loyalists, he immediately identified
himself as a British officer and asked them not to detain
him. But the three militia men made him dismount and
undress, and then the documents were discovered. It has
been said that they weren’t suspicious of him at all, but
that the elegant boots, something very valuable in those
days, tempted them, and that they were more interested in
Andre’s clothing than in what he might have on him.
Whatever the motivation, Andre was brought to Colonel
Jameson’s headquarters at Sand’s Mill, which is called
Armonk today.
Jameson sent the prisoner to General Arnold, a
strange decision which indicates some sort of private
motive. The papers, however, he sent directly to General
Washington, who was then at Hartford. Only upon the
return of his next -in -command, Major Tallmadge, did the
real state of affairs come to light. On Tallmadge’s insis-
tence, the party escorting Andre to General Arnold was
recalled and brought back to Sand’s Mills. But a letter
telling General Arnold of Andre’s capture was permitted to
continue on its way to West Point!
Benedict Arnold received the letter the next morning
at breakfast. The General rose from the table, announced
that he had to go across the river to West Point immedi-
ately, and went to his room in great agitation. His wife fol-
lowed him, and he informed her that he must leave at
once, perhaps forever. Then he mounted his horse and
dashed down to the riverside. Jumping into his barge, he
ordered his men to row him to the Vulture, some seventeen
miles below. He explained to his men that he came on a
flag of truce and promised them an extra ration of rum if
they made it particularly quickly. When the barge arrived
at the British vessel, he jumped aboard and even tried to
force the bargemen to enter the King’s service on the threat
of making them prisoners. The men refused, and the Vul-
ture sailed on to New York City. On arrival, General Clin-
ton freed the bargemen, a most unusual act of gallantry in
those days.
Meanwhile Andre was being tried as a spy. Found
guilty by a court-martial at Tappan, he was executed by
hanging on October 2, 1780. The three militia men who
had thus saved the very existence of the new republic were
voted special medals by Congress.
* * *
The entire area around Tappan and the Tarrytowns
is "Andre” country. At Philipse Castle there is a special
exhibit of Andre memorabilia in a tiny closet under the
stairs. There is a persistent rumor that Andre was trying to
escape from his captors. According to Mrs. Cornelia Beek-
man, who then lived at the van Cortlandt House in Peek-
skill, there was in her house a suitcase containing an
American army uniform and a lot of cash. That suitcase
was to be turned over to anyone bringing a written note
from Andre. Joshua Hett Smith, who had helped Andre
escape after his meeting with Arnold, later asked for the
suitcase; however, as Smith had nothing in writing, Beek-
man refused to give it to him. However, this story came to
light only many years after the Revolution, perhaps
because Mrs. Beekman feared to be drawn into a treason
trial or because she had some feelings of her own in the
matter.
Major Andre and the Question of Loyalty
139
Our next stop was to be the van Cortlandt mansion,
not more than fifteen minutes away by car. Obviously, Pat
Smith was in a good mood this morning. In her little for-
eign car she preceded us at such a pace that we had great
difficulty keeping up with her. It was a sight to behold how
this lady eased her way in and out of traffic with an almost
serpentine agility that made us wonder how long she could
keep it up. Bravely following her, we passed Sleepy Hollow
Cemetery and gave it some thought. No, we were not too
much concerned with all the illustrious Dutch Americans
buried there, nor with Washington Irving and nearby Sun-
nyside; we were frankly concerned with ourselves. Would
we also wind up at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, or would we
make it to the van Cortlandt mansion in one piece. . .?
The mansion itself is a handsome two-story building,
meticulously restored and furnished with furniture and art-
works of the eighteenth century, some of it from the origi-
nal house. Turned into a tourist attraction by the same
foundation which looked after Philipsburg Manor, the
house, situated on a bluff, is a perfect example of how to
run an outdoor museum. Prior to climbing the hill to the
mansion itself, however, we visited the ferryboat house at
the foot of the hill. In the eighteenth century and the early
part of the nineteenth century, the river came close to the
house, and it was possible for the ships bringing goods to
the van Cortlandts to come a considerable distance inland
to discharge their merchandise. The Ferryboat Inn seemed
a natural outgrowth of having a ferry at that spot: the ferry
itself crossed an arm of the Hudson River, not very wide,
but wide enough not to be forded on foot or by a small
boat. Since so much of these buildings had been restored, I
wondered whether Ingrid would pick up anything from the
past.
The inn turned out to be a charming little house.
Downstairs we found what must have been the public
room, a kitchen, and another room, with a winding stair-
case leading to the upper story. Frankly, I expected very
little from this but did not want to offend Pat Smith, who
had suggested the visit.
“Funny,” Ingrid said, “when I walked into the door,
I had the feeling that I had to force my way through a
crowd."
The curator seemed surprised at this, for she hadn't
expected anything from this particular visit either. “I can’t
understand this,” she said plaintively. “This is one of the
friendliest buildings we have.”
“Well,” I said, “ferryboat inns in the old days
weren’t exactly like the Hilton."
“I feel a lot of activity here,” Ingrid said. "Something
happened here, not a hanging, but connected with one.”
We went upstairs, where I stopped Ingrid in front of
a niche that contained a contemporary print of Andre's
execution. As yet we had not discussed Major Andre or his
connection with the area, and I doubt very much whether
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
Ingrid realized there was a connection. “As you look at
this, do you have any idea who it is?” I asked.
Ingrid, who is very nearsighted, looked at the picture
from a distance and said, “I feel that he may have come
through this place at one time.” And so he might have.
As we walked up the hill to the van Cortlandt man-
sion, the time being just right for a visit as the tourists
would be leaving, I questioned Pat Smith about the
mansion.
“My mother used to know the family who owns the
house,” Pat Smith began. “Among the last descendants of
the van Cortlandts were Mrs. Jean Brown and a Mrs.
Mason. This was in the late thirties or the forties, when I
lived in New Canaan. Apparently, there were such mani-
festations at the house that the two ladies called the Arch-
bishop of New York for help. They complained that a
spirit was ‘acting up,’ that there were the sound of a coach
that no one could see and other inexplicable noises of the
usual poltergeist nature.”
“What did they do about it?”
"Despite his reluctance to get involved, the Arch-
bishop did go up to the manor, partly because of the
prominence of the family. He put on his full regalia and
went through a ritual of exorcism. Whether or not it did
any good, I don’t know, but a little later a psychic sensitive
went through the house also and recorded some of these
noises. As far as I know, none of it was ever published,
and for all I know, it may still be there — the specter, that
is.”
We now had arrived at the mansion, and we entered
the downstairs portion of the house. Two young ladies
dressed in colonial costumes received us and offered us
some cornmeal tidbits baked in the colonial manner. We
went over the house from top to bottom, from bottom to
top, but Ingrid felt absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
True, she felt the vibrations of people having lived in the
house, having come and gone, but no tragedy, no deep
imprint, and, above all, no presence. Pat Smith seemed a
little disappointed. She didn’t really believe in ghosts as
such, but, having had some ESP experiences at Sunnyside,
she wasn’t altogether sure. At that instant she remembered
having left her shopping bag at the Ferryboat Inn. The bag
contained much literature on the various colonial houses in
the area, and she wanted to give it to us. Excusing herself,
she dashed madly back down the hill to the Ferryboat Inn.
She was back in no time, a little out of breath, which made
me wonder whether she had wanted to make her solo visit
to the Ferryboat Inn at dusk just as brief as humanly
possible.
* * *
In a splendid Victorian mansion surmounted by a
central tower, the Historical Society of the Tarrytowns
functions as an extremely well organized local museum as
well as a research center. Too prudent to display items of
general interest that might be found elsewhere in greater
140
quantity and better quality, the Historical Society concen-
trates on items and information pertaining to the immedi-
ate area. It is particularly strong on pamphlets, papers,
maps, and other literature of the area from 1786 onward.
One of the principal rooms in the Society’s museum is the
so-called Captors’ Room. In it are displays of a sizable col-
lection of material dealing with the capture of Major
Andre. These include lithographs, engravings, documen-
tary material, letters, and, among other things, a chair. It is
the chair Andre sat in when he was still a free man at the
Underhill home, south ofYorktown Heights. Mrs. Ade-
laide Smith, the curator, was exceptionally helpful to us
when we stated the purpose of our visit. Again, as I always
do, I prevented Ingrid from hearing my conversation with
Mrs. Smith, or with Miss Smith, who had come along now
that she had recovered her shopping bag full of literature.
As soon as I could get a moment alone with Ingrid, I asked
her to touch the chair in question.
“I get just a slight impression," she said, seating her-
self in the chair, then getting up again. “There may have
been a meeting in here of some kind, or he may have been
sentenced while near or sitting in this chair. I think there
was a meeting in this room to determine what would
happen.”
But she could not get anything very strong about the
chair. Looking at the memorabilia, she then commented, "I
feel he was chased for quite a while before he was cap-
tured. I do feel that the chair in this room has something
to do with his sentence."
“Is the chair authentic?”
"Yes, I think so.”
“Now concerning this room, the Captors’ Room, do
you feel anything special about it?”
“Yes, I think this is where it was decided, and I feel
there were a lot of men here, men from town and from the
government.”
Had Ingrid wanted to manufacture a likely story to
please me, she could not have done worse. Everything
about the room and the building would have told her that
it was of the nineteenth century, and that the impression
she had just described seemed out of place, historically
speaking. But those were her feelings, and as a good sensi-
tive she felt obliged to say whatever came into her mind or
whatever she was impressed with, not to examine it as to
whether it fit in with the situation she found herself in. I
turned to the curator and asked, “Mrs. Smith, what was
this room used for, and how old is the building itself?”
“The building is about one hundred twenty-five years
old; our records show it was built between 1848 and 1850
by Captain Jacob Odell, the first mayor of Tarrytown. It
was built as one house, and since its erection two families
have lived here. First, there were the Odells, and later Mr.
and Mrs. Aussie Case. Mrs. Case is eighty-seven now and
retired. This house was purchased for the Society to
become their headquarters. It has been used as our head-
quarters for over twenty years.”
“Was there anything on this spot before this house
was built?”
“I don’t know."
“Has anyone ever been tried or judged in this room?”
“I don’t know.”
Realizing that a piece of furniture might bring with
itself part of the atmosphere in which it stood when some
particularly emotional event took place, I questioned Mrs.
Smith about the history of the chair.
“This chair, dated 1725, was presented to us from
Yorktown. It was the chair in which Major Andre sat the
morning of his capture, when he and Joshua Smith stopped
at the home of Isaac Underhill for breakfast.”
The thoughts going through Andre’s head that morn-
ing, when he was almost sure of a successful mission, must
have been fairly happy ones. He had succeeded in obtain-
ing the papers from General Arnold; he had slept reason-
ably well, been fed a good breakfast, and was now,
presumably, on his way to Manhattan and a reunion with
his commanding general, Sir Henry Clinton. If Ingrid felt
any meetings around that chair, she might be reaching
back beyond Andre’s short use of the chair, perhaps into
the history of the Underhill home itself. Why, then, did
she speak of sentence and capture, facts she would know
from the well-known historical account of Major Andre’s
mission? I think that the many documents and memorabilia
stored in the comparatively small room might have created
a common atmosphere in which bits and snatches of past
happenings had been reproduced in some fashion. Perhaps
Ingrid was able to tune in on this shallow but nevertheless
still extant psychic layer.
Major Andre became a sort of celebrity in his own
time. His stature as a British master spy was exaggerated
far out of proportion even during the Revolutionary War.
This is understandable when one realizes how close the
cause of American independence had come to total defeat.
If Andre had delivered the documents entrusted to him by
Major General Arnold to the British, West Point could not
have been held. With the fall of the complicated fortifica-
tions at the point, the entire North would have soon been
occupied by the British. Unquestionably, the capture of
Major Andre was a turning point in the war, which had
then reached a stalemate, albeit one in favor of the British.
They could afford to wait and sit it out while the Conti-
nental troops were starving to death, unable to last another
winter.
General Arnold’s betrayal was by no means a sudden
decision; his feelings about the war had changed some time
prior to the actual act. The reasons may be seen in his
background, his strong Tory leanings, and a certain resent-
ment against the command of the Revolutionary Army. He
felt he had not advanced quickly enough; the command at
West Point was given him only three months prior to
Andre’s capture. Rather than being grateful for the belated
Major Andre and the Question of Loyalty
141
recognition of his talents by the Continental command,
Arnold saw it as a godsend to fulfill his own nefarious task.
For several months he had been in correspondence with Sir
Henry Clinton in New York, and his decision to betray the
cause of independence was made long before he became
commander of West Point.
But Andre wasn’t the master spy later accounts try to
make him out: his bumbling response when captured by
the three militia men shows that he was far from experi-
enced in such matters. Since he had carried on his person a
laissez-passer signed by General Arnold, he needed only to
produce this document and the men would have let him
go. Instead, he volunteered the information that he was a
British officer. All this because one of the militia men wore
a Hessian coat. It never occurred to Andre that the coat
might have been stolen or picked up on the battlefield! But
there was a certain weakness in Andre’s character, a certain
conceit, and the opportunity of presenting himself as a
British officer on important business was too much to pass
up when he met the three nondescript militia men. Perhaps
his personal vanity played a part in this fateful decision;
perhaps he really believed himself to be among troops on
his own side. Whatever the cause of his strange behavior,
he paid with his life for it. Within weeks after the hanging
of Major Andre, the entire Continental Army knew of the
event, the British command was made aware of it, and in a
detailed document Sir Henry Clinton explained what he
had had in mind in case Arnold would have been able to
deliver West Point and its garrison to the British. Thus,
the name Andre became a household word among the
troops of both sides.
* * *
In 1951 I investigated a case of a haunting at the
colonial house belonging to the late New York News colum-
nist Danton Walker. The case was first published, under
the title "The Rockland County Ghost,” in Tomorrow mag-
azine and, later, in Ghost Hunter. Various disturbances had
occurred at the house between 1941 and 1951 that had led
Mr. Walker to believe that he had a poltergeist in his
domicile. The late Eileen Garrett offered to serve as
medium in the investigation, and Dr. Robert Laidlaw, the
eminent psychiatrist, was to meet us at the house to super-
vise the proceedings along with me. Even before Mrs. Gar-
rett set foot in the house, however, she revealed to us the
result of a “traveling clairvoyance” expedition in which she
had seen the entity "hung up” in the house. His name, she
informed us, was Andreas, and she felt that he was
attached to the then owner of the house.
The visit to the house was one of the most dramatic
and perhaps traumatic psychic investigations into haunted
houses I have ever conducted. The house, which has since
changed ownership owing to Mr. Walker’s death, stands
on a hill that was once part of a large farm. During the
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
Revolutionary War, the house served as headquarters for a
detachment of troops on the Revolutionary side. General
Anthony Wayne, known as "Mad” Anthony, had his head-
quarters very near this site, and the Battle of Stony Point
was fought just a few miles away in 1779. The building
served as a fortified roadhouse used for the storage of arms,
ammunitions, food, and at times for the safekeeping of
prisoners.
At the time Danton Walker bought the house, it was
in a sad state of disrepair, but with patience and much
money he restored it to its former appearance. During the
time when the house was being rebuilt, Walker stayed at a
nearby inn but would occasionally take afternoon naps on
an army cot in the upstairs part of his house. On these
occasions he had the distinct impression of the presence of
a Revolutionary soldier in the same room with him. Psy-
chic impressions were nothing new for the late News
columnist; he had lived with them all his life. During the
first two years of his tenancy, Walker did not observe any-
thing further, but by 1944 there had developed audible and
even visible phenomena.
One afternoon, while resting in the front room down-
stairs, he heard a violent knocking at the front door caused
by someone moving the heavy iron knocker. But he found
no one at the front door. Others, including Walker’s man
Johnny, were aroused many times by knocking at the door,
only to find no one there. A worker engaged in the restora-
tion of the house complained about hearing someone with
heavy boots on walking up the stairs in mid-afternoon, at a
time when he was alone in the place. The sound of heavy
footfalls, of someone, probably male, wearing boots, kept
recurring. During the summer of 1952, when Walker had
guests downstairs, everyone heard the heavy thumping
sound of someone falling down the stairs. Other, more tan-
gible phenomena added to the eerie atmosphere of the
place: the unmistakable imprint of a heavy man's thumb
on a thick pewter jar of the seventeenth century, inexplica-
ble on any grounds; the mysterious appearance on a plate
rail eight feet above the kitchen floor of a piece of glass
that had been in the front-door window; pictures tumbling
down from their places in the hallway; and a pewter
pitcher thrown at a woman guest from a bookshelf behind
the bed.
One evening, two Broadway friends of Danton
Walker’s, both of them interested in the occult but not
really believers, came to the house for the weekend. One of
the men, L., a famous Broadway writer, insisted on spend-
ing the night in the haunted bedroom upstairs. An hour
later the pajama-clad guest came down to Walker's little
studio at the other end of the estate, where Walker was
now sleeping because of the disturbances, and demanded
an end to the “silly pranks” he thought someone was play-
ing on him. The light beside his bed was blinking on and
off, while all the other lights in the house were burning
steadily, he explained. Walker sent him back to bed with
an explanation about erratic power supply in the country.
142
A little over an hour later, L, came running back to
Walker and asked to spend the rest of the night in
Walker’s studio.
In the morning he explained the reasons for his
strange behavior: he had been awakened from deep sleep
by the sensation of someone slapping him violently about
the face. Sitting bolt upright in bed, he noticed that the
shirt he had placed on the back of a rocking chair was
being agitated by the breeze. The chair was rocking ever so
gently. It then occurred to L. that there could be no breeze
in the room, since all the windows had been closed!
Many times, Walker had the impression that some-
one was trying desperately to get into the house, as if for
refuge. He recalled that the children of a previous tenant
had spoken of some disturbance near a lilac bush at the
comer of the house. The original crude stone walk from
the road to the house passed by this lilac bush and went on
to the well, which, according to local tradition, had been
used by Revolutionary soldiers.
Our group of investigators reached the house on
November 22, 1952, on a particularly dark day, as if it had
been staged that way. Toward 3 o’clock in the afternoon,
we sat down for a seance in the upstairs bedroom. Within
a matter of seconds, Eileen Garrett had disappeared, so to
speak, from her body, and in her stead was another person.
Sitting upright and speaking in halting tones with a distinct
Indian accent, Uvani, one of Mrs. Garrett’s spirit guides,
addressed us and prepared us for the personality that
would follow him.
“I am confronted myself with a rather restless per-
sonality, a very strange personality, and one that might
appear to be, in his own life, perhaps not quite of the right
mind,” he explained to us. The control personality then
added that he was having difficulty maintaining a calm
atmosphere owing to the great disturbance the entity was
bringing into the house. As the control spoke, the
medium’s hands and legs began to shake. He explained
that she was experiencing the physical condition of the
entity that would soon speak to us, a disease known as
classical palsy. Dr. Laidlaw nodded and asked the entity to
proceed.
A moment later, the body of Eileen Garrett was
occupied by an entirely new personality. Shaking uncon-
trollably, as if in great pain, the entity tried to sit up in the
chair but was unable to maintain balance and eventually
crashed to the floor. There, one of the legs continued to
vibrate violently, which is one of the symptoms of palsy, a
disease in which muscular control is lost. For two minutes
or more, only inarticulate sounds came from the entranced
medium’s lips. Eventually we were able to induce the pos-
sessing entity to speak to us. At first there were only halt-
ing sounds, as if the entity were in great pain. From time
to time the entity touched his leg, and then his head, indi-
cating that those were areas in which he experienced pain.
Dr. Laidlaw assured the personality before us that we had
come as friends and that he could speak with us freely and
without fear. Realizing what we were attempting to convey,
the entity broke into tears, extremely agitated, and at the
same time tried to come close to where Dr. Laidlaw sat.
We could at last understand most of the words. The
entity spoke English, but with a marked Polish accent. The
voice sounded rough, uncouth, not at all like Eileen Gar-
rett’s own.
“Friend... friend... mercy. I know. ..I know...,”
and he pointed in the direction of Danton Walker. As we
pried, gently and patiently, more information came from
the entity on the floor before us. “Stones, stones. . . . Don’t
let them take me. I can’t talk.” With that he pointed to his
head, then to his tongue.
"No stones. You will not be stoned,” Dr. Laidlaw
assured him.
“No beatin’?”
Laidlaw assured the entity that he could talk, and that
we were friends. He then asked what the entity’s name
might be.
"He calls me. I have to get out. I cannot go any fur-
ther. In God’s name, I cannot go any further.”
With that, the entity touched Danton Walker’s
hands. Walker was visibly moved. “I will protect you,” he
said simply.
The entity kept talking about “stones,” and we
assumed that he was talking about stones being thrown at
him. Actually, he was talking about stones under which he
had hidden some documents. But that came later. Mean-
while he pointed at his mouth and said, "Teeth gone,” and
he graphically demonstrated how they had been kicked in.
"Protect me,” the entity said, coming closer to Walker
again. Dr. Laidlaw asked whether he lived here. A violent
gesture was his answer. “No, oh, no. I hide here. Cannot
leave here.”
It appeared that he was hiding from another man and
that he knew the plans, which he had hidden in a faraway
spot. “Where did you hide the plans?” Walker demanded.
“Give me map,” the entity replied, and when Walker
handed him a writing pad and a pen, the entity, using Mrs.
Garrett’s fingers, of course, picked it up as if he were han-
dling a quill. The drawing, despite its unsteady and vacil-
lating lines due to palsy, was nevertheless a valid
representation of where the entity had hidden the papers.
“In your measure, Andreas hid. . .not in the house. . .tim-
ber house, log house. . .under the stones. . .fifteen
stones. . .plans for the whole shifting of men and ammuni-
tions I have for the French. Plans I have to deliver to log
house, right where the sun strikes window. Where sun
strikes the window. . .fifteen stones under in log
house. . .there I have put away plans.”
This was followed by a renewed outburst of fear,
during which the entity begged us not to allow him to be
taken again. After much questioning, the entity told us that
he was in need of protection, that he was Polish and had
Major Andre and the Question of Loyalty
143
come to this country as a young man. He threw his arms
around Walker, saying that he was like a brother to him.
“Gospodin, gospodin,” the entity said, showing his joy at
finding who he thought was his brother again. "Me Andre,
you Hans,” he exclaimed. Walker was somewhat non-
plussed at the idea of being Hans. “My brother” the entity
said, “he killed too. . .1 die. . .big field, battle. Like yester-
day, like yesterday.. .1 lie here. . .English all over. They
are terrible.”
“Were you with the Americans?” Dr. Laidlaw asked.
Apparently the word meant nothing to him. “No, no.
Big word. Republic Protection. The stars in the flag, the
stars in the flag. Republic. . . . They sing.”
“How long have you been hiding in this house?”
“I go away a little, he stays, he talk, he here part of
the time.”
Uvani returned at this point, taking Andreas out of
Eileen’s body, explaining that the Polish youngster had
been a prisoner. Apparently, he had been in other parts of
the country with the French troops. He had been friendly
with various people in the Revolutionary Army, serving as
a jackboot for all types of men, a good servant. But he had-
n’t understood for whom he was working. “He refers to an
Andre.” Uvani went on to say, “with whom he is in con-
tact for some time, and he likes this Andre very much
because of the similar name. . .because he is Andrewski.
There is this similarity to Andre. It is therefore he has
been used, as far as I can see, as a cover-up for this man.
Here then is the confusion. He is caught two or three times
by different people because of his appearance; he is a dead-
ringer, or double. His friend Andre disappears, and he’s
lost and does what he can with this one and that one and
eventually he finds himself in the hands of the British
troops. He is known to have letters and plans, and these he
wants me to tell you were hidden by him due east of where
you now find yourselves, in what he says was a temporary
building of sorts in which were housed different caissons.
In this there is also a rest house for guards. In this type
kitchen he will not reveal the plans and is beaten merci-
lessly. His limbs are broken and he passes out, no longer in
the right mind, but with a curious break on one side of the
body, and his leg is damaged. It would appear that he is
from time to time like one in a coma — he wakes, dreams,
and loses himself again, and I gather from the story that he
is not always aware of people.”
We sat in stunned silence as Uvani explained the
story to us. Then we joined in prayer to release the unfor-
tunate one. To the best of my knowledge, the house has
been free from further disturbances ever since. The papers,
of course, were no longer in their hiding place. French aux-
iliary troops under Rochambeau and Lafayette had been all
over the land, and papers must have gone back and forth
between French detachments and their American allies.
Some of these papers may have been of lesser importance
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
and could have been entrusted even to so simple a man as
Andreas.
The years went by, Danton Walker himself passed
away, and the house changed hands, but the pewter jar
which Danton had entrusted to my care was still in my
hands. Johnny, who had served the late columnist so well
for all those years, refused to take it. To him, it meant that
the ghost might attach himself to him now. Under the cir-
cumstances, I kept the jar and placed it in a showcase in
my home along with many other antiquities and did not
give the matter much thought. But roughly on the twenti-
eth anniversary of the original expedition to the house in
Rockland County, I decided to test two good mediums I
work with, to see whether any of the past secrets clinging
to the pewter might yet be unraveled.
On September 25, 1972, I handed Shawn Robbins a
brown paper bag in which the pewter jar had been placed.
But Shawn could not make contact, so I took out the object
and placed it directly into her hands. “I pick up three ini-
tials and a crest,” she began. "The first thing I see are
these initials, someone’s name, like B.A.R.; then I see a
man with a beard, and he may have been very important.
There is another man, whom I like better, however. They
look Nordic to me, because of the strange helmets they
wear.”
“The person you sense here — is he a civilian or a
soldier?”
“I'm thinking of the word ‘crown.’ There is someone
here who wears a crown; the period is the 1700s, perhaps
the 1600s. The King wore a crown and a white, high neck,
like a ruffled collar, and then armor. That is one of the lay-
ers I get from this object.”
I realized, of course, that the object was already old
when the American Revolution took place. Danton Walker
had acquired it in the course of his collecting activities, and
it had no direct connection with the house itself.
It seemed to me that Shawn was psychometrizing the
object quite properly, getting down to the original layer
when it was first created. The description of a seventeenth-
century English king was indeed quite correct. “The armor
is a rough color, but all in one piece and worn over some-
thing else, some velvet, I think. On his head, there is a
crown, and yet I see him also wearing a hat.” I couldn’t
think of a better description of the way King Charles II
dressed, and the pewter pitcher originated during his reign.
“What are some of the other layers you get?” I asked.
“There is a man here who looks as if he either broke
his neck or was hanged. This man is the strongest influence
I feel with this object. He is bearded and slightly baldish in
front.”
“Stick with him then and try to find out who he
was.”
Shawn gave the object another thorough investigation,
touching it all over with her hands, and then reported, "He
is important in the sense that the object is haunted by him.
He was murdered by a person who had an object in his
144
hand that looks like a scepter to me, but I don’t know what
it is. The man in back of him killed him: he got it in the
back of his neck. The man who killed him is in a position
of power.”
"What about the victim — what was his position?”
“The only initials I pick up are something like Pont,
or perhaps Boef.”
While this did not correspond to Andreas, it seemed
interesting to me that she picked up two French names. I
recalled that the unlucky Polish jackboot had served the
French auxiliaries. "Can you get any country of origin?”
"It is hard to say, but the man who was murdered
had something to do with England. Perhaps the man who
killed him did.”
I then instructed Shawn to put her thumb into the
dent in the wall of the pitcher where the ghostly hand of
Andreas had made a depression. Again, Shawn came up
with the name Boef. Since I wasn’t sure whether she was
picking up the original owner of the pewter pitcher or per-
haps one of its several owners, I asked her to concentrate
on the last owner and the time during which he had had
the object in his house.
“The letter V is an important initial here,” she said,
“and I sense a boat coming up.”
I couldn’t help thinking of the sloop Vulture, which
Major Andre had wanted to use for his getaway but didn’t,
and which saved the life of General Arnold. “Do you feel
any suffering with this object?” I asked.
“Yes,” Shawn replied. "A man was murdered, and a
woman was involved: a woman, an older person, and the
murderer; this was premeditated murder. The victim is a
good-looking man, not too old, with a moustache or beard,
and it looks as if they are taking something away from him
which is part of him, something that belonged to him.”
“Was it something he had on his person?”
“When he was murdered, he didn't have it on him,
and it is still buried somewhere," Shawn replied.
Shawn, of course, had no idea that there was a con-
nection between the object she was psychometrizing and
the Rockland County Ghost, which I had written about in
the 1960s. "What is buried?” I asked, becoming more
intrigued by her testimony as the minutes rolled by.
“There is something he owns that is buried some-
where, and I think it goes back to a castle or house. It is
not buried inside but outside. It is buried near a grave, and
whoever buried it was very smart.”
"Why was he killed?” I asked.
"I see him, and then another man, besides, who is
involved. He was murdered because he was a friend of this
man and his cause. They are wearing something funny on
their heads. One of them is holding up his two hands, with
an object with a face on it, a very peculiar thing.”
"Can you tell me where the object he buried is
located?”
“I can’t describe it unless I can draw it. Give me a
pencil. There is the initial 'A’ here.”
“Who is this ‘A’?”
“‘K’ would be another initial of importance. This is
the hat they are wearing.”
Shawn then drew what looked to me like the rough outlines
of a fur-braided hat, the kind soldiers in the late eighteenth
century would wear in the winter. The initial “A” of
course startled me, since it might belong to Andreas. The
"K” I thought might refer to Kosciuszko, the leader of the
Polish auxiliary forces in America during the Revolutionary
War, who wore fur hats. "The hat is part metal, but there
is a red feather on it, actually red and green,” she said.
The colors were quite correct for the period involved.
“This man is in love with an older woman; he is a
very good looking fellow. This is how he looks to me.”
Shawn drew a rough portrait of a man in the wig and short
tie of an eighteenth-century gentleman. She then drew the
woman also, and mentioned that she wore a flower or some
sort of emblem. It reminded her of a flower or a crest and
was important. "It is a crude way of saying something, and
the letters V.A.R. come in here also. A crest with V.A.R.
across it,” Shawn said.
"Tell me Shawn,” I said, steering her in a somewhat
different direction, "has there ever been any psychic mani-
festation associated with this object?”
“Somebody’s heavy footsteps are associated with this.
Things would move in a house. By themselves.”
“Is there any entity attached to this object?”
“I want to say the name Victor. ” Was she getting
Walker?
As I questioned Shawn further about the object, it
became increasingly clear that she was speaking of the
period when it was first made. She described, in vivid
words, the colors and special designs on the uniforms of
the men who were involved with the object. All of it fit the
middle or late seventeenth century but obviously had noth-
ing to do with the Revolutionary War. I was not surprised,
since I had already assumed that some earlier layer would
be quite strong. But then she mentioned a boat and
remarked that it was going up a river. “I must be way off
on this,” Shawn said, somewhat disappointed, "because I
see a windmill.”
The matter became interesting again. I asked her
what became of “A.” "There are three or four men in the
boat,” Shawn said. “They are transporting someone, and I
think it is ‘A’ on his way to his execution.”
“What did he do?”
“He didn’t do anything — that is the sad part of it.
He was just a victim of circumstances. He is an innocent
victim.”
“Who did his captors think he was?”
*Richard Varick, of noble Dutch descent, became Aide-de-Camp to
General Arnold in August 1780, six weeks prior to the treason. He
was not involved in it, however.
Major Andre and the Question of Loyalty
145
"An important person.”
“Did this important person commit a crime or did he
have something they wanted?”
“He had nothing on him, but the initials K.A.E. A.
are of importance here. That is an important name. But
they have the wrong man. But they kill him anyway. There
is a design on his cloak, which looks to me like the astro-
logical Cancer symbol, like the crab.”
“What happens further on?”
“They are leaving the windmill now. But something
is going to happen because they are headed that way.
Other people are going to die because of this. Many.”
Without my telling her to, Shawn touched the object again.
“I feel the period when Marie Antoinette lived. I have the
feeling they are going off in that direction. They are going
to France. There is a general here, and I get the initials
L.A.M. He, too, was killed in the war.”
“But why is A’ brought to this general?”
“Well, A’ looks to me as if he had changed clothes,
and now he wears black with a little piece of white here.
They are obviously conferring about something. A is con-
ferring with someone else. It doesn’t look like someone in
the military, and he is hard to describe, but I never saw a
uniform like this before. He has on a beret and a medal.”
“What about A? Is he a civilian or an officer?”
"Truthfully, he is really an officer. I think this is
what the whole thing is all about. I think they captured
someone really important. He probably was an officer in
disguise, not wearing the right coloring. It is treason, what
else? Could he have sold papers, you know, secrets?”
Shawn felt now that she had gotten as much as she
could from the object. I found her testimony intriguing, to
say the least. There were elements of the Andre story in it,
and traces of Andreas’s life as well. Just as confusing, it
seemed to me, as the mistaken-identity problems which
had caused Andreas’ downfall. All this time, Shawn had no
idea that Major Andre was involved in my investigation,
no idea of what the experiment was all about. As far as she
was concerned, she had been asked to psychometrize an old
pewter jar, and nothing else.
On October 3, 1972, 1 repeated the experiment with
Ethel Johnson Meyers. Again, the pitcher was in the brown
paper bag. Again, the medium requested to hold it directly
in her hands. “I see three women and a man with heavy
features,” she began immediately. “Something is going on,
but the language doesn’t sound English. Now there is a
man here who is hurt, blood running from his left eye.”
“How did he get hurt?”
“There are some violent vibrations here. I hear loud
talking, and I feel as if he had been hit with this pitcher.
He has on a waistcoat or brown jacket, either plush or vel-
*General John Lamb was sent by General Washington on September
25, 1780, to secure Kings Ferry on the eve of Arnold's treason.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
veteen, and a wide collar. Black stockings and purple shoes.
Knickers that go down to here, and of the same material as
the coat.”
“Can you pinpoint the period?”
"I would guess around the time of Napoleon,” Ethel
said, not altogether sure. That too was interesting since she
obviously wasn't judging the jar (which was far older than
the Napoleonic period) by its appearance. As far as the
Major Andre incident was concerned, she was about
twenty years off. “I am hearing German spoken,” Ethel
continued. “I think this object has seen death and horror,
and I hear violence and screams. There is the feeling of
murder, and a woman is involved. I hear a groan, and now
there is more blood. I feel there is also a gash on the neck.
Once in a while, I hear an English word spoken with a
strange accent. I hear the name Mary, and I think this is at
least the seventeenth century.”
I realized that she was speaking of the early history of
the object, and I directed her to tune in on some later
vibrations. “Has this object ever been in the presence of a
murder?” I asked directly.
“This man’s fate is undeserved. He has been crossing
over from a far distance into a territory where he is not
wanted by many, and he is not worthy of that protection
which he has. He has not deserved this; he has no political
leanings; he has not offended anyone purposely. His pres-
ence is unwanted. God in heaven knows that.”
It sounded more and more the way Andreas spoke
when Eileen Garrett was his instrument. Protection! That
was the word he kept repeating, more than any other word,
protection from those who would do him injustice and hurt
him.
"What nationality is he?”
“It sounds Italian.”
“What name does he give you?”
“Rey...Rey.t .. .Man betrayed.” Ethel was sinking
now into a state of semi-trance, and I noticed some pecu-
liar facial changes coming over her; it was almost as if the
entity were directing her answers.
“Betrayed by whom?” I asked, bending over to hear
every word.
“The ones that make me feel safe."
“Who are they?”
“Bloody Englishmen.”
“Who are your friends?”
"I’m getting away from English.”
“Is there something this person has that someone else
wants?”
“Yes, that is how it is.”
“Who is this person to whom all these terrible things
are happening.”
“Coming over. A scapegoat.”
Again, Ethel managed to touch both the earlier layer
and the involvement with the Revolutionary period, but in
^AndR Eas?
146
a confusing and intertwined manner which made it difficult
for me to sort out what she was telling me. Still, there were
elements that were quite true and which she could not have
known, since she, like Shawn, had no idea what the object
was or why I was asking her to psychometrize it. It was
clear to me that no ghostly entity had attached to the
object, however, and that whatever the two mediums had
felt was in the past. A little lighter in my heart, I replaced
the object in my showcase, hoping that it would in time
acquire some less violent vibrations from the surrounding
objects.
As for Andreas and Andre, one had a brief moment
in the limelight, thanks chiefly to psychical research, while
the other is still a major figure in both American and
British history. After his execution on October 2, 1780, at
Tappan, Andre was buried at the foot of the gallows. In
1821 his body was exhumed and taken to England and
reburied at Westminster Abbey. By 1880 tempers had suf-
ficiently cooled and British- American friendship was firmly
enough established to permit the erection of a monument
to the event on the spot where the three militia men had
come across Major Andre. Actually, the monument itself
was built in 1853, but on the occasion of the centennial of
Andre’s capture, a statue and bronze plaque were added
and the monument surrounded with a protective metal
fence. It stands near a major road and can easily be
observed when passing by car. It is a beautiful monument,
worthy of the occasion. There is only one thing wrong with
it, be it ever so slight: It stands at the wrong spot. My good
friend, Elliott Schryver, the eminent editor and scholar,
pointed out the actual spot at some distance to the east.
In studying Harry Hansen’s book on the area, I have
the impression that he shares this view. In order to make a
test of my own, we stopped by the present monument, and
I asked Ingrid to tell me what she felt. I had purposely told
her that the spot had no direct connection with anything
else we were doing that day, so she could not consciously
sense what the meaning of our brief stop was. Walking
around the monument two or three times, touching it, and
“taking in” the atmosphere psychically, she finally came up
to me, shook her head, and said, “I am sorry, Hans, there
is absolutely nothing here. Nothing at all.”
But why not? If the Revolutionary taverns can be
moved a considerable distance to make them more accessi-
ble to tourists, why shouldn’t a monument be erected
where everyone can see it instead of in some thicket where
a prospective visitor might break a leg trying to find it?
Nobody cares, least of all Major Andre.
# 16
Benedict Arnold’s Friend
“I WAS COMPLETELY FASCINATED by your recent book,”
read a letter by Gustav j. Kramer of Claverack, New York.
Mr. Kramer, it developed, was one of the leading lights of
the Chamber of Commerce in the town of Hudson and
wrote a column for the Hudson Register-Star on the side.
"During the past three years I have specialized in writing
so-called ghost stories for my column,” he explained. "We
have a number of haunted houses in this historic section of
the Hudson Valley. President Martin Van Buren’s home is
nearby and is honestly reputed to be the scene of some
highly disturbing influences. Aaron Burr, the killer of
Alexander Hamilton, hid out in a secret room of this estate
and has reliably been reported to have been seen on
numerous occasions wandering through the upper halls.”
This was in 1963, and I had not yet investigated the
phenomena at Aaron Burr’s stables in lower Manhattan at
the time. Perhaps what people saw in the house was an
imprint of Burr’s thought forms.
From this initial letter developed a lively correspon-
dence between us, and for nearly two years I promised to
come to the Hudson Valley and do some investigating,
provided that Mr. Kramer came up with something more
substantial than hearsay.
It wasn’t until July 1965 that he came up with what
he considered “the house.” He explained that it had a cold
spot in it and that the owner, a Mrs. Dorothea Connacher,
a teacher by profession, was a quiet and reserved lady who
had actually had a visual experience in the attic of this very
old house.
My brother-in-law’s untimely and unexpected death
postponed our journey once again, so we — meaning Ethel
Johnson Meyers, the medium, my wife Catherine, and I —
weren’t ready to proceed to Columbia County, New York,
until early February 1966. GHOST HUNTER VISITS HUD-
SON, Gus Kramer headlined in his column. He met us at
the exit from the Taconic Parkway and took us to lunch
before proceeding further.
It was early afternoon when we arrived at Mrs. Con-
nacher’s house, which was situated a few minutes away on
a dirt road, standing on a fair-sized piece of land and sur-
rounded by tall, old trees. Because of its isolation, one had
the feeling of being far out in the country, when in fact the
thru way connecting New York with Albany passes a mere
ten minutes away. The house is gleaming white, or nearly
so, for the ravages of time have taken their toll. Mr. and
Mrs. Connacher bought it twenty years prior to our visit,
but after divorcing Mr. Connacher, she was unable to keep
it up as it should have been, and gradually the interior
especially fell into a state of disrepair. The outside still
Benedict Arnold’s Friend
147
showed its noble past, those typically colonial manor house
traits, such as the columned entrance, the Grecian influence
in the construction of the roof, and the beautiful colonial
shutters.
New York State in the dead of winter is a cold place
indeed. As we rounded the curve of the dirt road and saw
the manor house looming at the end of a short carriage
way, we wondered how the lady of the house was able to
heat it. After we were inside, we realized she had difficul-
ties in that respect.
For the moment, however, I halted a few yards away
from the house and took some photographs of this visually
exciting old house. Ethel Johnson Meyers knew nothing
about the house or why we were there. In fact, part of our
expedition was for the purpose of finding a country home
to live in. Ethel thought we were taking her along to serve
as consultant in the purchase of a house, since she herself
owns a country home and knows a great deal about houses.
Of course, she knew that there were a couple of interesting
places en route, but she took that for granted, having
worked with me for many years. Even while we were
rounding the last bend and the house became visible to
us, Ethel started getting her first impressions of the case.
I asked her to remain seated in the car and to tell me
about it.
“I see two people, possibly a third. The third person
is young, a woman with a short, rather upturned nose and
large eyes, but she seems to be dimmer than the impres-
sion of the men. The men are very strong. One of them
has a similar upturned nose and dark skin. He wears a
white wig. There is also an older woman. She seems to
look at me as if she wants to say, Why are you staring at
me that way?” Ethel explained to the spirit in an earnest
tone of voice why she had come to the house, that she
meant no harm and had come as a friend, and if there were
anything she could do for them, they should tell her.
While this one-sided conversation was going on,
Catherine and I sat in the car, waiting for it to end. Gus
Kramer had gone ahead to announce our arrival to Mrs.
Connacher.
“What sort of clothing is the woman wearing — I
mean the older woman?” I asked.
“She’s got on some kind of a white dusting cap,”
Ethel replied, “and her hair is sticking out.”
“Can you tell what period they are from?”
“He wears a wig, and she has some sort of kerchief,
wide at the shoulders and pointed in back. The blouse of
her dress fits tight. The dress goes down to the floor, as far
as I can see. The bottom of the dress is ruffled. I should
say she is a woman in her sixties, perhaps even older."
“What about the man?"
“I think one of the women could be his daughter,
because the noses are alike, sort of pug noses.”
“Do you get any names or initials?”
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
“The letter ‘B’ is important.”
“Do you get any other people?”
“There is a woman with dark hair parted in the mid-
dle, and there is a man with a strange hat on his head.
Then there is someone with an even stranger hat, octagonal
in shape and very high. I’ve never seen a hat like that
before. There is something about a B.A. A Bachelor of
Arts? Now I pick up the name Ben. I am sorry, but I don't
think I can do any more outside.”
“In that case,” I said, “let us continue inside the
house.” But I asked Ethel to wait in the car while I inter-
viewed the owner of the house. Afterward, she was to come
in and try trance.
Mrs. Dorothea Connacher turned out to be a smallish
lady in her later years, and the room we entered first gave
the impression of a small, romantic jumble shop. Antiqui-
ties, old furniture, a small new stove so necessary on this
day, pictures on the walls, books on shelves, and all of it in
somewhat less than perfect order made it plain that Mrs.
Connacher wasn’t quite able to keep up with the times, or
rather that the house demanded more work than one per-
son could possibly manage. Mrs. Connacher currently lived
there with her son, Richmond, age thirty-six. Her husband
had left three years after she had moved into the house. I
asked her about any psychic experiences she might have
had.
“Both my husband and I are freelance artists,” she
began, “and my husband used to go to New York to work
three days a week, and the rest of the time he worked at
home. One day shortly after we had moved in, I was alone
in the house. That night I had a dream that my husband
would leave me. At the time I was so happy I couldn’t
understand how this could happen.”
The dream became reality a short time later. It
wasn’t the only prophetic dream Mrs. Connacher had. On
previous occasions she had had dreams concerning dead
relatives and various telepathic experiences.
“What about the house? When did it start here?”
“We were in the house for about five months. We
had been told that everything belonging to the former own-
ers had been taken out of the house — there had been an
auction, and these things had been sold. There really
wasn’t anything up in the attic, so we were told. My hus-
band and I had been up a couple of times to explore it.
We were fascinated by the old beams, with their wooden
pegs dating back to the eighteenth century. There was
nothing up there except some old picture frames and a
large trunk. It is still up there.
“Well, finally we became curious and opened it, and
there were a lot of things in it. It seemed there were little
pieces of material all tied up in bundles. But we didn’t look
too closely; I decided to come up there some day when I
had the time to investigate by myself. My husband said he
was too busy right then and wanted to go down.
“A few days later, when I was home alone, I decided
to go upstairs again and look through the trunk. The attic
148
is rather large, and there are only two very small windows
in the far corner. I opened the trunk, put my hands into it,
and took out these little pieces of material, but in order to
see better I took them to the windows. When I got to the
bottom of the trunk, I found a little waistcoat, a hat, and a
peculiar bonnet, the kind that was worn before 1800. 1
thought, what a small person this must have been who
could have worn this! At first I thought it might have been
for a child; but no, it was cut for an adult, although a very
tiny person.”
As Mrs. Connacher was standing there, fascinated by
the material, she became aware of a pinpoint of light out of
the corner of her eye. Her first thought was, I must tell Jim
that there is a hole in the roof where this light is coming
through. But she kept looking and, being preoccupied with
the material in the trunk, paid no attention to the light.
Something, however, made her look up, and she noticed
that the light had now become substantially larger. Also, it
was coming nearer, changing its position all the time. The
phenomenon began to fascinate her. She wasn’t thinking of
ghosts or psychic phenomena at all, merely wondering
what this was all about. As the light came nearer and
nearer, she suddenly thought, why, that looks like a human
figure!
Eventually, it stopped near the trunk, and Mrs. Con-
nacher realize it was a human figure, the figure of an
elderly lady. She was unusually small and delicate and wore
the very bonnet Mrs. Connacher had discovered at the bot-
tom of the trunk! The woman’s clothes seemed gray, and
Mrs. Connacher noticed the apron the woman was wearing.
As she watched the ghostly apparition in fascinated horror,
the little lady used her apron in a movement that is gener-
ally used in the country to shoo away chickens. However,
the motion was directed against her, as if the apparition
wanted to shoo her away from “her” trunk!
"I was frightened. I saw the bonnet and the apron
and this woman shooing me away, and she seemed com-
pletely solid,” Mrs. Connacher said.
“What did you do?”
"I walked around in back of the trunk to see whether
she was still there. She was. I said, all right, all right. But I
didn’t want to look at her. I could feel my hair stand up
and decided to go down. I was worried I might fall down
the stairs, but I made it all right.”
“Did you ever see her again?”
"No. But there were all sorts of unusual noises. Once
my husband and I were about to go off to sleep when it
sounded as if someone had taken a baseball bat and hit the
wall with it right over our heads; That was in the upstairs
bedroom. The spot isn’t too far from the attic, next to the
staircase.”
“Have other people had experiences here?”
“Well, my sister Clair had a dream about the house
before she had been here. When she came here for the first
time she said she wanted to see the attic. I was surprised,
for I had not even told her that there was an attic. She
rushed right upstairs, but when she saw it, she turned
around, and her face was white; it was exactly what she
had seen in her dream. Then there was this carpenter who
had worked for me repairing the attic and doing other
chores on the property. After he came down from the attic,
he left and hasn’t been back since. No matter how often I
ask him to come and do some work for me, he never shows
up.”
“Maybe the little old lady shooed him away too,” I
said. “What about those cold spots Gus has been telling
me about?”
“I only have a fireplace and this small heater here.
Sometimes you just can’t get the room warm. But there are
certain spots in the house that are always cold. Even in the
summertime people ask whether we have air conditioning.”
"When was the house built?”
"One part has the date 1837 engraved in the stone
downstairs. The older part goes back two hundred years.”
“Did any of the previous owners say anything about
a ghost?”
"No. Before us were the Turners, and before them
the Link family owned it for a very long time. But we
never talked about such things.”
I then questioned Gus Kramer about the house and
about his initial discussions with Mrs. Connacher. It is not
uncommon for a witness to have a better memory immedi-
ately upon telling of an experience than at a later date
when the story has been told and told again. Sometimes it
becomes embroidered by additional, invented details, but at
other times it loses some of its detail because the storyteller
no longer cares or has forgotten what was said under the
immediate impression of the experience itself.
"Mrs. Connacher was holding an old, musty woman’s
blouse at the time when the apparition appeared,” Gus
said. “At the time she felt that there was a connection
between her holding this piece of clothing and her
sighting.”
"Have you yourself ever experienced anything in the
Connacher house?”
“Well, the last time I visited here, we were sitting in
the dim, cluttered living room, when I noticed the dog fol-
low an imaginary something with his eyes from one bed-
room door to the door that leads to the attic, where Mrs.
Connacher ’s experience took place. He then lay down with
his head between his paws and his eyes fastened on the
attic door. I understand he does this often and very fre-
quently fastens his gaze on ‘something’ behind Mrs. Con-
nacher’s favorite easy chair when she is in it. I assure you,
the hairs on the back of my neck stood up like brush bris-
tles while watching that dog.”
I decided to get Ethel out of the car, which by now
must have become a cold spot of its own. "Ethel,” I said,
“you are standing in the living room of this house now.
There is another story above this one and there is an attic.
Benedict Arnold’s Friend
149
I want you to tell me if there is any presence in this house
and, if so, what area you feel is most affected.
“The top,” Ethel replied, without a moment’s
hesitation.
“Is there a presence there?”
“Yes,” Ethel said firmly. We had stepped into the
next room, where there was a large, comfortable easy chair.
I tried to get Ethel to sit down in it, but she hesitated.
“No, I want to go somewhere.” I had the distinct impres-
sion that she was gradually falling into trance, and I
wanted her in a safe chair when the trance took hold.
Memories of an entranced Ethel being manipulated by an
unruly ghost were too fresh in my mind to permit such
chance-taking. I managed to get her back into the chair all
right. A moment later, a friendly voice spoke, saying,
“Albert, Albert,” and I realized that Ethel’s control had
taken over. But it was a very brief visit. A moment later, a
totally different voice came from the medium’s entranced
lips. At first, I could not understand the words. There was
something about a wall. Then a cheery voice broke
through. “Who are you, and what the hell are you doing
here?”
When you are a psychic investigator, you sometimes
answer a question with another question. In this case, I
demanded to know who was speaking. “Loyal, loyal,” the
stranger replied. I assured “him” that we had come as
friends and that he — for it sounded like a man — could
safely converse with us. “Will you speak to me then?” he
asked.
“Can I help you?” I replied.
"Well, I’ll help others; they need help.”
"Is this your house? Who are you?” But the stranger
wouldn’t identify himself just yet. “Why were you brought
in? Who brought you here?”
“My house, yes. My house, my house.”
“What is your name, please?” I asked routinely.
Immediately, I felt resistance.
"What is that to you, sir?”
I explained that I wanted to introduce myself
properly.
“I’m loyal, loyal,” the voice assured me.
"Loyal to whom, may I ask?”
“His Majesty, sir; do you know that George?”
I asked in which capacity the entity was serving His
Majesty. “Who are you? You ask for help. Help for what?”
We weren’t getting anywhere, it seemed to me. But
these things take time, and I have a lot of patience.
“Can you tell me who you are?”
Instead, the stranger became more urgent. “When is
he coming, when is he coming? When is he coming to help
me?”
“Whom do you expect?” I replied. I tried to assure
him that whomever he was expecting would arrive soon, at
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
the same time attempting to find out whom he was talking
about. This, of course, put him on his guard.
“I don’t say anymore."
Again I asked that he identify himself so I could
address him by his proper name and rank.
“You are not loyal, you, you, who are in my house?”
“Well, I was told you needed help.”
But the entity refused to give his name. “I fear.”
“There is no need to fear. I am a friend. You are
making it very difficult for me. I am afraid I cannot stay
unless you — ” I hinted.
“When will he come? When will he come?”
“Who are you waiting for?”
“Horatio. Horatio Gates. Where is he? Tell me, I am
a loyal subject. Where is he? Tell me.”
"Well, if you are loyal, you will identify yourself.
You have to identify yourself before I can be of any service
to you.”
Instead, the entity broke into bitter laughter. “My
name, ha ha ha. Trap! Trap!”
I assured him it was no trap. “You know me, you
do,” he said. I assured him that I didn’t. “You know me if
you come here, ha ha ha.”
I decided to try a different tack. “What year are we
in?”
This didn’t go down well with him either. “Madman,
madman. Year, year. You’re not of this house. Go.”
“Look,” I said, “we’ve come a long distance to speak
with you. You’ve got to be cooperative if we are going to
help you.” But the stranger insisted, and repeated the ques-
tion: When will he come? I started to explain that “he”
wouldn’t come at all, that a lot of time had gone by and
that the entity had been “asleep.”
Now it was the entity’s turn to ask who I was. But
before I could tell him again, he cried out, “Ben, where are
you?” I wanted to know who Ben was, at the same time
assuring him that much time had passed and that the
house had changed hands. But it didn’t seem to make any
impression on him. “Where is he? Are you he? Is that you?
Speak to me!”
I decided to play along to get some more information.
But he realized right away that I was not the one he was
expecting. “You are not he, are you he? I can’t hang by my
throat. I will not hang by my throat. No, no, no.”
“Nobody’s threatening you. Have you done anything
that you fear?”
“My own Lord God knows that I am innocent. If I
have a chance. Why, why, why?”
“Who is threatening you? Tell me. I’m on your
side."
“But you will get me.”
“I’ve come to help you. This is your house, is it not?
What is your name? You have to identify yourself so that I
know that I haven’t made a mistake,” I said, pleading with
him. All the time this was going on, Gus Kramer, Mrs.
Connacher, and my wife watched in fascinated silence.
150
Ethel looked like an old man now, not at all like her own
self. There was a moment of hesitation, a pause. Then the
voice spoke again, this time, it seemed to me, in a softer
vein.
“Let me be called Anthony.”
“Anthony what?"
“Where is he? I wait. I’ve got to kill him.” I
explained how it was possible for him to speak to us in our
time. But it seemed to make no impression on him. "He
was here. He was here. I know it.”
“Who was here?” I asked, and repeated that he had
to identify himself.
“But I may go?” There was a sense of urgency in his
voice.
“Would you like to leave this house?”
“My house, why my house? To hang here. My
daughter, she may go with you.”
“What is your daughter’s name?”
“Where you lead, I go, she says. But she too will
hang here if I do not go. She too. God take me, you will
take me.”
I assured him that he could leave the house safely
and need not return again. “You will be safe. You’ll see
your daughter again. But you must understand, there is no
more war. No more killing.”
"She died right here, my sweet daughter, she died
right here."
“What happened to you after that?”
“I sit here; you see me. I sit here. I will go.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m not so old that I can't go from here, where the
fields are fertile, and oh! no blood.”
“Where would you like to go from here?”
“Far away. Sweet Jennie died. Take me from here.
He does not come.”
"I promise to take you. Just be calm.”
“Oh, Horatio, Horatio, you have promised. Why did
he come instead of you, Horatio?”
“Did you serve under Horatio Gates?”
“Arnold, are you he? No.”
“If you’re looking for Arnold, he’s dead.”
“You lie.”
Again, I explained, tactfully, about the passage of
time. But he would hear none of it.
“You lie to me. He will come. You lie.”
“No,” I replied. “It is true. Arnold is dead.”
"Why? Why, why, why? He is gone, is he?”
"Is your name Anthony?”
Eagerly he replied: “Oh, yes, it is. They don’t want
me to go from here, but I must go, they’ll hang me. Don’t
let them hang me.” I assured him that I wouldn’t. “My
daughter, my sweet child. Oh why, because we swear alle-
giance to. . .Now I hang here. They will come to get me;
they will come. Where is he? He has forsaken me.”
“A lot of time has gone by. You have passed on.”
“No. Madness. John, John, help me. Come quick.”
I informed the entity that he was speaking through a
female instrument, and to touch his instrument’s hair. That
way, he would be convinced that it wasn’t his own body he
was in at present.
“John, John, where are you? I’m dreaming.”
I assured him that he wasn't dreaming, and that I
was speaking the truth.
“I am mad, I am mad.”
I assured him that he was sane.
“They hold me. Oh, Jesus Christ!”
I began the usual rescue-circle procedure, explaining
that by wanting to be with his daughter, who had gone on
before him, he could leave this house where his tragedy
had kept him. “Go from this house. You are free to join
your daughter. Go in peace; we’ll pray for you. There is
nothing to fear.” A moment later, the entity was gone and
Albert had returned to Ethel Meyers’s body.
Usually, I question Albert, the control personality,
concerning any entity that has been permitted to speak
through Ethel Meyers’ instrumentality. Sometimes addi-
tional information or the previous information in more
detailed and clarified form emerges from these discussions.
But Albert explained that he could not give me the man’s
name. “He gives false names. As far as we can judge here,
he believes he was hanged. He was a Loyalist, refusing to
take refuge with Americans. He didn’t pose as a Revolu-
tionary until the very end, when he thought he could be
saved.” Albert explained that this had taken place in this
house during the Revolutionary War.
“Why does he think he was hanged? Was he?”
“I don’t see this happening in this house. I believe he
was taken from here, yes.”
“What about other entities in this house?”
“There have been those locked in secret here, who
have had reason to be here. They are all still around.
There is a woman who died and who used to occupy this
part of the house and up to the next floor. Above, I think I
hear those others who have been wounded and secreted
here.”
I asked Albert if he could tell us anything further
about the woman who had been seen in the house. “I
remember I showed this to my instrument before. She was
wearing a white, French-like kerchief hat with lace and lit-
tle black ribbons. There are two women, but one is the
mother to this individual here. I am talking about the older
woman.”
“Why is she earthbound?”
“Because she passed here and remained simply
because she wanted to watch her husband’s struggles to
save himself from being dishonored and discredited. Her
husband is the one who was speaking to you.”
“Can you get anything about the family?"
“They have been in this country for some time, and
they are Loyalists.”
Benedict Arnold’s Friend
151
“Why is the woman up there in the attic and not
down here in the rest of the house?”
"She comes down, but she stays above, for she passed
there.”
“Do you get her name?”
“Elsa, or Elva.”
“Is she willing to speak to us?”
"I can try, but she is a belligerent person. You see,
she keeps reliving her last days on earth, and then the
hauntings in her own house, while her husband and daugh-
ter were still living here. Sometimes they clash one with the
other.”
“What about the other woman? Can you find out
anything about her?
“I can describe her, but I can’t make her speak. She
has dark hair parted in the middle and an oval face, and
she wears a high-necked dress of a dark color. Black with
long sleeves, I think. However, I feel she is from a later
period.”
“Why is she earthbound in the house?”
"She had been extremely psychic when she lived
here, and she has been bothered by these other ghosts that
were here before her. Her name was Drew. Perhaps
Andrew, although I rather think Drew was the family
name. She died in this house. There was a man who went
before her. A curse had been put on her by a woman who
was here before her. It was a ghostly kind of quarrel
between the two women. One was angry that she should be
here, and the other was angry because she owned the house
and found it invaded by those unwanted 'guests,' as she
called them.”
I asked Albert to make sure that the house was now
“clean” and to bring Ethel back to her own self. “I will not
need to take the woman by the hand,” he explained. “She
will go away with her husband, now that he has decided to
leave for fear they will hang him.” With that, I thanked
Albert for his help, and Ethel returned to herself a few
moments later, remembering nothing of what had tran-
spired, as is usual with her when she is in deep trance.
We had not yet been to the upper part of the house.
Even though Ethel would normally be quite tired after a
trance session, I decided to have a look at the second story
and the attic. Ethel saw a number of people in the upper
part of the house, both presences and psychometric impres-
sions from the past. I felt reasonably sure that the dis-
turbed gentleman who had called himself Anthony was
gone from the house, as was his daughter. There remained
the question of the other woman, the older individual who
had frightened Mrs. Connacher. “I see what looks like a
small boy,” Ethel suddenly exclaimed as we were standing
in the attic. “I rather think it is a woman, a short woman.”
“Describe her, please.”
"She seems to wear a funny sort of white cap. Her
outfit is pinkish gray, with a white handkerchief over her
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
shoulders going down into her belt. She looks like a girl
and is very small, but she is an older woman,
nevertheless."
En route to another house at Hudson, New York, I
asked Gus Kramer to comment. "Benedict Arnold was
brought to this area after the battle of Saratoga to recuper-
ate for one or two nights,” Kramer explained, and I
reminded myself that General Arnold, long before he
turned traitor to the American cause, had been a very suc-
cessful field commander and administrative officer on the
side of the Revolution. “He spent the night in the Kinder -
hook area,” Gus continued. “The location of the house
itself is not definitely known, but it is known that he spent
the night here. Horatio Gates, who was the American
leader in the battle of Saratoga, also spent several nights in
the immediate area. It is not inconceivable that this place,
which was a mansion in those days, might have entertained
these men at the time."
“What about the hanging?”
“Seven Tories were hanged in this area during the
Revolutionary War. Some of the greatest fighting took
place here, and it is quite conceivable that something took
place at this old mansion. Again, it completely bears out
what Mrs. Meyers spoke of while in trance.”
I asked Gus to pinpoint the period for me. “This
would have been in 1777, toward October and November."
“What about that cold spot in the house?”
"Outside of the owner,” Gus replied, “there was an
artist named Stanley Bate, who visited the house and com-
plained about an unusually cold spot. There was one par-
ticular room that was known as the Sick Room; we have
found out from a later investigation that it is one of the
bedrooms upstairs. It was used for mortally sick people,
when they became so ill that they had to be brought to this
bedroom, and eventually several of them died in it. You
couldn’t notice it today, because the whole house was so
cold, but we have noticed a difference of at least twenty-
five to thirty degrees in the temperature between that room
and the surrounding part of the house. This cannot be
attributed to drafts or open windows.”
“Did your artist friend who visited the house experi-
ence anything else besides the cold spot?”
"Yes, he had a very vivid impression of someone
charging at him several times. There was a distinct tugging
on his shirt sleeve. This was about two years ago, and
though he knew that the house was haunted, he had not
heard about the apparition Mrs. Connacher had seen.”
It appeared to me that the entity, Anthony, or what-
ever his name might have been, had pretty good connec-
tions on both sides of the Revolutionary War. He was in
trouble, that much was clear. In his difficulty, he turned to
Benedict Arnold, and he turned to General Horatio Gates,
both American leaders. He also cried out to John to save
him, and I can’t help wondering, common though the
name is, whether he might not also have known major
John Andre.
152
» 17
The Haverstraw Ferry Case
HAVERSTRAW IS A SLEEPY little town about an hour’s ride
from New York City, perched high on the west side of the
Hudson River. As its name implies, it was originally set-
tled by the Dutch. On the other side of the river, not far
away, was Colonel Beverley Robinson’s house, where Bene-
dict Arnold made his headquarters. The house burned
down some years ago, and today there are only a few
charred remnants to be seen on the grounds. At Haver-
straw also was the house of Joshua Smith, the man who
helped Major John Andre escape, having been entrusted
with the British spy’s care by his friend, Benedict Arnold.
At Haverstraw, too, was one of the major ferries to cross
the Hudson River, for during the Revolutionary period
there were as yet no bridges to go from one side to the
other.
I had never given Haverstraw any particular thought,
although I had passed through it many times on my way
upstate. In August 1966 I received a letter from a gentle-
man named Jonathan Davis, who had read some of my
books and wanted to let me in on an interesting case he
thought worthy of investigation. The house in question
stands directly on the river, overlooking the Hudson and,
as he put it, practically in the shadow of High Tor. Includ-
ing the basement there are four floors in all. But rather
than give me the information secondhand, he suggested to
the owner, a friend, that she communicate with me
directly. The owner turned out to be Laurette Brown, an
editor of a national women’s magazine in New York City.
“I believe my house is haunted by one or possibly
two ghosts: a beautiful thirty -year-old woman and her two-
year-old daughter, ’ she explained. Miss Brown had shared
the house with another career woman, Kaye S., since Octo-
ber 1965. Kaye, a lovely blonde woman who came from a
prominent family, was extremely intelligent and very cre-
ative. She adored the house overlooking the river, which
the two women had bought on her instigation. Strangely,
though, Kaye frequently said she would never leave it
again alive. A short a time later, allegedly because of an
unhappy love affair, she drove her car to Newburgh, rigged
up the exhaust pipe, and committed suicide along with the
child she had had by her second husband.
“After she died, and I lived here alone, I was terribly
conscious of a spirit trying to communicate with me,” Miss
Brown explained. "There was a presence, there were unnat-
ural bangings of doors and mysterious noises, but I denied
them. At the time, I wanted no part of the so-called super-
natural. Since then, Miss Brown has had second thoughts
about the matter, especially as the phenomena continued.
She began to wonder whether the restless spirit wanted
something from her, whether there was something she
could do for the spirit. One day, her friend Jonathan Davis
was visiting and mentioned that he very much wanted the
red rug on which he was standing at the time and which
had belonged to Kaye. Before Miss Brown could answer
him, Davis had the chilling sensation of a presence and the
impression that a spirit was saying to him, "No, you may
not take my rug.”
“Since that time, I have also heard footsteps, and the
crying of a child. Lately, I wake up, out of a deep sleep,
around midnight or 2 A.M., under the impression that
someone is trying to reach me. This has never happened to
me before.”
Miss Brown then invited me to come out and investi-
gate the matter. I spoke to Jonathan Davis and asked him
to come along on the day when my medium and I would
pay the house a visit. Davis contributed additional infor-
mation. According to him, on the night of August 6, 1966,
when Miss Brown had awakened from deep sleep with par-
ticularly disturbed thoughts, she had gone out on the bal-
cony overlooking the Hudson River. At the same time, she
mixed herself a stiff drink to calm her nerves. As she stood
on the balcony with her drink in hand, she suddenly felt
another presence with her, and she knew at that instant,
had she looked to the right, she would have seen a person.
She quickly gulped down her drink and went back to sleep.
She remembered, as Mr. Davis pointed out, that her for-
mer housemate had strongly disapproved of her drinking.
“It may interest you to know,” Miss Brown said,
“that the hills around High Tor Mountain, which are so
near to our house, are reputed to be inhabited by a race of
dwarves that come down from the mountains at night and
work such mischief as moving road signs, et cetera. That
there is some feeling of specialness, even enchantment,
about this entire area, Kaye always felt, and I believe that
if spirits can roam the earth, hers is here at the house she
so loved.”
The story sounded interesting enough, even though I
did not take Miss Brown's testimony at face value. As is
always the case when a witness has preconceived notions
about the origin of a psychic disturbance, I assume nothing
until I have investigated the case myself. Miss Brown had
said nothing about the background of the house. From my
knowledge of the area, I knew that there were many old
houses still standing on the river front.
Ethel Johnson Meyers was my medium, and Cather-
ine, my wife, drove the car, as on so many other occasions.
My wife, who had by then become extremely interested in
the subject, helped me with the tape recording equipment
and the photography. Riverside Avenue runs along the
river but is a little hard to locate if you don’t know your
way around Haverstraw. The medium-size house turned
out to be quite charming, perched directly on the water’s
edge. Access to it was now from the street side, although I
felt pretty sure that the main entrance had been either from
around the corner or from the water itself. From the looks
The Haverstraw Ferry Case
153
of the house, it was immediately clear to me that we were
dealing with a pre-Revolutionary building.
Miss Brown let us into a long verandah running
alongside the house, overlooking the water. Adjacent to it
was the living room, artistically furnished and filled with
antiquities, rugs, and pillows. Mr. Davis could not make it
after all, owing to some unexpected business in the city.
Ethel Meyers sat down in a comfortable chair in the
corner of the living room, taking in the appointments with
the eye of a woman who had furnished her own home not
so long before. She knew nothing about the case or the
nature of our business here.
“I see three men and a woman," she began. “The
woman has a big nose and is on the older side; one of the
men has a high forehead; and then there is a man with a
smallish kind of nose, a round face, and long hair. This
goes back some time, though.”
“Do you feel an actual presence in this house?”
"I feel as if someone is looking at me from the back,”
Ethel replied. "It might be a woman. I have a sense of dis-
turbance. I feel as if I wanted to run away — I’m now
speaking as if I were her, you understand — I’m looking for
the moment to run, to get away.”
Ethel took a deep breath and looked toward the
verandah, and beyond it to the other side of the Hudson
River. “Somebody stays here who keeps looking out a win-
dow to see if anyone is coming. I can’t seem to find the
window. There is a feeling of panic. It feels as if I were
afraid of somebody’s coming. A woman and two men are
involved. I feel I want to protect someone.”
“Let the individual take over, then, Ethel,” I sug-
gested, hoping that trance would give us further clues.
But Ethel wasn’t quite ready for it. “I’ve got to find
that window,” she said. “She is full of determination to
find that window.”
“Why is the window so important to her?”
“She wants to know if someone is coming. She’s got
to look out the window.”
I instructed Ethel to tell the spirit that we would look
for the window, and to be calm. But to the contrary, Ethel
seemed more and more agitated. “Got to go to the win-
dow. . .the window. . .the window. The window isn’t here
anymore, but I’ve got to find it. Who took away the. . . .
No, it is not here. It is not this way. It is that way.” By
now Ethel was gradually sinking into trance, although by
no means a complete one. At certain moments she was still
speaking as herself, giving us her clairvoyant impressions,
while at other moments some alien entity was already
speaking through her directly.
“Very sick here, very sick,” she said, her words fol-
lowed by deep moaning. For several minutes I spoke to the
entity directly, explaining that whatever he was now expe-
riencing was only the passing symptoms remembered and
had no validity in the present.
The moaning, however, continued for some time. I
assured the entity that he could speak to me directly, and
that there was nothing to be afraid of, for we had come as
friends.
Gradually, the moaning became quieter, and individ-
ual words could be understood. “What for? What for? The
other house. . . ” This was immediately followed by a series
of moans. I asked who the person was and why he was
here, as is my custom. Why are you bringing him here?”
the entranced medium said. That man, that man, why are
you bringing him here? Why? Why?” This was followed
by heavy tears.
As soon as I could calm the medium again, the con-
versation continued. “What troubles you? What is your
problem? I would like to help you,” I said.
“Talk, talk, talk. . .too many. . .too many.”
“Be calm, please.”
“No! Take him away! I can’t tell. They have left.
Don’t touch me! Take it away! Why hurt me so?”
“It’s all right now; much has happened since,” I
began.
Heavy tears was the response. “They went away.
Don’t bother me! They have gone. Don’t touch! Take him
away! Take them off my neck!”
“It’s all right,” I said again, in as soothing a tone of
voice as I could muster. “You are free. You need not worry
or fear anything.”
Ethel’s voice degenerated into a mumble now. “Can’t
talk. . .so tired. . .go away.”
“You may talk freely about yourself.”
“I'll tell you when they’ve gone. I didn’t help. ... I
didn’t help. ... I didn’t know.”
“Who are the people you are talking about?”
“I don’t know. They took it over.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“They went away over the water. Please take this off
so I can talk better.”
Evidently, the entity thought that he was still gagged
or otherwise prevented from speaking clearly. In order to
accommodate him, I told him I was taking off whatever
was bothering him, and he could speak freely and clearly
now. Immediately, there was a moaning sound, more of
relief than of pain. But the entity would not believe that I
had taken “it” off and called me a liar instead. I tried to
explain that he was feeling a memory from the past, but he
did not understand that. Eventually he relented.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“You know, you know.” Evidently he had mistaken
me for someone else. I assured him that I did not know his
name.
“You are a bloody rich man, that is what you are,”
he said, not too nicely. Again, he remembered whatever
was preventing him from speaking, and, clutching his
throat, cried, “I can’t speak... the throat...” Then, sud-
denly, he realized there was no more pain and calmed
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
154
down considerably. "I didn’t have that trouble after all,” he
commented.
"Exactly. That is why we’ve come to help you.”
“Enough trouble — I saw them come up, but they
went away.”
All along I had assumed that we were talking to a
male. Since the entity was using Ethel's voice, there were
of course some female tinges to it, but somehow it sounded
more like a masculine voice than that of a woman. But it
occurred to me that I had no proof one way or another.
“What is your name? Are you a gentleman or. . . ”
"Defenseless woman. Defenseless. I didn’t take any-
one. But you won’t believe me.”
I assured her that I would.
“You won’t believe me. . . . It was dark. It was dark
here — I told him, take care of me.”
“Is this your house?”
“Yes.”
“What is your name?”
“My name is Jenny.”
“Why are you here?”
“Where is my window? Where is it?"
I ignored the urgency of that remark and continued
with my questioning. “What is your family name?”
“Smith... Smith."
"Where and when were you born?”
There was no reply.
“What day is this today?” I continued.
“July.”
"What year are we in?”
"’80.”
“What went on in this house? Tell me about it.”
“They brought him here. They came here.” Evi-
dently the woman wasn’t too happy about what she was
about to tell me.
“Whose house is this?”
“Joshua. Joshua Smith.”
“How is he related to you?”
“Husband. They brought him. . . . I told them, tell
them! No. . .no one was coming. That is all I told them. I
don’t know why they hurt me.”
“You mean, they thought you knew something?”
“Yah. . .my friends. All that noise. Why don’t they
stop? Oh, God, I feel pain. They got away. I told you they
got away.”
“Who are the people you fear?”
“Guns — I must look in the window. They are com-
ing. All is clear. . .time to go. . .they get away. . .they got
away. . . . See, look, they got away. It is dark. They are near
the water. I get the money for it.”
“What is the money for?”
“For helping.”
At the time, I hadn’t fully realized the identity of the
speaker. I therefore continued the interrogation in the hope
of ferreting out still more evidential material from her.
“Who is in charge of this country?”
“George. . .George. . .nobody. . .everybody is fighting."
“Where were you born?”
“Here.”
“Where was your husband born?”
Instead of answering the question, she seemed to say,
faintly, but unmistakably, “Andre.”
“Who is Andre?”
“He got away. God Bless His Majesty. He got away.”
“You must go in peace from this house,” I began,
feeling that the time had come to free the spirit from its
compulsion. “Go in peace and never return here, because
much time has gone on since, and all is peaceful now. You
mustn’t come back. You mustn’t come back.”
“They will come back.”
“Nobody will come. It all happened a long time ago.
Go away from here.”
“Johnny. . .Johnny.”
"You are free, you are free. You can go from this
house.”
“Suckers ... bloody suckers They are coming, they
are coming now. I can see them. I can see them! God Bless
the Majesty. They got away, they got away!”
It was clear that Jenny was reliving the most dramatic
moment of her life. Ethel, fully entranced now, sat up in
the chair, eyes glazed, peering into the distance, as if she
were following the movements of people we could not see!
“There is the horse,” the spirit continued. “Quick,
get the horse! I am a loyal citizen. Good to the Crown.
They got away. Where is my window?” Suddenly, the
entity realized that everything wasn’t as it should be. An
expression of utter confusion crept over Ethel’s face.
“Where am I, where am I?”
“You are in a house that now belongs to someone
else,” I explained.
“Where is that window? I don’t know where I am.”
I continued to direct her away from the house, sug-
gesting that she leave in peace and go with our blessings.
But the entity was not quite ready for that yet. She would-
n’t go out the window, either. “The soldiers are there.”
“Only in your memory,” I assured her, but she con-
tinued to be very agitated."
“Gone. . .a rope. . . . My name is Jenny. . . . Save me,
save me!”
At this point, I asked Albert to help free the entity,
who was obviously tremendously embroiled in her emo-
tional memories. My appeal worked. A moment later,
Albert’s crisp, matter-of-fact voice broke through. “We
have taken the entity who was lost in space and time,” he
commented.
If ever there was proof that a good trance medium
does not draw upon the unconscious minds of the sitters —
that is to say, those in the room with her — then this was it.
Despite the fact that several names had come through
Ethel’s entranced lips, I must confess they did not ring a
The Haverstraw Ferry Case
155
bell with me. This is the more amazing as I am historian
and should have recognized the name Joshua Smith. But
the fact is, in the excitement of the investigation, I did not,
and I continued to press for better identification and back-
ground. In fact, I did not even connect John with Andre
and continued to ask who John was. Had we come to the
house with some knowledge that a Revolutionary escape
had taken place here, one might conceivably attribute the
medium’s tremendous performance to unconscious or even
conscious knowledge of what had occurred in the place. As
it was, however, we had come because of a suspected ghost
created only a few years ago — a ghost that had not the
slightest connection with pre-Revolutionary America. No
one, including the owner of the house, had said anything
about any historical connotations of the house. Yet, instead
of coming up with the suspected restless girl who had com-
mitted suicide, Mrs. Meyers went back into the eighteenth
century and gave us authentic information — information I
am sure she did not possess at the time, since she is neither
a scholar specializing in pre-Revolutionary Americana nor
familiar with the locality or local history.
When Albert took over the body of the instrument, I
was still in the dark about the connections between this
woman and Smith and Andre. “Albert," I therefore asked
with some curiosity, "who is this entity?”
“There are three people here,” Albert began. “One is
gone on horseback, and one went across. They came here
to escape because they were surrounded. One of them was
Major Andre.”
“The historical Major Andre?” 1 asked incredulously.
“Yes,” Albert replied. “They took asylum here until
the coast was clear, but as you may well know, Andre did
not get very far, and Arnold escaped across the water.”
“What about the woman? Is her real name Smith?”
“Yes, but she is not related to Joshua Smith. She is a
woman in charge of properties, living here.”
“Why does she give the name Jenny Smith?”
“She was thinking more of her employer than of her-
self. She worked for Joshua Smith, and her name was
Jennifer.”
“I see,” I said, trying to sort things out. “Have you
been able help her?”
"Yes, she is out of a vacuum now, thanks to you. We
will of course have to watch her until she makes up her
mind that it is not 1780.”
“Are there any others here in the house?” I asked.
“There are others. The Tories were always protected
around this neck of the woods, and when there was an
escape, it was usually through here.”
“Are all the disturbances in this house dating back to
the period?"
“No, there are later disturbances here right on top of
old disturbances.”
“What is the most recent disturbance in this house?”
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
“A woman and a child.”
Immediately this rang a bell. It would have been
strange if the medium had not also felt the most recent
emotional event in this house, that involving a woman and
a child. According to Jonathan Davis, Mrs. Brown had
heard the sound of a child in a room that was once used as
a nursery. Even her young daughter, then age five, had
heard the sounds and been frightened by them. But what
about the woman?
“The woman became very disturbed because of the
entity you have just released,” Albert responded. “In fact,
she had been taken over. This was not too long ago.”
“What happened to her?”
“She became possessed by the first woman, Jennifer,
and as a result felt very miserable.”
“Am I correct in assuming that Jennifer, the colonial
woman, was hanged?”
“That is right.”
“And am I further correct in assuming that the more
recent woman took on the symptoms of the unfortunate
Jennifer?”
“That is right, too.”
“I gather Jennifer died in this house. How?”
“Strangulation.”
“What about the more recent case? How did she
die?”
“Her inner self was tortured. She lost her breath. She
was badly treated by men who did not understand her
aberration, the result of her possession by the first spirit in
the house. Thus, she committed suicide. It was poison or
strangulation or both, I am not sure.”
“Do you still sense her in the house now?”
“Yes. She is always following people around. She is
here all right, but we did not let her use the instrument,
because she could stay on, you know. However, we have
her here, under control. She is absolutely demented now.
At the time she committed suicide, she was possessed by
this woman, but we cannot let her speak because she would
possess the instrument. Wait a moment. All right, thank
you, they have taken her.” Evidently, Albert had been
given the latest word by his helpers on the other side. It
appeared that Kaye was in safe hands, after all.
“Is there any connection between this woman and the
present occupants of the house?” I asked.
“Yes, but there will be no harm. She was not in the
right mind when she died, and she is not yet at rest. I’m
sure she would want to make it clear that she was pos-
sessed and did not act as herself. Her suicide was not of
her own choosing. I aim repeating words I am being told: it
was not of her own volition. She suffered terribly from the
possession, because the colonial woman had been beaten
and strangled by soldiers.”
"Before you withdraw, Albert, can we be reasonably
sure that the house will be quiet from now on?”
"Yes. We will do our best.”
156
With that, Albert withdrew, and Ethel returned to
her own self, seemingly a bit puzzled at first as to where
she was, rubbing her eyes, yawning a couple of times, then
settling back into the comfortable chair and waiting for me
to ask further questions, if any. But for the moment I had
questions only for the owner of the house. “How old is this
house, and what was on the spot before it was built?”
“It is at least a hundred years old, and I remember
someone telling me that something happened down here on
this spot, something historical, like an escape. There were
soldiers here during the Revolutionary War, but I really
don’t know exactly what happened.”
It is important to point out that even Miss Brown,
who had lived in the area for some time, was not aware of
the full background of her house. The house, in fact, was
far more than a hundred years old. It stood already in Sep-
tember 1780, when Major John Andre had visited it. At
that time, there was a ferry below the house that connected
with the opposite shore, and the house itself belonged to
Joshua Smith, a good friend of General Benedict Arnold. It
was to Joshua Smith that Arnold had entrusted the escape
of Major Andre. Everything Ethel had said was absolutely
true. Three people had tried to escape: Andre, a servant,
and, of course, General Arnold, who succeeded. Smith was
a Loyalist and considered his help a matter of duty. To the
American Army he was a traitor. Even though Andre was
later captured, the Revolutionary forces bore down heavily
on Smith and his property. Beating people to death in
order to elicit information was a favorite form of treatment
used in the eighteenth century by both the British and the
American armies. Undoubtedly, Jennifer had been the vic-
tim of Revolutionary soldiers, and Kaye, perhaps psychic
herself, the victim of Jennifer.
Ethel Meyers had once again shown what a superb
medium she is. But there were still some points to be
cleared up.
“How long have you had the house now, Miss
Brown?” I asked.
“A year and a half. Kaye’s suicide took place after we
had been here for two months. We had bought the house
together. She had been extremely upset because her hus-
band was going to cut off his support. Also, he had
announced a visit, and she didn’t want to see him. So she
took off on a Sunday with her child, and in Newburgh she
committed suicide along with the child. They didn’t find
her until Thursday.”
“After her death, what unusual things did you expe-
rience in the house?”
“I always felt that someone was trying to communi-
cate with me, and I was fleeing from it in terror. I still feel
her presence here, but now I want it to be here. She always
said that she wanted to stay here, that she loved this river
bank. We both agreed that she would always stay here.
When I heard all sorts of strange noises after her death,
such as doors closing by themselves and footsteps where no
one could be seen walking, I went into an alcoholic obliv-
ion and on a sleeping-pill binge, because I was so afraid.
At the time, I just didn't want to communicate.”
“Prior to these events, did you have any psychic
experiences?”
“I had many intuitive things happen to me, such as
knowing things before they happened. I would know when
someone was dead before I got the message; for instance,
prior to your coming, I had heard noises almost every
night and felt the presence of people. My little girl says
there is a little Susan upstairs, and sometimes I too hear
her cry. I hear her call and the way she walks up and down
the stairs.”
“Did you ever think that some of this might come
from an earlier period?”
“No, I never thought of that.”
“Was Kaye the kind of person who might commit
suicide?”
“Certainly not. It would be completely out of charac-
ter for her. She used to say, there was always a way, no
matter what the problem, no matter what the trouble. She
was very optimistic, very reliable, very resourceful. And
she considered challenges and problems things one had to
surmount. After her death, I looked through the mail,
through all her belongings. My first impression was that
she had been murdered, because it was so completely out
of character for her. I even talked to the police about it.
Their investigation was in my opinion not thorough
enough. They never looked into the matter of where she
had spent the four days and four nights between Sunday
and Thursday, before she was found. But I was so broken
up about it myself, I wasn’t capable of conducting an
investigation of my own. For a while I even suspected her
husband of having killed her.”
“But now we know, don't we,” I said.
The ferry at Haverstraw hasn't run in a long, long
time. The house on Riverside Avenue still stands, quieter
than it used to be, and it is keeping its secrets locked up
tight now. The British and the Americans have been fast
friends for a long time now, and the passions of 1780
belong to history.
The Haverstraw Ferry Case
157
* 18
“Ship of Destiny”:
The U. S. F. Constellation
The DARK Buick RACED through the windy night, turn-
ing corners rather more sharply than it should: But the
expedition was an hour late, and there were important peo-
ple awaiting our arrival. It was 9 o’clock in the evening,
and at that time Baltimore is pretty tame: Traffic had
dwindled down to a mere trickle, and the chilly October
weather probably kept many pedestrians indoors, so we
managed to cross town at a fast clip.
Jim Lyons had come to pick us up at the hotel min-
utes before, and the three committee members awaiting us
at the waterfront had been there since 8 o’clock. But I had
arrived late from Washington, and Sybil Leek had only
just joined us: She had come down from New York with-
out the slightest idea why I had summoned her. This
was all good sport to my psychic associate, and the dark
streets which we now left behind for more open territory
meant nothing to her. She knew this was Baltimore, and
a moment later she realized we were near water: You
couldn’t very well mistake the hulls of ships silhouetted
against the semidark sky, a sky faintly lit by the reflections
from the city’s downtown lights.
The car came to a screeching halt at the end of a
pier. Despite the warmth of the heater, we were eager to
get out into the open. The excitement of the adventure was
upon us.
As we piled out of Jim Lyons’ car, we noticed three
shivering men standing in front of a large, dark shape.
That shape, on close inspection, turned out to be the hull
of a large sailing ship. For the moment, however, we
exchanged greetings and explained our tardiness: little com-
fort to men who had been freezing for a full hour!
The three committee members were Gordon Stick,
chairman of the Constellation restoration committee, Jean
Hofmeister, the tall, gaunt harbormaster of Baltimore, and
Donald Stewart, the curator of the ancient ship and a pro-
fessional historian.
Although Sybil realized she was in front of a large
ship, she had no idea of what sort of ship it was; only a
single, faint bulb inside the hull cast a little light on the
scene, and nobody had mentioned anything about the ship
or the purpose of our visit.
There was no superstructure visible, and no masts,
and suddenly I remembered that Jim Lyons had casually
warned me — the old ship was “in repair” and not its true
self as yet. How accurate this was I began to realize a
moment later when we started to board her. I was looking
for the gangplank or stairway to enter.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
The harbormaster shook his head with a knowing
smile.
“I’m afraid you'll have to rough it, Mr. Holzer,” he
said.
He then shone his miner’s lamp upon the black hull.
There was a rope ladder hanging from a plank protruding
from the deck. Beyond the plank, there seemed to be a
dark, gaping hole, which, he assured me, led directly into
the interior of the ship. The trick was not to miss it, of
course. If one did, there was a lot of water below. The ship
lay about two yards from the pier, enough room to drown,
if one were to be so clumsy as to fall off the ladder or miss
the plank. I looked at the rope ladder swaying in the cold
October wind, felt the heavy tape recorder tugging at my
back and the camera around my neck, and said to myself,
“Hans, you’re going for a bath. How do I get out of all
Now I’m not a coward normally, but I hate taking
chances. Right now I wished I were someplace else. Any-
place except on this chilly pier in Baltimore. While I was
still wrestling with words to find the right formula that
would get me off the hook, I saw Sybil Leek, who is not a
small woman, hurry up that rope ladder with the agility of
a mother hen rushing home to the coop for supper. In a
second, she had disappeared into the hull of the ship. I
swallowed hard and painfully and said to myself, if Sybil
can do it, so can I. Bravely, I grabbed the ladder and
hauled myself up, all the while sending thought messages
to my loved ones, just in case I didn’t make it. Step by
step, farther and farther away from firm ground I went. I
didn’t dare look back, for if I had I am sure the others
would have looked like dwarfs to me by now. Finally I saw
the wooden plank sticking out of the hull, and like a pirate-
condemned sailor in reverse I walked the plank, head
down, tape recorder banging against my ribs, camera hit-
ting my eyeballs, not daring to stand up lest I hit the
beams — until I was at the hole; then, going down on my
knees, I half crawled into the hull of the ship where I
found Sybil whistling to herself, presumably a sailor’s tune.
At least I had gotten inside. How I would eventually get
back out again was a subject too gruesome to consider at
that moment. It might well be that I would have to remain
on board until a gangplank had been installed, but for the
moment at least I was safe and could begin to feel human
again. The others had now followed us up the ladder, and
everybody was ready to begin the adventure.
There was just enough light to make out the ancient
beams and wooden companionways, bunks, bulkheads, and
what have you: A very old wooden ship lay before us, in
the state of total disrepair with its innards torn open and
its sides exposed, but still afloat and basically sound and
strong. Nothing whatever was labeled or gave away the
name of our ship, nor were there any dates or other details
as the restoration had not yet begun in earnest and only the
158
The U. S. F. Constellation as she
used to look
outer hull had been secured as a first step. Sybil had no
way of knowing anything about the ship, except that which
her own common sense told her — a very old wooden ship.
For that reason, I had chosen the dark of night for our
adventure in Baltimore, and I had pledged the men to keep
quiet about everything until we had completed our
investigation.
* * *
I first heard about this remarkable ship, the frigate
Constellation, when Jim Lyons, a TV personality in Balti-
more, wrote to me and asked me to have a psychic look at
the historic ship. There had been reports of strange hap-
penings aboard, and there were a number of unresolved
historical questions involving the ship. Would I come
down to see if I could unravel some of those ancient mys-
teries? The frigate was built in 1797, the first man-of-war
of the United States. As late as World War II she was still in
commission — something no other ship that old ever
accomplished. Whenever Congress passed a bill decommis-
sioning the old relic, something happened to stay its hands:
Patriotic committees sprang up and raised funds, or indi-
viduals in Washington would suddenly come to the rescue,
and the scrappy ship stayed out of the scrapyard. It was as
if something, or someone, was at work, refusing to let the
ship die. Perhaps some of this mystic influence rubbed off
on President Franklin Roosevelt, a man who was interested
in psychic research as was his mother, Sarah Delano Roo-
sevelt. At any rate, when the Constellation lay forgotten at
Newport, Rhode Island, and the voices demanding her
demolition were louder than ever, Roosevelt reacted as if
the mysterious power aboard the frigate had somehow
reached out to him: In 1940, at the height of World War
II, he decreed that the frigate Constellation should be the
flagship of the U. S. Atlantic Fleet!
* * *
Long after our remarkable visit to Baltimore on a
windy October night, I got to know the remarkable ship a
lot better. At the time, I did not wish to clutter my uncon-
scious mind with detailed knowledge of her history, so that
Sybil Leek could not be accused of having obtained data
from it.
The year was 1782. The United States had been vic-
torious in its war for independence, and the new nation
could well afford to disband its armed forces. Commerce
with foreign countries thrived, and American merchant
ships appeared in increasing numbers on the high seas. But
a nation then as now is only as strong as her ability to
defend herself from enemy attacks. Soon the marauding
freebooters of North Africa and the Caribbean made
American shipping unsafe, and many sailors fell into pirate
hands. Finally, in 1794, Congress decided to do something
about this situation, and authorized the construction of six
men-of-war or frigates to protect American shipping
abroad. The bill was duly signed by George Washington,
and work on the ships started immediately. However, only
three of these ships, meant to be sister ships, were built in
time for immediate action. The first frigate, and thus the
very oldest ship in the U. S. Navy, was the U. S. F. Con-
stellation, followed by the Constitution and the United
States. The Constellation had three main masts, a wooden
hull, and thirty-six guns, while the other two ships had
forty-four guns each. But the Constellation’s builder, David
Stodder of Baltimore, gave her his own patented sharp bow
lines, a feature later famous with the Baltimore Clippers.
This design gave the ships greater speed, and earned the
Constellation, after she had been launched, the nickname of
“Yankee Race Horse.’’
“Ship of Destiny”: The U. S. F. Constellation
159
* * *
On June 26,1 798, the brand-new frigate put out to
sea from Baltimore, then an important American seaport,
and headed for the Caribbean. She was under the com-
mand of a veteran of the Revolutionary War by the name
of Thomas Truxtun, who was known for his efficiency and
stern views in matters of discipline. A month after the ship
had arrived in the area to guard American shipping, she
saw action for the first time. Although the North African
menace had been subdued for the time being in the wake
of a treaty with the Barbary chieftains, the French menace
in the Caribbean was as potent as ever.
Consequently, it was with great eagerness that the
crew of the Constellation came upon the famous French
frigate L’Insurgente passing near the island of Nevis on a
balmy February day in 1 799. Within an hour after the first
broadside, the French warship was a helpless wreck. This
first United States naval victory gave the young nation a
sense of dignity and pride which was even more pro-
nounced a year later when the Constellation met up with
the French frigate La Vengeance. Although the American
ship had increased its guns by two, to a total of thirty-
eight, she was, still outclassed by the French raider sport-
ing fifty-two guns. The West Indian battle between the
two naval giants raged for five hours. Then the French
ship, badly battered, escaped into the night.
America was feeling its oats now; although only a
handful of countries had established close relations with the
new republic, and the recently won freedom from Britain
was far from secure, Congress felt it would rather fight
than submit to blackmail and holdup tactics.
Although Captain Truxtun left the Constellation at
the end of 1801, his drill manual and tactical methods
became the basis for all later U. S. Navy procedures. Next
to command the Constellation was Alexander Murray,
whose first mission was to sail for the Mediterranean in
1802 to help suppress the Barbary pirates, who had once
again started to harass American shipping. During the
ensuing blockade of Tripoli, the Constellation saw much
action, sinking two Arab ships and eventually returning to
her home port in late 1805 after a peace treaty had finally
been concluded with the Arab pirates.
* * *
For seven years there was peace, and the stately ship
lay in port at Washington. Then in 1812, when war with
Britain erupted again, she was sent to Hampton Roads,
Virginia, to help defend the American installations at Fort
Craney. But as soon as peace returned between the erst-
while colonies and the former motherland, the Barbary
pirates acted up again, and it was deemed necessary to go
to war against them once more.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
This time the Constellation was part of Stephen
Decatur’s squadron, and remained in North African waters
until 1817 to enforce the new peace treaty with Algeria.
America was on the move, expanding not only over-
land and winning its own West, but opening up new trade
routes overseas. Keeping pace with its expanding merchant
fleet was a strong, if small, naval arm. Again, the Constella-
tion guarded American shipping off South America
between 1819 and 1821, then sailed around the Cape to the
Pacific side of the continent, and finally put down the last
Caribbean pirates in 1826. Later she was involved in the
suppression of the Seminole Indian rebellion in Florida,
and served as Admiral Dallas’s flagship. In 1840 she was
sent on a wide-ranging trip, sailing from Boston to Rio de
Janeiro under the command of Commodore Lawrence
Kearny. From there she crossed the Pacific Ocean to open
up China for American trade; returning home via Hawaii,
Kearny was able, in the proverbial nick of time, to prevent
a British plot to seize the islands.
The British warship H. M. S. Caryfoot had been at
anchor at Honolulu when the Constellation showed up.
Hastily, the British disavowed a pledge by King Kame-
hameha III to turn over the reins of government to the
ship’s captain, and native rule was restored.
For a few years, the famous old ship rested in its
berth at Norfolk, Virginia. She had deserved her temporary
retirement, having logged some 58,000 miles on her last
trip alone, all of it with sail power only. In 1853 it was
decided to give her an overhaul. After all, the Navy’s old-
est ship was now fifty-five years old and showed some
stress and strain. The rebuilding included the addition of
twelve feet to her length, and her reclassification as a
twenty -two -gun sloop of war. Most of her original timber
was kept, repairing and replacing only what was worn out.
Once more the veteran ship sailed for the Mediterranean,
but the handwriting was already on the wall: In 1858, she
was decommissioned.
Here the mysterious force that refused to let the ship
die came into play again.
When civil war seemed inevitable between North and
South, the Constellation was brought back into service in
1859 to become the flagship of the African squadron. Her
job was intercepting slave ships bound for the United
States, and she managed to return a thousand slaves to
their native Africa.
Outbreak of war brought her back home in 1 861 , and
after another stint in the Mediterranean protecting United
States shipping from marauding Confederate raiders, she
became a receiving and training ship at Hampton Roads,
Virginia.
Sailing ships had seen their day, and the inevitable
seemed at hand: Like so many wooden sailing ships, she
would eventually be destined for the scrapheap. But again
she was saved from this fate. The Navy returned her to
active service in 1871 as a training ship at the Annapolis
Naval Academy. The training period was occasionally
160
interrupted by further sea missions, such as her errand of
mercy to Ireland during the 1880 famine. Gradually, the
old ship had become a symbol of American naval tradition
and was known the world over. In 1894, almost a hundred
years old now, the still -seaworthy man-of-war returned to
Newport for another training mission. By 1914, her home
port Baltimore claimed the veteran for a centennial celebra-
tion, and she would have continued her glorious career as
an active seagoing ship of the U. S. Navy, forever, had it
not been for World War II. More important matters took
precedence over the welfare of the Constellation, which lay
forgotten at the Newport berth. Gradually, her condition
worsened, and ultimately she was no longer capable of
putting out to sea.
When the plight of this ancient sailor was brought to
President Roosevelt’s attention, he honored her by making
her once again the flagship of the U. S. Atlantic Fleet. But
the honor was not followed by funds to restore her to her
erstwhile glory. After the war she was berthed in Boston,
where attempts were made to raise funds by allowing visi-
tors aboard. By 1953, the ship was in such poor condition
that her total loss seemed only a matter of time.
At this moment, a committee of patriotic Baltimore
citizens decided to pick up the challenge. As a first step,
the group secured title to the relic from the U. S. Navy.
Next, the ship was brought home to Baltimore, like a
senior citizen finally led back to its native habitat. All the
tender care of a sentimental association was lavished on
her, and with the help of volunteers, the restoration com-
mittee managed to raise the necessary funds to restore the
Constellation to its original appearance, inside and out. At
the time of our nocturnal visit, only the first stage of the
restoration had been undertaken: to make her hull seawor-
thy so she could safely stay afloat at her berth. In the sum-
mer of 1968, the rest of the work would be undertaken, but
at the time of our visit, the inside was still a raw assort-
ment of wooden beams and badly hinged doors, her super-
structure reduced to a mastless flat deck and the original
corridors and companionways in their grime-covered state.
All this would eventually give way to a spick-and-span
ship, as much the pride of America in 1968 as she was
back in 1797 when she was launched.
But apart from the strange way in which fate seemed
to prevent the destruction of this proud sailing ship time
and again, other events had given the Constellation the rep-
utation of a haunted ship. This fame was not especially
welcomed by the restoration committee, of course, and it
was never encouraged, but for the sake of the record, they
did admit and document certain strange happenings aboard
the ship. In Donald Stewart, the committee had the ser-
vices of a trained historian, and they hastened to make him
the curator of their floating museum.
* * *
Whether or not any psychic occurrences took place
aboard the Constellation prior to her acquisition by the
The U. S. F. Constellation today
committee is not known, but shortly after the Baltimore
group had brought her into Baltimore drydock, a strange
incident took place. On July 26, 1959, a Roman Catholic
priest boarded the ship, which was then already open to
the public, although not in very good condition. The priest
had read about the famous ship, and asked curator Donald
Stewart if he might come aboard even though it was before
the 10 A.M. opening hour for visitors. He had to catch a
train for Washington at eleven, and would never be able to
face his flock back in Detroit without having seen so famed
a vessel. The curator gladly waived the rules, and the good
father ascended. However, since Mr. Stewart was in the
midst of taking inventory and could not spare the time to
show him around, he suggested that the priest just walk
around on his own.
At 10:25, the priest returned from below deck, look-
ing very cheerful. Again the curator apologized for not
having taken him around.
“That’s all right,” the man of the cloth replied, "the
old gent showed me around.”
“What old gent?” the curator demanded. “There is
nobody else aboard except you and me.”
The priest protested. He had been met by an old
man in a naval uniform, he explained, and the fellow had
shown him around below. The man knew his ship well, for
“Ship of Destiny^: The U. S. F. Constellation
161
he was able to point out some of the gear and battle
stations.
“Ridiculous,” bellowed Mr. Stewart, who is a very
practical Scotsman. “Let’s have a look below.”
Both men descended into the hull and searched the
ship from bow to stern. Not a living soul was to be found
outside of their own good selves.
When they returned topside, the priest was no longer
smiling. Instead, he hurriedly left, pale and shaken, to
catch that train to Washington. He knew he had met an old
sailor, and he knew he was cold sober when he did.
Donald Stewart’s curiosity, however, was aroused,
and he looked into the background of the ship a bit more
closely. He discovered then that similar experiences had
happened to naval personnel when the ship was at New-
port, Rhode Island, and to watchmen aboard the Constella-
tion. Nobody liked to talk about them, however. On one
occasion during the summer a figure was seen aboard on
the gun deck after the ship had closed for the day and no
visitors could be aboard. The police were called to rout the
burglar or intruder and they brought with them a police
dog, a fierce-looking German shepherd, who was immedi-
ately sent below deck to rout the intruder. But instead of
following orders as he always did, the dog stood frozen to
the spot, shivering with fear, hair on his neck bristling, and
refused to budge or go below. It is needless to point out
that no human intruder was found on that occasion.
Another time a group of Sea Scouts was holding a
meeting aboard. The idea was to give the proceedings a
real nautical flavor. The fact that the ship was tied up
solidly and could not move did not take away from the
atmosphere of being aboard a real seagoing vessel. Sud-
denly, as if moved by unseen hands, the wheel spun from
port to starboard rapidly. Everyone in the group saw it,
and pandemonium broke loose. There wasn’t any wind to
account for a movement of the ship. Furthermore, the
spool of the wheel was not even linked to the rudder!
The Constellation had returned to Baltimore in
August 1955. While still under Navy jurisdiction, the first
of the unusual incidents took place. The vessel was then
tied up beside the U. S. S. Pike at the Naval Training Cen-
ter. There was never anyone aboard at night. The dock was
well guarded, and strangers could not approach without
being challenged. Nevertheless, a Navy commander and his
men reported that they had seen “someone in an early uni-
form” walking the quarterdeck at night. The matter was
investigated by the Baltimore Sun, which also published
the testimonies of the Navy personnel. When the newspa-
per sent a photographer aboard the Constellation, however,
every one of his photographs was immediately seized by
naval authorities without further explanation.
Jim Lyons, a longtime Baltimore resident, was able to
add another detail to the later uncanny events recorded by
the curator. During a Halloween meeting of the Sea Scouts,
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
162
which was followed by a dance, one of the girls present
had an unusual experience. Seated on a wall bench, she
turned to speak to what she thought was her escort, and
instead looked directly into the face of an old sailor, who
smiled at her and then disappeared! Since she had never
heard of any alleged hauntings aboard ship, her mind was
not impressed with any such suggestion. She described the
apparition exactly as the priest had described his ghostly
guide below deck. Very likely other visitors to the ship may
have had strange encounters of this sort without reporting
them, since people tend to disregard or suppress that which
does not easily fall into categories they can accept.
It was clear from these reports that some restless
force was still active aboard the old vessel, and that it
wanted the Constellation to go on unharmed and as she was
in her heyday. But why did the ghostly sailor make such
an effort to manifest and to cling to this ship? What was
the secret that this “ship of destiny” harbored below deck?
* * *
We were standing in a small group on the main deck
of the ship when Sybil said hurriedly, "Must go down
below,” and before we could even ask her why, she had
descended the narrow ladder leading to the next lower
level. There she deftly made for the after orlop deck, where
she stopped abruptly and remarked, “There is much evil
here!”
Before we had all come aboard, she had been wander-
ing about the ship in almost total darkness. “I personally
have been with the ship for eleven years,” the curator later
observed, “and I would not attempt such a feat without
light, although I know the ship like the back of my hand.”
Earlier, while we were still en route to the harbor, Sybil
had suddenly mumbled a date out of context and appar-
ently for no particular reason. That date was 1802. When I
had questioned her about it she only said it had signifi-
cance for the place we were going to visit. Later I discov-
ered that the first captain of the Constellation had left the
frigate at the end of 1801, and that 1802 signified a new
and important chapter in the ship’s career.
How could Sybil deduce this from the modern streets
of nocturnal Baltimore through which we had been driving
at the time?
And now we were finally aboard, waiting for develop-
ments. These were not long in coming. As Sybil went
down into the hold of the ship, we followed her. As if she
knew where she was going, she directed her steps toward
the ladder area of the after orlop deck.
“I’m frightened,” she said, and shuddered. For a per-
son like Sybil to be frightened was most unusual. She
showed me her arms, which were covered with gooseflesh.
It was not particularly cold inside the hold, and none of us
showed any such symptoms.
"This area has a presence, lots of atmosphere. . . very
cruel. And I heard what sounded like a baby crying. Why
would a baby cry aboard a ship like this?”
Why indeed?
“A peculiar death... a boy... a gun... big gun... a
bad deed....
"Is this boy connected with the ship?”
Instead of answering, she seemed to take in the
atmosphere. More and more dissociating herself from us
and the present, she mumbled, "Seventeen sixty-five.”
The date had no significance for the ship, but proba-
bly for its first captain, then still in British service.
“French guns...."
This would refer to the two great engagements
with the French fleet in 1799 and 1800.
I tried to get back to the boy.
"He walked around this boat a lot,” Sybil said.
"Something happened to him. Have to find the gun.
Doesn't like guns. He’s frightened. Killed here. Two
men. . .frightening the boy. Powder. . .powder boy.
Eleven.”
"Who were those two men?”
"Seventy-two. . .sixty-six. . .their boat is not
here....”
“Is there an entity present on this boat now?"
“Three people. Boy and the two men.”
“Who are the two men?”
Belabored, breathing heavily, Sybil answered.
"Thraxton. . .captain. . .Thomas. . .T-h-r. . .1 can’t
get the middle of it. . . 1 802 . . .other man. . .to the gun. ...”
When these words came from Sybil’s now half-
entranced lips, the little group around me froze. I heard a
gasp from one of them and realized that Sybil must have
hit on something important. Only later did I learn that
Captain Thomas Truxtun was the ship’s first captain, and
that he had been replaced by another at the beginning of
1802. If he was one of the ghostly presences here, he cer-
tainly had a reason to stay with the ship that he had made
great and whose name was forever linked with his own in
naval history.
Sybil came out of her semi-trance momentarily and
complained she wasn’t getting through too well. “Name
ending in son,” she said now. "Harson. . .can’t hear it too
well. I hear a lot of noise from guns. Attacking. Seventy-
two. Sixty-four. French. I can’t see what happened to the
boy. He didn’t come back. But he’s here now. It’s confus-
ing me. Fire!”
"Can you get more about the two men with the
boy?” I asked.
"One is important, the other one is. . .a. . .armory . . .
the guns. . .tends to the guns. . .he’s still here. . .has to be
forgiven. . .for his adventures. . .he was a coward. . .he hid
away. . .he was killed by the men on this boat, not the
enemy. . .blew him up. . .his friends did it because he was a
coward ... in action .... ”
"What was his name?”
"Harson... Larson... I don’t know.... He was an
armorer. ...”
“Where was he from?”
“Sweden.”
At this point, when we were leaning over to catch
every word of Sybil’s testimony, my tape recorder went out
of order. No matter how I shook it, it would not work
again. Quickly, I tore out a sheet of paper and took notes,
later comparing them with those of the curator, Don
Stewart.
As I pressed my psychic friend — and her communi-
cators— for more information, she obliged in halting,
labored sentences.
This man had been done an injustice, she explained,
for he was not a coward. Captain Thomas “Thr-ton,” an
American, had given the order and he was killed by being
blown to bits through a cannon. Finally, the seventy-two
sixty-six figures she had mentioned earlier fell into place.
That was the spot where the killing happened, she
explained, at sea. The position, in other words.
“The guns are a bad influence,” she mumbled, “if
you take the third gun away it would be better. . .bad
influence here, frightens people. . .third gun. This ship
would be with another. . . Const., .ation, and Con. . .federa-
tion. . .something like that. . .should be at sea. . .not a sister
ship but of the same type with a similar spelling of the
name, even though this ship was slightly older, they belong
together!”
* * *
This of course was perfectly true, but she could not
have known it from standing in an almost dark hull. The
Constellation preceded the Constitution by a very short
time.
“1795 important to this boat.”
That was the year work on her had begun.
Gradually, I was able to sort out the various tenants
of the ship’s netherworld.
The eleven-year-old boy was somehow tied to the
date of August 16, 1822. He was, Mrs. Leek stated, the
victim of murder by two crew members in the cockpit of
the orlop deck. Mr. Stewart later confirmed that very
young boys were used aboard old ships to serve as lolly
boys or servants to naval surgeons. The area where the
ghostly boy was most active, according to the psychic, was
precisely what had been the surgeon’s quarters!
The man who had been executed as a coward during
action against the French, as the medium had said, could
not materialize because he was in bits and pieces and thus
remembered “himself” in this gruesome fashion.
The man who had condemned him was Captain
Thomas Truxtun, and the man’s name was something like
Harsen. But here confusion set in. For she also felt the
influence of a person named Larsen — a Swede, she thought
— and he gave two figures similar to the other figures men-
tioned before, 73 and 66, and we’d know him by those
numerals!
“Ship of Destiny”: The U. S. F. Constellation
163
It now became clear to me that Mrs. Leek was getting
impressions from several layers at the same time and
that I would have to separate them to come to any kind of
rational evaluation of the material.
I brought her out of her semi-trance state and we
started to discuss what had come through her, when all of
a sudden the large doors at the bottom of the ladder
approximately ten feet away slowly opened by themselves.
The curator, who saw this, reports that a rush of cold air
followed. He had often noticed that there was a tempera-
ture differential of some five degrees between the after
crew’s ladder area and the rest of the ship, for which there
was no satisfactory explanation.
It was 10 o'clock when we left the ship, and one by
one we descended the perilous ladder. It wasn’t easy for me
until I left my equipment behind for the moment and
bravely grabbed the rope ladder in the dark. The fact that
I am writing this account is proof I did not plunge into
chilly Baltimore Harbor, but I wouldn’t want to try it
again for all the ghosts in America!
* * *
We repaired to a harbor tavern, and I started to
question Mr. Stewart about the information received
through Mrs. Leek. It was there that I first learned about
Captain Truxtun, and his connection with the ship. It
should be noted that only I was in close proximity of Mrs.
Leek during most of the seance — the others kept a certain
distance. Thus, any “reading of the minds” of the others
who knew this name is not likely, and I did not as yet have
this knowledge in my own mind.
But there was more, much more. It would appear
that a man was indeed executed for cowardice during the
action against the French in 1799, just as Mrs. Leek had
said. It was during the battle with L’Insurgente. A sailor
named Neil Harvey deserted his position at gun number 7
on the portside. Found by a Lieutenant Starrett, the tradi-
tional account has it, he was instantly run through by the
officer.
Had Sybil’s “Harsen” anything to do with Harvey?
She had stated the gun was number 3, not 7, but on
checking it was found that the gun position numbers had
been changed later — after the killing — at the time the ship
was rebuilt, so that what is today gun 7 was actually gun 3
in 1799!
It was customary in the British (and early American)
navies to execute traitors by strapping them to the mouths
of cannon and blowing them to bits. If Lieutenant Starrett,
in hot anger, had run the sailor through — and we don’t
know if he was dead from it — it may well be that the cap-
tain, when apprised of the event, had ordered the man,
wounded or already dead, subjected to what was considered
a highly dishonorable death: no body, no burial at sea.
These bits of information were found by the curator, Mr.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
164
Stewart, in the original ship’s log preserved at the Navy
Department in Washington.
Apparently, Neil Harvey’s job was that of a night
watchman as well as gunner. This may have given rise to
another version of the tradition, researched for me by Jim
Lyons. In this version, Harvey was found fast asleep when
he should have stood watch, and, discovered by Captain
Truxtun himself, was cursed by his master forever to walk
the decks of his ship, after which the captain himself ran
him through with his sword.
The records, however, report the killing by Lieu-
tenant Starrett and even speak of the court-martial proceed-
ings against the sailor. He was condemned, according to
the log, for deserting his position and was executed aboard
by being shot. This would bear out my suggestion that the
sword of Lieutenant Starrett did not finish the unfortunate
man off altogether.
I had now accounted for the boy, the captain, and the
unhappy sailor named Neil Harvey, blown to bits by the
gun. But there was still an unresolved portion to the puz-
zle: the “Swede” Sybil felt present. By no stretch of the
imagination could Neil Harvey be called a Scandinavian.
Also, the man, she felt, had “spent the happiest days of his
life aboard ship as an employee."
One can hardly call an eighteenth-century sailor an
employee, and Harvey did not spend any happy days
aboard; certainly, at least, this would not be his memory at
the time of sudden death.
But the curator informed me that another watchman,
curiously enough, had seen Harvey’s ghost, or what looked
like an old sailor, while playing cards aboard ship. He
looked up from his game, casually, and saw the transparent
figure going through the wall in front of him. He quit his
position in 1963, when an electric burglary alarm system
was installed aboard. Originally a Royal Navy cook, the
man had come from Denmark — not Sweden — and his
name was Carl Hansen. It occurred to me then that Sybil
had been confused by two different entities — a Harvey and
a Hansen, both of them watchmen, albeit of different
periods.
After Hansen retired from his job aboard the Constel-
lation, he evidently was very lonely for his old home — he
had lived aboard from 1958 to 1963. He had written hun-
dreds of letters to the Constellation restoration committee
begging them to let him have his old position back, even
though he had planned to retire to a farm. It was not pos-
sible to give him back his job, but the old man visited the
ship on many occasions, keeping up a strong emotional tie
with it. He died in 1966 at age seventy -three.
Here again one of those strange similarities had con-
fused Sybil. On one occasion she had mentioned the figures
seventy-two and sixty-six as applying to a position at sea,
while later saying that the man from Sweden could be rec-
ognized by the numerals 73 and 66. It struck the curator
that he was giving his age and death year in order to be
identified properly!
Who then, among these influences aboard, was
responsible for the continued resurgence of the old ship?
Who wanted her to stay afloat forever, if possible?
Not the eleven-year-old boy, to whom the ship had
meant only horror and death.
But perhaps the other three had found at last, some-
thing in common: their love for the U. S. F. Constellation.
Captain Truxtun certainly would feel himself bound
to his old ship, the ship that shared his glories.
Neil Harvey might have wished to find justice and to
clear his name. So long as the ship existed, there was a
chance that the records would bear him out.
♦ 19
The Truth About Camelot
Was there a Camelot?
Did King Arthur preside in its splendid halls over
the Round Table and its famous knights amid medieval
splash and chivalry?
Musical comedy writers Lerner and Loewe thought
so when they created the Broadway musical Camelot. Basi-
cally, this version presents Arthur as the champion of jus-
tice in a world of corruption and violence. He and his
chosen knights of the Round Table challenge the sinister
elements around them — and usually win. The religious ele-
ments are subdued, and Arthur emerges as a good man
eventually hurt by his closest friend, when Lancelot runs
off with Queen Guinevere. This treachery makes Arthur’s
world collapse. The major point made here is that breach
of faith can only lead to disaster.
* * *
1 have been fascinated by the King Arthur tradition
for many years, wondering if there ever was a Camelot — if,
indeed, there ever was a real King Arthur. Historians have
had a go at all this material over the years, of course, and
the last word isn’t in yet, for the digs are still fresh and
new evidence does turn up in forgotten or lost manuscripts.
Also, reinterpretations of obscure passages shed new light
on ancient mysteries.
In 1965 I stood in the inner portions of the ruined
abbey of Glastonbury in the west of England. Near me was
a bronze tablet neatly stuck into the wet soil. “King
Arthur’s tomb,” it read, and a little farther on I found
Queen Guinevere’s tomb. I had not come to search for
these tombs, however, but to see for myself the remnants
of this “holiest spot in all Britain,” which had been discov-
ered through a combination of archaeological prowess and
psychic gifts. A professional archeologist named Bligh
Bond had discovered that he was also psychic. Far from
being incredulous, he did not reject this gift, but put it to a
And lastly, the twentieth-century watchman Hansen,
inexorably mixed up with the ship’s destiny by his love for
her and his lack of any other real focal point, might just
have “gotten stuck” there upon death.
The only thing I can say with reasonable certainty is
that the Constellation is not likely to disappear from the
sea, whether out in the open ocean or safely nestled at her
Baltimore dock. She’s got three good men to look after her
now.
prolonged and severe test. As a result of this test, he
received alleged communications from a monk who claimed
to have lived at Glastonbury in the early Middle Ages.
These communications came to Bond through automatic
writing, his hands being guided by the unseen person of
the monk. This, of course, sounds fantastic, and Bond was
attacked for his lapse into what his fellow professionals
thought was pure fantasy.
The location of Glastonbury Abbey was unknown
then, yet Bond’s communicator claimed that it was there,
beneath the grassy knoll near the present town of Glaston-
bury. He even supplied Bond with exact details of its walls,
layout, and walks. Eventually, Bond managed to have exca-
vations started, and the abbey emerged from its grave very
much as predicted by the ghostly monk.
As I said, though, I had not come to study King
Arthur’s grave, but to look at Glastonbury Abbey. Yet the
trail seemed to lead to Camelot just the same. Glastonbury
is 1214 miles due northwest of the area I later learned was
the site of Camelot. Originally a Celtic (or British) settle-
ment, it is the Avalon of the Arthurian legends.
My interest in the subject of King Arthur and
Camelot was temporarily put aside when more urgent pro-
jects took up my time, but I was suddenly brought back to
it in 1967 when I was contacted by a man named Paul
Johnstone, who had read one of my previous books.
Johnstone is a scholar who specializes in historical
research and is also a free-lance writer. His articles on
British history have appeared in Antiquity and Notes and
Queries, his fiction in Blue Book and other magazines. His
writing leans toward medieval historical subjects, and after
twenty-five years of research, in 1963 he completed a book
called The Real King Arthur. That year his mother passed
on, and he felt that her spirit might want to communicate
with him. Although Paul Johnstone is a rationally inclined
individual, he had never discounted the possibility of such
communications, particularly in view of the fact that as a
youngster he had had some ESP experiences. By means of a
The Truth About Camelot
165
"fortune-telling board” he had purchased for his own
amusement, he was able to come into communication with
his late mother, and although at first he asked her only the
most obvious questions, she eventually made it known to
him that Artorius wanted to talk to him.
Now, the legendary King Arthur and his Camelot
were merely fictional re-creations of old ballads, mainly
French, which Sir Thomas Malory condensed into La
Morte d’ Artur in the fifteenth century. These ballads, how-
ever, in turn were only re-creations of older Welsh tales
that, while not accurate, were nevertheless closer to the
truth. According to Godfrey Turton in The Emperor
Arthur, the medieval trappings "are completely inappropri-
ate to the historical Arthur, who lived nearly a thousand
years before Malory was born.”
The only contemporary source extant from the late
fifth century when Arthur lived is a book called De Excidio
Britanniae, written by Gildas, a monk who later became an
abbot. Arthur himself is not mentioned in this work, but
according to The Life of Gildas, Gildas and Arthur had
been enemies since Arthur had put the monk’s brother to
death for piracy.
In the ninth century a man named Nenius described
Arthur’s reign and victories in great detail. This Arthur
was a late- Roman chieftain, a provincial commander whose
military leadership and good judgment led him to be cho-
sen to succeed the British chief Ambrosius as head and
defender of post-Roman Britain. At this period in history,
the Saxons had not completely taken over Britain and the
Western part in particular was still free of their savage
rule. Although the Romans no longer occupied Britain,
centuries of occupation had left their mark, and Artorius
was as much a Roman general as any of his Italian
colleagues.
Because of Johnstone’s twenty-five years devoted to
research into King Arthur's life and times, he had evidently
attracted the attention of the King’s spirit, who now
wished to reward him by conversing with him directly and
setting the record straight wherever he, Johnstone, might
have erred in his research. According to Johnstone’s
mother, Arthur had for years tried to tell Johnstone his
side of the story directly, though Johnstone had not been
aware of it. But now, with her arrival on the other side, a
missing link had been supplied between Arthur and John-
stone, and they could establish direct communication.
I have examined the transcripts of these conversations,
and since Johnstone himself is writing a book about
his experiences with communicators like Arthur and others,
it will suffice to say that they are amazing and detailed.
The question of course immediately presents itself: Is this
really King Arthur of the Britons speaking, or is it a fig-
ment of Johnstone’s imagination, caused by his preoccupa-
tion with the subject and fed by the accumulated
knowledge in his conscious and unconscious minds? That
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
this also occurred to Johnstone is clear and he started the
talks by asking the alleged Artorius a number of questions
that had not been satisfactorily answered before, such as
exact sites of battles and places mentioned in the records
but not yet discovered. The answers came via the board in
a mixture of Welsh, Latin, and modern English. Many of
the names given were unknown to Johnstone, but he
looked them up and found that they fit.
Paul Johnstone questioned the communicator calling
himself Artorius extensively about the main events of his
life, and thus was able to adjust or confirm some of his
own earlier ideas about the period — ideas obtained purely
archeologically and through research, not psychically. Thus
we have a date for Arthur’s birth, 459 A.D., and another
for the battle at Badon Hill, 503, where Arthur decisively
defeated a coalition of Saxons and their allies, and estab-
lished his kingdom firmly for twenty peaceful years.
To me it did not even matter whether Arthur spoke
through Johnstone or whether Johnstone, the psychic,
obtained factual information not previously known or con-
firmed. The knowledge was gained, one way or the other,
through paranormal means. When I brought up this deli-
cate point, Johnstone referred to a number of instances
where his own knowledge and opinion had been totally dif-
ferent from what he received psychically from Arthur. For
example, when he asked what Castle Guinnion was, he was
told it was a refuge of the Piets. His own views had been
that it was a British stronghold, assailed by the Piets.
* * *
All this correspondence came to a sudden climax
when Johnstone informed me that new digs were going on
at what might or might not be the true site of Camelot.
* * *
Now the question as to where Arthur’s famed strong-
hold was situated — if there was indeed a Camelot — has
occupied researchers for centuries. The Tourist Board
insists it is Tintagel Castle in Cornwall. Arthur spent his
boyhood there, according to Mr. Johnstone, and there was
a monastery on the spot, but the castle itself is many cen-
turies later than Arthur. Cadbury Hill, west of Ilchester,
was a more logical choice for the honor. This hill fort in
Somerset overlooks the plains all the way to Glastonbury,
which one can clearly see from its ramparts. Johnstone sug-
gested it as the site of the true Camelot when he wrote his
book in 1963. His opinion was based on archeological evi-
dence, but the “establishment” of professionals rejected this
possibility then. The Cadbury Hill ruins were considered
pre-Roman, and any connection with Arthur’s fifth-century
Britain denied. It was the opinion of Leslie Alcock of the
University of Wales, one of the men digging at Cadbury,
that in Arthur’s time warfare did not use fortified positions
of this size. But after digging at the site in the summer of
1966, he expressed a different view in the March 1967
166
issue of Antiquity: Cadbury was a vital strongpoint in
Arthur’s time.
What Johnstone suggested to me was simply this:
Why not take a good medium to Cadbury and see what she
can get? Let us find out, he asked, if Cadbury Hill is
Camelot. He himself would not come along with us, so that
no one might accuse my medium of being influenced by
knowledge in his mind or subconscious. But he was willing
to give me exact instructions on how to get to the site, and
to a few other sites also connected with the Arthur -
Camelot lore, and afterward help me evaluate the material
I might obtain on the spot.
I enthusiastically agreed to this, and made arrange-
ments to visit Britain in the early fall of 1967, with Sybil
Leek serving as my psychic bloodhound.
Our plans would be made in such a manner that Sybil
could not guess our purpose or where we were headed, and
I would take great pains in avoiding all sensory clues that
might give away our destination. Thus I made my arrange-
ments with the driver whenever Sybil was not within sight,
and confined our conversations to such innocent topics as
the weather, always a good one in uncertain Britain.
Paul Johnstone had given me two sites to explore:
Cadbury Hill, allegedly the true Camelot, and a point in
Hampshire where he thought England was founded. If his
calculations were correct, then the latter place would be the
actual site of Cardie’s barrow, or grave, a spot where the
first king of Wessex, precursor of modern England, was
buried.
“It’s at Hurstbourne Priors in Hampshire,” he wrote,
"halfway between Winchester and Salisbury, but closer to
Andover. But there is a drawback to this one. Nobody
seems to know the exact site.”
Since Cardie was one of the local rulers Arthur fought
at Badon Hill, I felt we should include the visit, especially
as it was not out of our way to Camelot.
Johnstone was able, however, to give me one more
clue, this one not archeological, but psychic:
In 1950 he had had a strange dream about Cardie’s
grave. He saw that a nineteenth -century church had been
erected over the site, on the hill where the barrow was.
Cardie’s grave, called Ceardicesbeorg in the original
tongue, had escaped even so renowned an archeologist as
Professor O. G. S. Crawford, the founder of Antiquity, and
a man whose home territory this was, as he lived in nearby
Southampton.
Thus armed with a meager clue and the story of a
strange dream, we set out from London on September 22,
1967. Sybil Leek was to meet us at the Andover railroad
station.
I had with me an ordnance map of the area so that
even the smallest piece of territory could be quickly
explored. Our driver had long realized we were no ordinary
tourists (by “we” I mean Catherine and myself, and now,
Mrs. Leek).
We left Andover and drove three miles northeast to
the little village of Hurstbourne Priors. In fact, we drove
right through it, several times, actually, before we realized
that we were going too fast. As we turned the car around
once more, I spotted a narrow country lane, covered by the
shadows of huge old trees, opening to our left. And at the
bottom of the lane, a church — our church. We had found
it, exactly as Paul Johnstone had dreamed it in 1950!
Johnstone had never visited Europe, nor did he have
access to the fact that an early nineteenth-century-type
church would stand there at the end of this country lane.
But there it was, and we piled out.
Built in the traditional Church of England neo-Gothic
style, this church had earlier beginnings, but its essence
was indeed early nineteenth century. It stood in the middle
of a romantic churchyard filled with ancient grave-stones,
some still upright, but the majority leaning in various
directions due to age. Farther back were a number of huge
trees. Suddenly the busy country road we had just left did
not intrude any longer, and we were caught up in a time
warp where everything was just as it must have always
been. It was close to noon now, and not a living soul
around.
We entered the little church and found it the very
model of a country chapel.
The driver stayed outside near the car while we start-
ed to walk around the soft green grounds.
“The church is not important here,” Sybil said right
away, “it’s the ground that is.”
We stood near the biggest of the trees now.
“We should be on a hill,” she said, “a small hill, a rise
in the ground that has been utilized for a practical pur-
pose.”
I became interested and moved in closer. The funerary
bowers of old were just that.
"There is some connection with a disease. . .people
congregating here because of a disease. ... I expected to find
the hill here.”
Considering the changes possible in the course of fif-
teen centuries, I was not at all surprised that the hill no
longer existed, or at least that it was no longer prominent,
for there was a rise in back of the cemetery.
“Why is this hill important?” I asked.
“A long time ago. . .comes in in flickering movements,
but I can see the hill distinctly. There is a male dominance
here. This is not a local thing. I can’t quite see his legs. He
dominates, though there are other people. He has a tall rod,
which he is holding. There is a bird on the rod. It’s not a
flag, but it’s like a flag. The hill is important to
him. . .J. . .initial J. This is in connection with the flag thing.
I can see his face and his head.”
“Is there anything on his head?”
“Yes, there is, a headgear — it is related to the thing
he is holding. I can’t see it very clearly. The bird is also on
The Truth About Camelot
167
Camelot today— only the earth works are left
his headgear, swept up from it. An outdoor man of great
strength. He is a soldier. A very long time ago."
“What period are we in with him, would you say?” I
asked softly. Nothing in the appearance of the place related
to a soldier. Sybil was of course getting the right "vibra-
tions,” and I was fascinated by it.
“So far back I can’t be sure.”
“Is he an important man?”
“Yes. I’m looking at letters. C-Caius. . .C-a-i-s. . .
Caius. He is very important. The hill is connected with
him, yet he is foreign. But he needs the hill. He faces west.
West is the road he has to go. . .from east to west is the
journey....
"What has he done?”
"The thing in his hand is related to his position.
Coins. . .trading. . .a lot of people in one spot but he domi-
nates....”
Sybil felt at this point that we should move back far-
ther for better “reception” of the faint waves from the past.
She pointed to the two oldest trees at the extreme end of
the churchyard and remarked that the strongest impression
would be there.
“Kill. . .someone was killed between those two trees,”
she now asserted, “he was chased, there is an old road
beneath this cemetery. He had to go this way, make the
way as he went. Not just walk over. Almost on this spot, I
have the feeling of someone meeting sudden death. Violent
death. And yet it was not war. More like an attack, an
ambush. There is a big connection with the west. That’s
what he wants to do, go west. This man was very
dominant.”
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
168
We were now in the corner of the old cemetery. The
silence was unbroken by anything except an occasional jet
plane soaring overhead. There is an airbase situated not far
away.
There ought to be a clearing where you look out to
a hill,” Sybil insisted. “This man was here before those
trees. The trees are at least a thousand years old.”
I did some fast arithmetic. That would get us back to
about the ninth century. It was before then, Sybil asserted.
With that, she turned around and slowly walked back
to the car. We had lots more mileage to cover today, so I
thought it best not to extend our visit here, especially as we
had found interesting material already.
When I saw Paul Johnstone in St. Louis in February
of the following year, I played the tape of our investigation
for him. He listened with his eyes half-closed, then nod-
ded. “You’ve found it, all right. Just as I saw it in my
dream.”
“What exactly did you dream?”
"I was there. . .1 was looking at the hill. . .there was a
church on the hill, not a particularly ancient church, and
there was a bronze memorial of a British soldier in
it. . .then I was looking at a book, a book that does not
exist, but it was telling of Cardie of Wessex, and that he
was buried on this hill where stood this nineteenth-century
church. The church had obliterated the traces of his grave,
that is why it had not been found. I simply wrote this
dream down, but never did anything about it until you
came along.”
The reference to Cardie’s grave goes back to the
tenth century, Johnstone pointed out. I questioned him
about the name CAIUS which Sybil tried to spell for us.
“In his own time, Cardie would have spelled his
name C-a-r-a-t-i-c-u-s — Mrs. Leek got the principal let-
ters of the name, all right. The long rod with the bird on it
is also very interesting. For in the Sutton Hoo find of
ancient British relics there was a long bronze spear with a
stag atop it. This was a standard, and Cardie might well
have had one with a bird on it. This founder ofWessex
undoubtedly was a “dominant personality," as Sybil put it
— and again some interesting things fall into place. Cardie’s
father was a Jute, as were most of his people — remember
the letter, J, that Sybil used to describe him and his kind?”
Johnstone then went on to explain the role Cardie
played in history. I had not wanted to have this knowledge
before, so that Sybil could not get it from my mind or
unconscious.
Both Cardie and Artorius served as officers of British
King Ambrose, and when Ambrose died in 485 A.D.
Cardie went over to the Saxon enemy. In 495 he invaded
Hampshire with his Jutes, and ruled the country as a local
chieftain. In 503, when Arthur fought the Battle of Badon
Hill against the Saxons and their allies, Cardie’s people
were among those allies. According to Johnstone, he
arrived a little late and made his escape, living on to 516,
at which time he might have been ambushed at the barrow
site and buried there with the honors due him. This site
was very close to his western frontier, and the ambushers
would have been Britons from Ambrose’s old kingdom,
based at Salisbury, rather than men from the distant
Camelot. Johnstone does not think Arthur could have
ordered Cardie murdered: They had been friends for years,
and though their kingdoms were close to one another, there
was no war between them between 503 and 516, a pretty
long time of peace in those days. Arthur could have
crushed Cardie’s kingdom, which was based at what is now
Winchester, yet be chose for some reason not to do so. But
Ambrose’s heirs might not have felt as charitable about
their neighbor, and it is there that we must look for the
killers of Cardie.
Johnstone also suggested that the long rod with the
eagle on top and the helmet might very well have been
Roman, inasmuch as Roman culture was still very domi-
nant in the area and Cardie certainly trained as an officer
in that tradition.
The name Cardie itself is Welsh, and Johnstone sug-
gested that Cardie’s father, Elesa, was of Anglo-Jute origin,
his mother Welsh, and he himself a native of Britain, per-
haps the reason for his divided loyalties in those turbulent
times.
I questioned my expert concerning the remark, made
by Mrs. Leek, that the man wanted to go west and had
come from the east.
“As a Saxon commander, he naturally came from the
east and wanted to extend his power westward, but he was
fought to a standstill,” Johnstone replied.
It seemed fitting to me to visit the last resting place
of the man who had been Arthur’s counterplayer, and yet a
friend once too, before proceeding to Arthur’s lair,
Camelot, some two hours’ driving time farther to the
southwest.
Finding Cadbury Hill proved no easier than discover-
ing Cardie’s bower. We passed through South Cadbury
twice, and no one knew where the excavations were to be
found. Evidently the fame of Cadbury Hill did not extend
beyond its immediate vicinity. It was already the latter part
of the afternoon when we finally came upon the steep,
imposing hill that once held a succession of fortified
encampments from the dawn of history onward — includ-
ing, perhaps, the fabled Camelot?
A twisting road led up the hill, and we decided it
best to leave the car behind. After crossing a wooded sec-
tion and passing what appeared to be remnants of old stone
fortifications, we finally arrived on the plateau. The sight
that greeted our eyes was indeed spectacular. Windswept
and chilly, a slanting plateau presented itself to our eyes:
earth ramparts surrounding it on all four sides, with the
remnants of stone walls here and there still in evidence.
The center of the area was somewhat higher than the rest,
and it was there that a team of volunteer archeologists had
been digging. The sole evidence of their efforts was a criss-
cross network of shallow trenches and some interesting
artifacts stored in a local museum, most of it of Roman or
pre-Roman origin, however, which had led to the assump-
tion that this was nothing more than a native Celtic
fortress the Romans had taken over. Was this the great
palace of Camelot with its splendid halls and the famed
Round Table?
* * *
At the moment, a herd of cows was grazing on the
land and we were the only bipeds around. The cows found
us most fascinating and started to come close to look us
over. Until we were sure that they were cows and that
there were no bulls among them, this was somewhat of a
nerve-wracking game. Then, too, my tape recording of
what Sybil had to say was frequently interrupted by the
ominous and obvious sound of cow droppings, some of
which came awfully close for comfort. But the brave
explorer that I am stood me in good stead: 1 survived the
ordeal with at least as much courage as did Arthur’s
knights of old survive the ordeal of combat. There we
were, Catherine in a wine red pants suit, the driver some-
where by himself looking down into the village, and Sybil
and I trying to tune in the past.
If this was indeed the true Camelot, I felt that Mrs.
Leek should pick up something relating to it. She had no
conscious notion as to where we were or why I had caused
her to walk up a steep hill in the late afternoon, a hill evi-
dently given over to cows. But she saw the trenches and
diggings and may have assumed we were looking at some
ancient Roman site. Beyond that I honestly don’t think she
knew or cared why we were here: She has always trusted
me and assumed that there is a jolly good reason.
After walking around for few moments, I cornered
her near the diggings and begin my questioning.
“What do you think this place is?” I began.
"I think it’s a sanctuary,” came the odd reply, “a
retreat. A spiritual retreat.”
“Can you visualize what stood here?”
“As I was coming up the hill I had the feeling of a
monastery, but I am not thinking in terms of pure religion
- more like a place where people come to contemplate, a
spiritual feeling. I see more the end of the period than the
buildings.”
“How did it end?”
“The breaking up of a clan. . .a number of people,
not in a family, but tied by friendship. . ..”
“How far back?”
“I’ll try to get some letters. ...” She closed her eyes
and swayed a little in the strong wind, while I waited.
"G-w-a-i-n-e-l-o-d. . ..”
My God, I thought, is she trying to say “Camelot”?
“A meeting place,” Sybil continued, gradually falling
more and more into trance, “not a war place, a good place,
The Truth About Camelot
169
friendship. . .this place has had for many years a religious
association. A very special one."
“Is there some leader?” I asked.
“Abbot Erlaile. . .not of necessity in the same period.”
“When were these people here?”
“A long, long time ago. Not much power behind it,
very diffuse. I can only catch it from time to time. There
are many Gwaine letters, a lot of those.”
“You mean people whose names sound like that or
start with Gwaine?”
“Yes.”
“Are they male?”
“Not all male. But the friendship is male. Coming up
from the sea. This was their sanctuary.”
“Who were these men?”
“Gwaine is one."
“Who ruled over them?”
“It’s a very mixed thing. . .not easy to catch. . .thirteen
people. . .tied together by friendship. ...”
“Do they have any name as a group?”
“Templars.”
Later, when I examined the evidence, it became clear
to me that Sybil was getting more than one layer of history
when she made contact with the imprint left upon these
storied rocks.
Paul Johnstone, my Arthurian expert friend, assured
me later that Camelot was derived from the Welsh
Camallt, meaning crooked slope, which is a pretty good
description of the place at that.
In his psychic contact with the historical Arthur,
Johnstone, using his dowsing board, established the name
as Cambalta, which is pretty close to the modern Welsh
form. But on earlier occasion, again using the board, John-
stone questioned his communicator (as he described it in
an article, “News from Camelot,” in Search magazine,
March 1968) about the ancient name of the hill at South
Cadbury. This time the answer differs.
“Dinas Catui,” Johnstone quotes his informant, and
explains that it means Fort of Cado. But he also gives an
alternate name: Cantimailoc. Thus, even the “horse’s
mouth” wasn't always sure what the name was, it would
seem. Unless, of course, there was more than one name.
This is precisely what I think. As its owners changed, so
the name might have changed: When Cado was king, per-
haps it was Dinas Catui, which would be the post-Latin
form, or Cantimailoc, the local Welsh form. Then when
Arthur succeeded his erstwhile colleague, the name might
have left out the reference to King Cado and become Cam-
balta, referring to the geographical peculiarity of the place,
rather than incorporating Arthur’s name, a modesty quite
consistent with the character of the historical Artorius. But
when Gwaine became prominent in the area, he might not
have held such modest views as Arthur, and thus the forti-
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
170
fied hill might have become known as Gwaine ’s slope or
Gwainelot.
Mrs. Leek, getting her impressions at the same time
and with varying degrees of intensity, could not possibly
distinguish between the various layers that cling to the
place. Certainly, from what I heard, there were at least two
sixth-century layers, that of Artorius himself and that of
Gwaine, and a third layer not directly connected either in
time or relationship with the two earlier ones, but somehow
also concerned with the overall aspects of the site. This
strange discrepancy would require some sorting out, I
thought immediately, but surely there must be a connec-
tion. I knew enough of Mrs. Leek’s work to take nothing
lightly or dismiss any bit of information obtained through
her as unimportant.
After our return, I went over the tapes very carefully
to try to make sense out of what had come through. To
begin with, the sanctuary and Abbot Erlaile and the Tem-
plars would certainly have to be much later than the thir-
teen men tied together in friendship, and the man she
called Gwaine, and yet there might have been a strong
link.
Gwainelod — was that a contemporary name for
Camelot? Gwaine himself was the son of a northern chief-
tain whom Arthur had taken under his wing. Sometimes
styled Gawain, this historical knight with the Welsh name
actually lived in the early sixth century, and shows up also
as a fictional hero in the medieval Arthur legend, where he
is called Sir Gawain. The many people with names begin-
ning with Gwaine to which the medium referred might
very well have included Queen Gwainewere, better known
as Guinevere, Arthur’s first wife. According to Johnstone,
the one who did most of the things the medieval Guinevere
was supposed to have done was not this queen, who died
after a short time, but her successor, Arthur’s second
queen named Creirwy.
Now the Knights Templars belong to a much later
period, that of the Crusades. Strangely, the legend of the
Holy Grail is set during that latter time, incorporating
much of the Arthurian traditions. Was there a connection
somewhere between a post- Roman local ruler and a Christ-
ian mystical upholder of the faith? Was Camelot reoccu-
pied long after its fall and destruction by Arthur’s nephew
Mordred, in the Saxon period by a group of monks who
established a sanctuary there, linking the Arthurian tradi-
tions with their early medieval Christianity? In other
words, did a group of monks during the early Crusades
occupy the hill at Cadbury, and found upon the ruins of
Arthur’s sanctuary and palace a new sanctuary dedicated to
the revived belief in the Holy Grail of nearby Glastonbury?
All these thoughts came to me much later, when I
sifted the material back in New York.
At the moment we were standing atop Cadbury Hill,
and the air was getting chilly as the sun started to disap-
pear behind the horizon.
“There was some link with the sea, but they were
finished, they had to move. . .very suddenly. . .came here
for sanctuary and tried to build up. . .the same meeting
place... feeling....”
“What was the place called then?" I asked with bated
breath. “B-r-y-n-w-T-o-r-,” Sybil answered.
“Brynw Tor?” I repeated. Nearly Glastonbury came
to mind. A tor is high, craggy hill that in England usually
has a temple on it.
"What was here actually?” I pointed to the ground.
“The home of. . . . I see a face lying down. . .with gray
things hanging. . .chains. It’s a good man, in chains. Loss
of freedom must cause suffering. . .tied here.”
Later I wondered who the prisoner she felt might
have been. I found that Arthur himself was thrown into
prison by one of the sons of King Ambrose, after the king
had died. Arthur had become embroiled in the quarrel
among Ambrose’s sons and successors. Eventually Arthur
was freed by his men. Could Sybil be picking up this men-
tal image of that event in the far past?
Again I asked, who was the leader here, and Sybil
replied, she did not know. When I saw Paul Johnstone in
St. Louis many months later, he informed me that he had
had contact with Arthur, through his psychic board.
Arthur had informed him that he had not been present
when I came to look for Camelot, even though I had come
to the right place.
“Do you sense any leader at all?” I insisted, and
looked at Sybil.
“Two leaders. Two men.”
This, I discovered later, was also interesting. Arthur
ruled jointly with King Cado at Camelot when Arthur first
came there. Later, Arthur became sole ruler. Cado is
remembered today in the place name for Cadbury, site of
Camelot.
“What does the place look like?” I continued my
questioning.
“There is a circle. . .the circle is important. . .building,
too, but there must be a circle. . .the knights. . .brave
men. . .Welsh names. ..Monserrey..
I was overcome with the importance of what we were
doing and spoke in a subdued voice, even though I could
have shouted and nobody but the cows would have heard
me.
“Are we here. . . ” I asked. ‘‘Is this Monserrey ?"
“The place is here, but the cavity is not here.”
“Where is the cavity?”
"West. . .toward the sun. . . .”
“What is in the cavity?”
“The chains.”
“What is kept here?”
“No one must know. Not ready. Not ready for
knowledge.”
“Before the circle. ...”
“Who is at the head of the circle?”
“He’s dead. You should not look yet.”
“What is the secret kept here?”
“I will not say the name.”
The conversation was getting more and more into the
realms of mysticism, I felt. What Sybil had brought
through made sense although I would not be able to sort it
out until afterward, on my return to New York. The circle
could refer to the Round Table, the knights with Welsh
names were certainly Arthur’s men, but Monserrey (or
Montserrat) belonged to the legend of the Holy Grail.
Again, Sybil was fusing into one story two periods sepa-
rated by many centuries.
The cavity containing the chains also interested me.
Was she referring to a relic kept, perhaps, at Glastonbury?
Was there something besides the cup and the sprig Joseph
of Arimathaea had brought with him from Palestine? Were
these chains of later origin? I was hardly going to get any
objective proof for these statements, and yet the picture,
although confused, was intriguing, especially so as Sybil
had no way of connecting the windswept hill we were
standing on with either King Arthur or the Holy Grail!
“Who is the communicator?” I demanded. I had the
feeling it was not Artorius, and it wasn’t Sybil any longer,
and my curiosity was aroused: Who was it?
“Don’t say communicator. . .communicant!”
“Very well, what is the communicant’s name, then?”
"The King."
I was surprised, taken aback.
"I have to have proof.”
“The name is not ready. . . It is wrong to discover
more than you can hope to learn. . . . I want to protect the
secret with magic.”
"What is your name?”
"She knows me. ...” he said, referring to the
medium, and all at once I, too, knew who my informant
was, incredible though it seemed at that instant!
“I know you, too,” I heard myself say, “and I’m a
friend, you need not fear me.”
"I'm a bird,” the voice coming from Sybil's entranced
lips said, a little mockingly.
Merlin! Of course. . .Merlin means “small hawk.”
How apt the name fit the wise counselor of Arthur.
Was there a Merlin?
Not one, but two, Paul Johnstone assured me, and
one of them did serve as an adviser to Artorius. Whether
or not he was also a magician is a moot question. But a
historical figure Merlin (or Medwin) certainly was.
“Link between the sea and here. . .stranger. . .must
come. . . . When will that be? When the hawk. . .when the
birds fly in the sky like me. . . . Man flies in the sky. . . . The
link is a bad one....”
“And who will the stranger be?" I asked.
"Erfino...a bird....”
"Where will he come from?”
“From out of the earth?”
“Inside the earth?” I asked incredulously.
“Out of the earth. . .will rise again.”
The Truth About Camelot
171
"You speak in riddles.”
"I know the answers!”
“Why not give them to me now?”
“You are a man. . . . There have to be twelve others. . .
the bird is the secret. ...”
I began to understand the implications of this
prophecy, and, forgetting for the moment my mission here,
said only, "Is there nothing I can do?”
But Merlin was gone.
Sybil was back.
The change in expression and personality was incred-
ible: One moment ago, her face had been the wizened,
serene face of a timeless wise man, and now it was Sybil
Leek, voluble author and voluntary medium, merely stand-
ing on a hill she didn’t know, and it was getting dark and
chilly.
We quickly descended the steep hill and got into the
car, the driver turned on the heat, and off we went, back to
London.
But the experience we had just been through was not
easily assimilated. If it was indeed Arthur’s counselor Mer-
lin, speaking for the King — and how could I disprove it
even if I had wanted to? — then Sybil had indeed touched
on the right layer in history. The implications of Merlin’s
prophecy also hit home: Was he speaking of a future war
that was yet to come and that would drive the human race
underground, to emerge only when it was safe to do so, and
build once again the sanctuary?
* * *
The idea of a council of twelve is inherent in most
secret doctrines, from Rosicrucian to White Brotherhood,
and even in the twelve apostles and the esoteric astrologers’
twelve planets (of which we know only nine presently) this
number is considered important.
The prophecy of birds (airplanes) he calls hawks
(warlike) that represent a bad link needs, I think, no expla-
nation, and the subsequent destruction forcing man to live
in caves was reminiscent of H. G. Wells’ strangely
prophetic The Shape of Things to Come.
But what was the meaning of the bird named Erfine,
or perhaps Irfine, or some such spelling, since I only heard
the word and did not see it spelled out?
When I confronted Paul Johnstone in his friend Dr.
Saussele’s offices in St. Louis in February of 1968, I ques-
tioned him about the Camelot material.
"I think Sybil got several periods there,” he began.
“The Templars were prominent in England in the 1200s,
but that is of course seven hundred years after Arthur.”
“Did Arthur build a sanctuary on the hilltop?”
“Not to my knowledge. He built a fortress and occu-
pied a dwelling on the hilltop. Some invading Celtic tribes
built a hilltop fort there around 200 B.C. Then the Romans
came and chased these people away. The hill was semi-
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
172
deserted for quite a while. Then Cado reestablished himself
there. Cado was a kinsman to Arthur, and around 510
A.D., after the victorious Battle of Badon Hill, he invited
Arthur to share his kingdom with him, which Arthur did.”
“Any other comments?”
"No, except to say that Sybil Leek was getting some-
thing real.”
"Thus the real Camelot can no longer be sought at
Tintagel, or in Wales, or on the Scottish border: nowhere
but atop the breezy hill at Cadbury near Ilchester. There
are several other Cadburys in Somerset and Devon, but the
one that once belonged to King Arthur lies at a spot
marked Cadbury Castle on most maps. You can’t miss it if
you have an ordnance map, and even if you don't, have
Sybil Leek with you!
But to my mind Sybil had done more than merely
establish via psychometry the reality of Camelot and the
Arthurian presence at Cadbury. The puzzling dual impres-
sion of sixth-century Arthur and a twelfth-century Grail
tradition at this spot seemed to me to point in a direction
no other author has ever traveled. Could it be that the
romantic, almost fictional Arthur of the Christian chivalry
period was not merely the result of the continuous rewrit-
ing and distortion of ancient legends? Was there a kernel of
truth in linking Artorius with the story of the Grail?
According to my psychic friend, Sybil Leek, the hal-
lowed ground where Arthur tried to save Briton from the
barbarians overrunning it at the time was later turned into
another sanctuary by the Knights Templars. We know that
the legend of the Grail became known about that period,
when the monks of Glastonbury started to spread it.
So much of this part of the world is as yet under-
ground, awaiting the spade of the archeologist. Perhaps
some day in the not-too-distant future, additional digging
will reveal tangible proof for what is now mainly informa-
tion and deduction, but certainly not fantasy or make-
believe.
The early Christian leadership of Arthur may very
well have been the example the Templars wished to follow
in their endeavor to found a sanctuary of their own in a
period no less turbulent than Arthur’s. In time, the two
struggles might have become intertwined until one could
no longer tell them apart. The thirteenth- and fourteenth-
century authors merely picked up what they heard and
uncritically embroidered it even further.
Unraveling the confused yarn is not an easy task, but
through the talents of a psychic like Sybil Leek we could at
least assure ourselves of a totally fresh and independent
approach. There can be no doubt that Mrs. Leek picked
up impressions out of the past at Cadbury, and not
thoughts in my mind, for most of the material she obtained
was unknown to me at the time of our expedition.
It probably matters little to the producers of the mag-
nificent film that the real Camelot looks a lot less glamorous
than their version of it; no matter, Arthur would have liked
it. I’m almost sure.
* 20
Her Name Was Trouble: The Secret
Adventure of Nell Gwyn
Picture THIS, IF YOU WILL: All England is rejoicing, the
long and bloody Civil War is finally over. Thousands of
dead cavaliers and matching thousands of roundheads will
never see the light of day again, smoking ruins of burned-
down houses and churches and estates have finally cooled
off, and England is back in the family of nations. The
Puritan folly has had its final run: King Charles II has been
installed on his father’s throne, and Whitehall Palace rings
once again with pleasant talk and music.
The year is 1660. One would never suspect that a
scant eleven years before, the King's father had been
executed by the parliamentary government of Oliver
Cromwell. The son does not wish to continue his revenge.
Enough is enough. But the Restoration does not mean
a return to the old ways, either. The evils of a corrupt
court must not be repeated lest another Cromwell arise.
Charles II is a young man with great determination and
skill in the art of diplomacy. He likes his kingship, and he
thinks that with moderation and patience the House of
Stuart would be secure on the English throne for centuries
to come. Although the Puritans are no longer running the
country, they are far from gone. The King does not wish to
offend their moral sense. He will have his fun, of course,
but why flaunt it in their faces?
With the Restoration came not only a sigh of relief
from the upper classes, that all was well once again and
one could play, but the pendulum soon started to swing the
other way: Moral decay, excesses, and cynicism became the
earmarks of the Restoration spirit. Charles II wanted no
part of this, however. Let the aristocracy expose them-
selves; he would always play the part of the monarch of the
people, doing what he wanted quietly, out of sight.
One of the nicest sights in the young King’s life was
an actress of sorts by the name of Nell Gwyn. She and her
mother had come to London from the country, managed to
meet the King, and found favor in his eyes. She was a pale-
skinned redhead with flash and lots of personality, and evi-
dently she had the kind of attractions the King fancied.
Kings always have mistresses, and even the Puritans would
not have expected otherwise. But Charles II was also wor-
ried about his own friends and courtiers: He wanted the
girl for himself, he knew he was far from attractive, and
though he was the King, to a woman of Nell’s spirit, that
might be enough.
The thing to do was simply not to sneak her in and
out of the Whitehall rear doors for a day or two, and pos-
sibly run into the Queen and a barrage of icy stares. A lit-
tle privacy would go a long way, and that was precisely
what Charles had in mind. Nell was not his only mistress
by any means — but she was the only one he loved. When
he gazed into the girl’s sky-blue eyes or ran his hands
through her very British red hair, it electrified him and he
felt at peace. Peace was something precious to him as the
years of his reign rolled by. The religious problem had not
really been settled; even the Stuarts were split down the
middle among Protestants and Catholics. The Spaniards
were troublesome, and Louis XIV in league with the "god-
less” Turks was not exactly a good neighbor. Yes, Charlie
needed a place in the country where the pressures of
Whitehall would not intrude.
* * *
His eyes fell upon a partially dilapidated old manor
house near St. Albans, about an hour and a half from Lon-
don by today’s fast road, in the vicinity of an old Roman
fortress dominating the rolling lands of Herfordshire.
Nearby was the site of the Roman strong city of Veru-
lamium, and the place had been a fortified manor house
without interruption from Saxon times onward. It had once
belonged to the Earl of Warwick, the famed "King maker,”
and in 1471, during an earlier civil war period, the War of
the Roses, the house had been in the very center of the
Battle of Barnet. To this day the owners find rusty
fifteenth-century swords and soldiers’ remains in the moat
or on the grounds.
By the middle of the sixteenth century, however, the
manor house, known as Salisbury Hall, had gradually fallen
into a state of disrepair, partially due to old age and par-
tially as a consequence of the civil war, which was fought
no less savagely than the one two centuries later which
brought Charles II to the throne.
A certain country squire named John Cutte had then
acquired the property, and he liked it so much he decided
to restore the manor house. He concentrated his rebuilding
efforts on the center hall, lavishing on the building all that
sixteenth-century money could buy. The wings later fell
into ruins, and have now completely disappeared. Only an
old battlement, the moat surrounding the property, or an
occasional corridor abruptly ending at a wall where there
had once been another wing to the house remind one of its
early period.
One day Charles and Nell were driving by the place,
and both fell in love with it instantly. Discreetly Charles
inquired whether it might be for sale, and it so happened it
was, not merely because he was the King, but because of
financial considerations: The recent political affairs had
caused the owners great losses, and they were glad to sell
the house. Once again it was almost in ruins, but Charles
restored it in the style of his own period. This was a costly
operation, of course, and it presented a problem, even for a
king. He could not very well ask Parliament for the money
to build his mistress a country house. His personal coffers
were still depleted from the recent war. There was only one
way to do it, and Charles II did not hesitate: He borrowed
Her Name Was Trouble: The Secret
Adventure of Nell Gwyn
173
Nell Gwyn’s old home later became the Royal
Saddlery. It is a night club today.
the money from discreet sources, and soon after installed
his lady love at Salisbury Hall.
As time went on, the King’s position grew stronger,
and England’s financial power returned. Also, there was no
longer any need for the extreme caution that had character-
ized the first few years after the Restoration. The King did
not wish to bury Nell Gwyn at a distance in the country,
especially as he did not fancy riding out there in the cold
months of the year. He therefore arranged for her to have a
private apartment in a house built above the Royal Sad-
dlery near the Deanery, in the London suburb called Soho.
In the second half of the seventeenth century, Soho
was pretty far uptown from Whitehall, and the young
things flitting to and fro through its woods were still four-
legged. Today, of course, Soho is the sin-studded nightclub
section of London's West End. The old house, built in
1632, still stands, but it has changed over many times
since. Next door to it was the Royalty Theatre, where Nell
Gwyn had once been among the hopeful young actresses —
but not for long. It seems odd to find a theater next door
to the stables, but Soho was a hunting suburb and it
seemed then logical to have all the different sporting events
and facilities close together. Besides, Nell did not mind;
she liked peeking in at the Royalty Theatre when she was
not otherwise engaged. Unfortunately, the theater is no
more; an unfriendly Nazi bomb hit it during World War
II. But the Saddlery did not get a scratch and that is all to
the good, for today it houses a most interesting emporium.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
174
The nightclub known as the Gargoyle occupied part of the
four-story building, the balance being what is now called
the Nell Gwyn Theatre, and various offices and dressing
rooms. In the 1920s, Noel Coward was one of the founding
members of this club, and Henri Matisse designed one of
the rooms. It was highly respectable and private then, and
many of the leading artists of the 1920s and 1930s made it
their hangout for late-night parties. As Soho became more
and more a nightclub area, the Gargoyle could not remain
aloof: It became London’s best-known strip-tease club.
The acts at the Gargoyle are never vulgar. It isn’t the place
to take your maiden aunt, but you can take your wife. The
last time I visited Jimmy Jacobs and his club, I was some-
what startled by the completely nude bartenders, female,
popping up behind the bar of the upstairs club; it seemed a
bit incongruous to think that these girls dress to go to
work, then take their clothes off for their work, and get
dressed to go home. But I think Nell Gwyn would have
been quite understanding. A girl’s got to make a living,
after all. The decor inside is flashy and very much in the
style of the 1920s, for Jimmy Jacobs has not touched any
of it.
In this "town house” Nell Gwyn lived for many
years. But she actually died of a stroke in another house in
the Mall which the King had given her in the days when
they were close. According to Burnet’s Oum Time, Vol. I, p.
369, she continued in favor with the King for many years,
even after she was no longer his mistress, and it is true that
the King had words of concern for her on his deathbed:
“Let not poor Nelly starve,” he asked of his brother and
successor on the English throne, James II.
That of course might have been an expression of
remorse as much as a sign of caring. When her royal pro-
tector was gone, Nell was most certainly in great debt, and
among other things was forced to sell her personal silver.
The Dictionary of National Biographies is our source of ref-
erence for these events that filled her last remaining years.
She survived Charles II by only two years, leaving this vale
of tears on November 13, 1687, at the age of thirty-seven,
considered middle age in those day, especially for a
woman!
But there were periods during which Nell was at
odds with her King, periods in which he refused to look
after her. Nell, of course, was not a shy wallflower: On one
occasion she stuck her head out of her window, when some
sightseers were staring at her house, and intoned, “I’m a
Protestant whore!” Although her profession had been listed
as actress, she herself never made any bones about what
she thought she was.
During those lean years she badgered the Court for
money, and the sentimental King sent it to her now and
then. Their relationship had its ups and downs, and there
were periods when Nell was in financial trouble and the
King would not help her. Whatever help he gave her was
perhaps because of their offspring. The first-born child
later became the Duke of St. Albans, taking the title from
Charles’s romantic memory still attaching to his and Nell’s
early days (and nights) at Salisbury Hall near St. Albans.
The descendants of this child still thrive, and the present
duke is the thirteenth to hold the title. Gradually the
King’s interest started to wander, but not his possessive-
ness of her. While he allowed himself the luxury of casting
an appreciative eye in other directions, he took a dim view
of anyone else doing likewise toward his Nell.
There are popular stories that Nell died broke and
lonely, but the fact seems to be that while she had years
when she was indeed poor and unhappy, at the very end
she had a measure of comfort due perhaps to the personal
belongings she had managed to save and which she was
later able to sell off. The house in the Mall was still hers,
and it was there that she passed on. In a final gesture, Nell
left the house to the Church and was buried properly in
the crypt at St. Martin’s in the Fields.
We know very little about her later years except the
bare facts of her existence and continued relationship with
the King. But this knowledge is only a skeleton without the
flesh and blood of human emotions. The story fascinated
me always from the purely historical point of view, but it
was not until 1964 that I became interested in it as a case
of psychic phenomena.
The English actress Sabrina, with whom I shared an
interest in such matters, called my attention to an incident
that had occurred a short time before my arrival in
London.
One of the girls in the show got locked in by mis-
take. It was late at night, and she was the only one left in
the building. Or so she thought. While she was still trying
to find a way to get out, she became aware of the sounds of
footsteps and noises. Human voices, speaking in excited
tones, added to her terror, for she could not see anyone.
Not being a trained psychic researcher, she reacted as
many ordinary people would have reacted: She became ter-
rified with fear, and yelled for help. Nobody could hear
her, for the walls of the building are sturdy. Moreover, she
was locked in on the top floor, and the noises of the Soho
streets below drowned out her cries for help. Those who
did hear her took her for a drunk, since Soho is full of such
people at that time of the night. At any rate, she became
more and more panicky, and attempted to jump out the
window. At that point the fire department finally arrived
and got her out.
Jimmy Jacobs was so impressed with her story that
he asked the editor of the Psychic News to arrange for an
investigation, which yielded two clues: that the Royal Sta-
bles were once located in the building, and that Jimmy
Jacobs himself was very psychic. The first fact he was able
to confirm objectively, and the second came as no surprise
to him either. Ever since he had taken over the club, he
had been aware of a psychic presence.
“When I bought this place in 1956, I hadn’t bar-
gained for a ghost as well, you know,” Jimmy Jacobs
explained to me, especially as the subject of ESP had always
fascinated him and running a burlesque show with psychic
overtones wasn't what he had in mind. But he could not
discount the strange experiences his employees kept having
in the old building, even though he had given explicit
instructions to his staff never to tell any new dancer any-
thing about the psychic connotations of the building. If
they were to learn of them, they would do so by their own
experiences, not from gossip or hearsay, he decided.
One night in 1962, Jimmy was standing in the recep-
tion room on the top floor. It was 3 o’clock in the morning,
after the club had shut down and he was, in fact, the only
person in the building. He was about to call it a night
when he heard the elevator come up to his floor. His first
thought was that someone, either an employee or perhaps a
customer, had forgotten something and was coming back to
get it. The hum of the elevator stopped, the elevator came
to a halt, and Jimmy looked up toward it, curious to see
who it was. But the doors did not open. Nobody came out
of the elevator. His curiosity even more aroused, Jimmy
stepped forward and opened the outer iron gates, then the
inner wooden gates of the small elevator, which could
accommodate only three people at one time. It was empty.
Jimmy swallowed hard. He was well aware of the
operating mechanism of this elevator. To make it come up,
someone had to be inside it to press the button, or someone
had to be where he was, to call it up. He had not called it
up. Nobody was inside it. How did the elevator manage to
come up?
For days after the event he experimented with it to
try and find another way. But there just wasn’t any other
way, and the mechanism was in perfect working order.
Jimmy stared at the elevator in disbelief. Then, all of
a sudden, he became aware of a shadowy, gray figure,
about five yards away from him across the room. The fig-
ure was dressed in a period costume with a high waist; it
wore a large hat and had its face turned away from him —
as if it did not wish to be recognized. Jimmy later took this
to be a sign that the girl was “an imposter” posing as Nell
Gwyn, and did not wish to be recognized as such. That he
was wrong in his conclusion I was to learn later.
For the moment Jimmy stared at the shadowy girl,
who did not seem to walk the way ordinary humans do,
but instead was gliding toward him slightly above floor
level. As she came nearer to where he was rooted, he was
able to distinguish the details of her hat, which was made
of a flowered material. At the same time, his nostrils filled
with the strong aroma of gardenias. For days afterward he
could not shake the strong smell of this perfume from his
memory.
The figure glided past him and then disappeared into
the elevator shaft! Since Jimmy was only a yard away from
the figure at this point, it was clear that she was not a
Her Name Was Trouble; The Secret
Adventure of Nell Gwyn
175
human being simply taking the elevator down. The eleva-
tor did not budge, but the figure was gone nevertheless.
The next morning, when Jimmy returned to his club,
he began to put all reports of a psychic nature into a sem-
blance of order, so that perhaps someone — if not he —
could make head or tail of it. Clearly, someone not of flesh
and blood was there because of some unfinished business.
But who, and why?
The interesting part seemed to be that most of the
disturbances of a psychic nature occurred between 1962
and 1964, or exactly two hundred years after the heyday of
Nell Gwyn. It almost looked as if an anniversary of some
sort were being marked!
An exotic dancer named Cherry Phoenix, a simple
country woman, had come to London to make her fame
and fortune, but had wound up at the Gargoyle making a
decent enough salary for not-so-indecent exposure, twice
nightly. The men (and a few women, too) who came to see
her do it were from the same country towns and villages
she had originally come from, so she should have felt right
at home. That she didn’t was partially due to the presence
of something other than flesh -and -blood customers.
For the first months of her stay she was too busy
learning the routines of her numbers and familiarizing her-
self with the intricate cues and electrical equipment that
added depth to her otherwise very simple performance to
allow anything unusual to intrude on her mind. But as she
became more relaxed and learned her job better, she was
increasingly aware that she was often not alone in her
dressing room upstairs. One night she had come in fifteen
minutes early, and the stairwell leading up to the roof was
still totally dark. But she knew her way around, so she
walked up the winding old stairs, using her hands to make
sure she would not stumble. Her dressing room was a
smallish room located at the top of the stairs and close to a
heavy, bolted door leading out to the flat rooftop of the
building. There were other dressing rooms below hers, in
back of the stage, of course, but she had drawn this partic-
ular location and had never minded it before. It was a bit
lonesome up there on the top floor, and if anything should
happen to her, no one was likely to hear her cries, but she
was a self-sufficient young woman and not given to
hysterics.
That evening, as she reached the top of the stairs, she
heard a peculiar flicking sound. Entering her dressing room
in the darkness, she made her way to the familiar dressing
table on the right side of the room. Now the noise was
even more pronounced. It sounded to her as if someone
were turning the pages of a book, a sound for which there
was no rational source. Moreover, she suddenly became
aware of a clammy, cold feeling around her. Since it was a
warm evening, this too surprised her. “I went goosey all
over,” the girl commented to me in her provincial accent.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
In the dark, she could not be sure if there wasn’t
someone else in the dressing room. So she called out the
names of the other two girls, Barbara and Isabelle, who
shared the room with her. There was no answer. Cherry
Phoenix must have stood on that spot for about fifteen
minutes without daring to move. Finally, she heard the
noise of someone else coming up the stairs. The steps came
nearer, but it was one of her dressing roommates. With
that, the spell was broken and the noise stopped. Casually,
the other girl turned the lights on. Only then did Cherry
talk about her experience. She got very little sympathy
from the other girl, for she had heard the strange noise
herself on many occasions. For the first time Cherry found
out that the ghost of "Nell” was responsible for all these
shenanigans, and was told not to worry about it.
This was of little comfort to the frightened girl. The
more so as other uncanny happenings added to her worries.
The door to the roof was always secured by a heavy iron
bolt. It would be impossible to open it from the outside,
and the girls were safe in this respect even in Soho. But it
could be pulled back by someone on the inside of the door,
provided the person attempting this had great physical
strength. The bolt was rarely pulled as this was an emer-
gency exit only, and it was stiff and difficult to move. Nev-
ertheless, on a number of occasions, when the girls knew
there was no one else upstairs, they had found the bolt
drawn back and the door to the roof wide open. In fact, it
soon became apparent that the rooftop and that door were
focal points of the mysterious haunting.
The last time Cherry found the rooftop door wide
open was in 1964, and even after she left the show in 1965,
it continued to “open itself” frequently to the consternation
of newcomers to the dressing room.
One night, when Cherry was getting ready to leave —
about the same time as Jimmy Jacobs’ encounter with the
gray lady — she heard a rattling sound, as if someone
wanted to get out of a cage! There was such an air of
oppression and violence about the area then that she could
not get out of the dressing room and down the stairs fast
enough.
When I visited the haunted stairwell in September of
1966, I clearly heard those terrifying sounds myself. They
sounded far away, as if they were coming to my ears
through a hollow tunnel, but I could make out the sound
of metal on metal. . .such as a sword hitting another sword
in combat. Was that perhaps the rattling sound Cherry
Phoenix had heard earlier? At the time I heard these metal-
lic sounds I was quite alone on the stairs, having left two
friends in the theater with Jimmy Jacobs. When they
joined me outside on the stairs a few moments later, the
sounds had stopped, but the whole area was indeed icy.
Cherry Phoenix never saw the gray lady the way her
boss had seen her. But another girl named Tracy York had
been in the Gargoyle kitchen on the floor below the top
floor, when she saw to her horror the outline of a woman’s
figure in a pale lilac dress. She ran out of the kitchen
176
screaming, into the arms of choreographer Terry Brent,
who calmed her down. In halting words, Tracy York
reported her experience, and added that she had wanted to
talk about the strange voice she kept hearing — a voice call-
ing her name! The voice belonged to a woman, and Miss
York thought that one of her colleagues had called her. At
the time she was usually in the top-floor dressing room,
and she assumed the voice was calling her from the next
lower floor. When she rushed down, she found there was
no one there, either. Terry Brent remembered the incident
with the gray lady very well. "Tracy said there was a kind
of mistiness about the figure, and that she wore a period
costume. She just appeared and stood there.’’
Brent was not a believer in the supernatural when he
first came to work at the Gargoyle. Even the mounting tes-
timony of many girls — noises, apparitions, metallic rat-
tlings, cold spots — could not sway him. He preferred to
ascribe all this to the traditional rumors being told and
embroidered more and more by each successive tenant of
the top-floor dressing room. But one night he came in to
work entering through the theater, It was still early, but he
had some preliminary work to do that evening. Suddenly
he heard the laughter of a woman above his head, coming
from the direction of that top-floor dressing room. He nat-
urally assumed that one of the girls had come in early, too.
He went upstairs and found Isabelle Appleton all by her-
self in the dressing room. The laughter had not been hers,
nor had the voice sounded like hers at all. The girl was
pale with fear. She, too, had heard the violent laughter of
an unseen woman!
When I had investigated the Gargoyle and also Salis-
bury Hall for the first time, I had wondered whether the
restless shade of Nell Gwyn might be present in either of
the houses. According to my theory she could not very
well be in both of them, unless she were a "free spirit” and
not a troubled, earthbound ghost. Had there been evidence
of Nell Gwyn’s presence at Salisbury Hall, once her coun-
try retreat?
Some years ago, Sir Winston Churchill’s stepfather,
Cornwallis-West, had an experience at Salisbury Hall. A
guards officer not the least bit interested in psychic phe-
nomena, Mr. Cornwallis- West was sitting in the main hall
downstairs when he became aware of a figure of a beautiful
girl with blue eyes and red hair coming down the stairs
toward him. Fascinated by her unusual beauty, he noticed
that she wore a pale cream dress with blue chiffon, and he
heard clearly the rustling of silk. At the same time he
became conscious of the heavy scent of perfume, a most
unusual scent for which there was no logical explanation,
such as flowers or the presence of a lady. The figure
reached the heavy oaken door near the fireplace and just
disappeared through it. Cornwallis- West was aware of her
ethereal nature by now, and realized it was a ghost. His
first thought, however, was that perhaps something dread-
ful had happened to his old nanny, for the girl reminded
him of her. Immediately he telephoned his sister and
A chorine showing the door that kept opening
mysteriously
inquired if the woman was all right. He was assured that
she was. Only then did it strike him that he had seen an
apparition of Nell Gwyn, for the nanny had always been
considered a veritable double of the celebrated courtesan.
He quickly reinforced his suspicions by inspecting several
contemporary portraits of Nell Gwyn, and found that he
had indeed seen the onetime owner of Salisbury Hall!
Others living at the Hall in prior years had also met
the beautiful Nell. There was the lady with several daugh-
ters who occupied Salisbury Hall around 1890. On one of
several occasions she was met by a beautiful young girl,
perhaps in her late teens, with a blue shawl over her shoul-
ders and dressed in a quaint, old-fashioned costume of an
earlier age. The lady assumed it was one of her daughters
masquerading to amuse herself, and she followed the elu-
sive girl up the stairs. It was nighttime, and the house was
quiet. When the girl with the blue shawl reached the top
landing of the stairs, she vanished into thin air!
On checking out all her family, she found them
safely asleep in their respective rooms. Nobody owned an
outfit similar to the one she had seen the vanished girl
wear.
But the phenomena did not restrict themselves to the
wraith of beautiful Nell. Christopher, the young son of Mr.
and Mrs. Walter Goldsmith, the present owners of the
Her Name Was Trouble: The Secret
Adventure of Nell Gwyn
177
Nell Gwyn in her prime
Hall, reports an experience he will never forget. One night
when he occupied his brother Robin’s room upstairs, just
for that one night, he had a terrifying dream, or perhaps a
kind of vision: Two men were fighting with swords — two
men locked in mortal combat, and somehow connected
with this house.
Christopher was not the only one who had experi-
enced such a fight in that room. Some years before a girl
also reported disturbed sleep whenever she used that par-
ticular room, which was then a guest room. Two men
would “burst out” of the wall and engage in close combat.
There is an earlier specter authenticated for the Hall,
dating back to the Cromwellian period. It is the unhappy
ghost of a cavalier who was trapped in the Hall by round -
heads outside, and, having important documents and
knowledge, decided to commit suicide rather than brave
capture and torture. The two fighting men might well have
reference to that story, but then again they might be part of
Nell’s — as I was to find out much later.
* * *
The mystery of Nell Gwyn remained: I knew she had
died almost forgotten, yet for many years she had been the
King’s favorite. Even if she had become less attractive with
her advancing years, the King would not have withdrawn
his favors unless there was another reason. Had something
happened to break up that deep-seated love between
Charles II and Nell? History is vague about her later years.
She had not been murdered nor had she committed suicide,
so we cannot ascribe her “continuous presence" in what
were once her homes to a tragic death through violence.
What other secret was Nell Gwyn hiding from the world?
* * *
In September of 1966, I finally managed to take up
the leads again and visit the house at 69 Deane Street. This
time I had brought with me a psychic by the name of
Ronald Hearn, who had been recommended to me by the
officers of the College of Psychic Science, of which I am a
member. I had never met Mr. Hearn, nor he me, nor did
he seem to recognize my name when I telephoned him. At
any rate, I told him only that we would need his services
for about an hour or so in London, and to come to my
hotel, the Royal Garden, where we would start.
Promptly at 9 P.M. Mr. Hearn presented himself. He
is a dark-haired, soft-spoken young man in his early thir-
ties, and he did not ask any questions whatever. With me
were two New Yorkers, who had come along because of an
interest in producing a documentary motion picture with
me. Both men were and are, I believe, skeptics, and knew
almost nothing about the case or the reasons for our visit
to 69 Deane Street, Soho.
It was just a few minutes before ten when we jumped
out of a taxi at a corner a block away from the Gargoyle
Club. We wanted to avoid Mr. Hearn seeing the entrance
sign, and he was so dazzled by the multitude of other signs
and the heavy nightclub traffic in the street that he paid no
attention to the dark alleyway into which I quickly guided
him. Before he had a chance to look around, I had dragged
him inside the Gargoyle entrance. All he could see were
photographs of naked girls, but then the whole area is rich
in this commodity. Nothing in these particular photographs
was capable of providing clues to the historical background
of the building we had just entered.
I immediately took Hearn up the back stairs toward
the dressing rooms to see if it meant anything to him. It
did.
“I’ve got a ghastly feeling,” he said suddenly. “I
don’t want to come up the stairs. . .almost as if I am afraid
to come up and come out here. ...”
We were standing on the roof now. Jimmy Jacobs
had joined us and was watching the medium with fascina-
tion. He, too, was eager to find out who was haunting his
place.
“My legs are feeling leaden as if something wants to
stop me coming out onto this rooftop,” Hearn explained.
“I feel terribly dizzy. I didn’t want to come but something
kept pushing me; I’ve got to come up!”
I inquired if he felt a “living” presence in the area.
Hearn shook his head in deep thought.
“More than one person,” he finally said. “There’s a
fight going on. . .someone’s trying to get hold of a man,
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
178
but someone else doesn’t want him to. . .two people
battling. . .1 feel so dizzy. . .more on the staircase ”
We left the chilly roof and repaired to the staircase,
carefully bolting the “haunted door” behind us. We were
now standing just inside the door, at the entrance to the
dressing room where Cherry Phoenix had encountered the
various phenomena described earlier. Unfortunately, music
from the show going on below kept intruding, and Hearn
found it difficult to let go. I decided to wait until the show
was over. We went down one flight and sat down in
Jimmy Jacobs’ office.
Hearn took this opportunity to report a strange
occurrence that had happened to him that afternoon.
“I had no idea where I was going tonight,” he
explained, “but I was with some friends earlier this evening
and out of the blue I heard myself say, ‘I don’t know
where I’m going tonight, but wherever it is, it is associated
with Nell Gwyn.’ My friend’s name is Carpenter and he
lives at 13, Linton Road, Kilburn, N.W. 6. His telephone
is Maida Vale 1871. This took place at 7:30 P.M.”
My skeptic friend from New York thereupon grabbed
the telephone and dialed. The person answering the call
confirmed everything Hearn had reported. Was it a putup
job? I don’t think so. Not after what followed.
We went down into the third -floor theater, which
was now completely dark and empty. Clouds of stale
smoke hanging on in the atmosphere gave the place a feel-
ing of constant human presences. Two shows a night, six
days a week, and nothing really changes, although the
women do now and then. It is all done with a certain
amount of artistic finesse, this undressing and prancing
around under the hot lights, but when you add it up it
spells the same thing: voyeurism. Still, compared to smaller
establishments down the street, Jimmy Jacobs’ emporium
was high-class indeed.
We sat down at a table to the right hand of the stage,
with the glaring night light onstage providing the only illu-
mination. Against this background Ronald’s sharp profile
stood out with eerie flair. The rest of us were watching him
in the dim light, waiting for what might transpire.
“Strange,” the psychic said, and pointed at the rotund
form of proprietor Jimmy Jacobs looming in the semidark-
ness, "but I feel some sort of psychic force floating round
him, something peculiar, something I haven’t met up with
before. There’s something about you, sir.”
Jimmy chuckled.
“You might say there is,” he agreed, “you see, I’m
psychic myself.”
The two psychics then started to compare feelings.
“I feel very, very cold at the spine,” Jimmy said, and
his usual joviality seemed gone.
He felt apprehensive, he added, rather unhappy, and
his eyes felt hot.
“I want to laugh,” Hearn said slowly, “but it’s not a
happy laugh. It’s a forced laugh. Covering up something. I
feel I want to get out of here, actually. I feel as though in
coming here I’m trapped. It’s in this room. Someone used
to sit here with these feelings, I’ve been brought here, but
I’m trapped, I want to get out! It’s a woman. Voluptuous.
Hair’s red. Long and curled red hair.”
We sat there in silent fascination. Hearn was describ-
ing the spitting image of Nell Gwyn. But how could he
know consciously? It was just another nightclub.
“Fantastic woman. . .something in her one could
almost love, or hate. . .there's a beauty spot on her cheek
...very full lips, and what a temper....”
Hearn was breathing with difficulty now, as if he
were falling into trance. Jimmy sat there motionless, and
his voice seemed to trail off.
“Do you know where the Saddlery is?” Jimmy mum-
bled now, before I could stop him. I wanted one medium
at a time.
“Below here,” Hearn answered immediately, “two
floors below.”
“Who’d be in the Saddlery?” Jimmy asked. I
motioned him to stay out of it, but he could not see me.
“John,” Hearn murmured.
“What’s his rank?" Jimmy wanted to know. It was
hard to tell whether Jimmy Jacobs, medium, or Jimmy
Jacobs, curious proprietor of the Gargoyle Club, was
asking.
"Captain,” Hearn answered. He was now totally
entranced.
“Who was this Captain John?”
“A friend of the King’s.”
“What did he serve in?”
“Cavalry,” the voice coming from Hearn’s lips
replied.
Jimmy nodded assent. Evidently he was getting the
same message.
"What duty?” he asked now.
“In charge of the guard.”
Hearn’s own personality was completely gone now,
and I decided to move in closer.
"Brought here,” I heard him mumble.
"Who was brought here?” I asked.
"They made me. . .to hide. . .from the King. . .jeal-
ous....”
"For what reason?” The breathing was labored and
heavy.
“Tell us who you are!”
“Oh God it’s Car. . .Charles ” The voice was now
so excited it could scarcely be understood.
"Whose house is this?” I demanded to know.
“I....” The communicator choked.
“What is your name?”
But the entity speaking through Hearn would not
divulge it.
Her Name Was Trouble: The Secret
Adventure of Nell Gwyn
179
A moment later, the medium awoke, grimacing with
pain. He was holding his left arm as if it had been hurt.
“Almost can’t move it,” he said, with his usual voice.
I often get additional information from a psychic just
after the trance ends.
“Was the entity female or male?”
“Female.”
“Connected with this house?”
"Yes, yes. She must have lived here, for some time at
least.”
“Is she still here?”
“Yes.”
“What does she want?”
“She can’t leave. Because she is ashamed of having
caused something to happen. She felt responsible for some-
body’s death.”
“Whose death?”
“It was her lover. Somebody was murdered. It has to
do with the stairs.”
“Is she here alone?”
“No, I think there is somebody else here. There was a
fight on the stairs. Two men.”
“Who was the other man?”
“He was sent. . .terrible, I feel like banging my head
very hard. . ..”
Evidently Hearn was in a semi-trance state now, not
fully out, and not really in, but somewhere in between.
“What period are we in now?” I continued the
questioning.
“Long curls and white hats. . .big hats. . .Charles the
First....”
“Who was the other man who was killed?”
“I can’t be sure....”
A sudden outburst of bitter laughter broke through
the clammy, cold silence of the room. Hearn was being
seized by a spell of laughter, but it wasn’t funny at all. I
realized he was again being taken over. I asked why he was
laughing so hard.
“Why shouldn’t I?” came the retort, and I pressed
again for a name.
“Are you ashamed of your name?”
“Yes,” came the reply, "trouble. . .my name was trou-
ble. . .always trouble. . .1 loved too much. . . .”
“Why are you here?”
“Why shouldn’t I be here? It is my house.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“Charles.”
“What do you seek?”
Mad laughter was my answer. But I pressed on, gen-
tly and quietly.
“Oh, no. . .you could pay, love. . .but the King
wouldn’t like it. ...” The voice was full of bitterness and
mock hilarity.
“Are you here alone?” I asked.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
"No. ...”
“Who is with you?”
“He is. . .my lover. . .John.”
“What is his name?”
“He has many names. . .many. . ..”
Evidently the communicator was having her little fun
with me. "What happened to him?”
"He was killed.”
“By whom?”
“The King’s men.”
“Which ones of the King’s men?”
“Fortescue.”
"What is his rank?”
“Lieutenant.”
“Regiment?"
"Guards.”
“Who sent him?”
“The King.”
“How did he find out?”
“Sometimes. . .beyond talking. . ..”
“Did you cheat on the King?”
"Yes, many times.” Great satisfaction in the voice
now.
“Did he give you this house?”
“He did.”
“Then why did you cheat?”
"Because he wasn’t satisfactory. ...” It was said with
such disdain I almost shuddered. Here was a voice, pre-
sumably from the 1660s or 1670s, and still filled with the
old passions and emotional outbursts.
“How many years since then?” I said. Perhaps it was
time to jolt this entity into understanding the true
situation.
“Oh, God. . .what’s time? What’s time?! Too much
time. ...”
“Are you happy?”
“No!!” the voice shouted, “No! He killed my lover!”
“But your lover is dead and should be with you now.
Would that not give you happiness?” I asked.
“No,” the entity replied, “because my lover was the
same cheat. Cheat! Oh, my God. . .that’s all these men
ever cared about. . .hasn’t changed much, has it?
Hahaha....”
Evidently the ghostly communicator was referring to
the current use to which her old house was being put. It
seemed logical to me that someone of Nell Gwyn’s class (or
lack of it) would naturally enjoy hanging around a bur-
lesque theater and enjoy the sight of men hungering for
women.
“Not much difference from what it used to be.”
“How did it used to be?”
“The same. They wanted entertainment, they got it.”
If this was really Nell Gwyn and she was able to
observe goings-on in the present, then she was a “free
spirit,” only partially bound to these surroundings. Then,
too, she would have been able to appear both here and at
180
her country house whenever the emotional memories pulled
her hither or yon.
"Is this your only house?” I asked now.
"No. . .Cheapside. . .don’t live there much. . .Smith-
field. . .God, why all these questions?” The voice flared up.
“How do we know you are the person you claim to
be?” I countered. "Prove it.”
"Oh, my God,” the voice replied, as if it were below
her dignity to comply.
I recalled Jimmy Jacobs’ view that the ghost was an
imposter posing as Nell Gwyn.
“Are you an imposter?”
"No. the voice shot back firmly and a bit
surprised.
"Where were you born?”
"Why do you want to know ?.. . What does it
matter? ...”
“To do you honor.”
"Honor? Hahaha.... Sir, you speak of honor?”
“What is your name?”
“I used to have a name. . . . What does it matter
now?”
She refused and I insisted, threatened, cajoled.
Finally, the bitterness became less virulent.
“It is written,” she said, “all over. . .Nell. . .Nell. . .
God!!!”
There was a moment of silence, and I continued in a
quieter vein. Was she happy in this house? Sometimes. Did
she know that many years had passed? Yes. Was she aware
of the fact that she was not what she used to be?
“What I used to be?” she repeated, "Do you know
what I used to be? A slut. A slut!!”
“And what are you now,” I said, quietly, “now
you're a ghost.”
“A ghost,” she repeated, pensively, playing with the
dreaded word, as I continued to explain her status to her.
“Why did they have to fight?” she asked.
"Did you know he was coming?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you warn him?”
“What could I do? My life or his!”
“I don’t understand — do you mean he would have
killed you?”
“The King was a jealous man,” she replied, “always
quarrels. . .he was bald. . .bald. . .hahaha. . .with his
wig....”
"Why are you in this part of the building? What is
there here for you?”
“Don't I have a right?”
I explained that the house belonged to someone else.
“Do I — disturb — ?”
“What are you looking for here?”
“I'm not looking for anything....”
Again, the name Fortescue came from the entranced
lips of the medium. “Where did this Fortescue do the
Nell Gwyn, the Royal actress
killing?” I asked. Almost as if every word were wrought
with pain, the voice replied.
“On the stairs. . .near the top....”
“What time was that?”
“Oh, God, time! It was the autumn. ...”
“Was there anyone with him?”
“Outside.”
“Where did you yourself pass over?” I said as gently
as I could. There was moment of silence as if she did not
understand the question. “You do know you’ve passed
over?” I said.
"No.”
“You don’t remember?”
"What is there to remember, nobody cares. Why do
they use this house, these people?” she demanded to know
now. I explained it was a theater.
“Is there any other place you go to, or are you here
all the time?”
“I think so....”
“What are the noises for? What do you want?”
“Do you want me to stop the fighting, you hear them
fighting on the stairs? ...”
“What was John’s full name?”
"Molyneaux.”
"He was a lieutenant?”
"Captain. . .in the Guards.”
“And Fortescue, what was he?”
Her Name Was Trouble: The Secret
Adventure of Nell Gwyn
181
Contemporary portrait of Nell
Gwyn
“Lieutenant. . .King’s Guards. He was sent by the
King.”
“What was the order?”
“Kill him. . .1 was terrified. . .fight with swords. . .1
was below. . .the salon. ...”
“What can I do to help you find peace?”
“What is peace?”
“Do you know Salisbury Hall?” I decided to see what
the reaction would be.
“You want to know I was his mistress. ... I was
there . . . sometimes
I demanded to have further proof of her identity, but
the visitor from beyond demurred.
“Let me go. . .Why have you come here?”
Again, following Jimmy Jacobs’ suggestion, I accused
her of being an actress impersonating Nell Gwyn. But the
entity did not budge. She was Nell Gwyn, she said, and
would not discuss anything about her family.
In retrospect I feel sure she was speaking the truth.
Shortly after, Ronald Hearn woke up. He seemed
tired and worn out, but could not recollect anything that
had come through him the past hour or so. At any rate he
stated he didn’t, and while I can never objectively prove
these absences of a medium's true self, I have no reason to
doubt their statements either. We left, and Hearn was dri-
ven back to his home in the suburbs.
On September 24, 1 came back to the Gargoyle Club
with Trixie Allingham. It was the end of a very long day
which we had spent at Longleat, the ancestral seat of the
Marquess of Bath, and I didn’t expect too much of Trixie,
as even mediums get tired.
But time was short and we had to make the best of
our opportunities, so I took her quickly upstairs to the
same spot where we had brought Ronald Hearn, a table in
the rear of the clubroom.
Trixie looked at the somewhat seedy surroundings of
the old place in astonishment. It was clear she had never
been in or near anything like it. After all, she was origi-
nally a nurse who had turned professional psychic later in
life when she discovered her great gift. This wasn’t her
kind of place, but she was willing to have a go at whatever
I wanted of her. It was late afternoon, before the club was
open for business, and quite dark already. She did not real-
ize where she was, except that it was some Soho nightclub,
and she wanted to get out of it as soon as possible!
* * *
There was a curiously depressing atmosphere all
around us, as we sat down in the empty club, breathing
stale air mixed with the smoke of the previous night.
“There’s a man and a woman concerned,” she said
immediately, “there’s a tragedy. . .the one she loves is
killed.” She then continued, "She’s tall, rather lovely, dark
eyes, pale face.”
I wanted to know how she died, but Trixie does not
like direct questions as it throws her off her thought track.
So I decided to just let her get into the atmosphere of the
place by herself, as we watched her intently.
"I'm conscious of a stab. . .a knife goes through
me. . .there’s some triviality here to do with a garter." The
King of England, of course, was the head of the Order of
the Garter, which is considered a royal symbol. Trixie’s
psychometry was working fine.
“There’s something to do with a triangle here,” she
continued, “also something to do with money. . .initial
R... some people looking at a body on the ground. . .
stabbed. . .she is most unhappy now, tears pouring down
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
182
her face. I think she said ‘marry’ .... Why on earth am I
seeing a bear?!”
While Trixie wondered about the bearskin she was
seeing, one of my companions, the American writer Victor
Wolfson, commented that the Royal Guards wear a
bearskin. I don’t like to have any information disclosed
during an investigation, but I thanked him and requested
that he hold back comments until later.
Meanwhile I asked Trixie to press the female ghost
for some proof of her identity, and further personal data.
“Some extraordinary link with the Palace. . . . Does
that sound crazy?” Trixie said, hesitatingly, for her logical
mind could not conceive of any connection between a Soho
striptease club and Whitehall. I reassured her, and let her
continue. “That’s what I’m getting. . .something in
French. . .my French is so poor, what did you say, dear?
Someone is to guard her. . .I’m going back in time for this
picture. . .two men to guard her. . .darkish men, they’ve
got European dress on, band of silk here. . . She indicated
the waistline. “Can’t quite see them. . .turbans. . .M. . .link
with royalty. . .acting and royalty. . .and heartache. . .some-
one linked with her at the time was ill. . .Flarry . . .clandes-
tine meetings. . .real love. . .betrayal . . .two men
fighting. . .castle is linked with all this. . .1 hear the words,
‘Save for the world. . .passion. . .save and deliver me!”'
We were all listening very quietly as the drama
unfolded once again.
"It was nighttime,” Trixie continued in a halting
voice as if the memory were painful. “There was a fog out-
side. . .C. . .Charles. . .now I’m seeing a prior coming into
the room from that door and he is saying, ‘Time this was
remedied! I’ve called you here.’. . .Now I’m seeing a cherub
child leading her away and I hear the prior saying, ‘Go in
peace, you have done what was necessary.”1 Trixie put her
head into her arms and sighed. “That’s all I can give you. I
feel so sick.”
Since so much of her testimony had matched Ronald
Hearn’s, and as it was obvious that she was at the end of
her psychic day, I felt it would do no harm to try to stimu-
late some form of reaction with material obtained by Hearn
in the hope that it would be further enlarged upon by the
second medium. “Does the name Fortescue mean anything
to you?” I asked casually. Her facial expression remained
the same. It didn’t mean anything to her. But she then
added, “If it’s got to do with an ancient house, then it’s
right. All ancient lineage.”
On later checking I found that the Fortescue family
was indeed one of England’s oldest, although the name is
by no means common or even well-known today.
Trixie explained the girl was now gone, but the prior
was still around and could be questioned by her psychi-
cally.
I asked about Salisbury. Just that one word, not indi-
cating whether I was referring to a man or a place.
“A tall and rather grim-looking place,” Trixie com-
mented, “isolated, cold, and gray. . .dreary. . .
The description did indeed fit Salisbury Hall at the
time Charles II bought it.
I asked the prior to tell us who the girl was.
“Some link here with royalty.” Trixie answered after
a moment, presumably of consultation with the invisible
priest, "She came and she went. . .some obscure. . .linked
up with this royal. . .setup. . .she rose. . .then something
happened. . .she was cast off. . .that caused this tragedy. . .
beautiful person, dark, I don’t mean jet-black, but dark by
comparison with a blonde, and curls. . .down to her shoul-
der. . ,N. . .Nell. . .this is Nell Gwyn!”
We all rose and cheered. Everything Trixie had said
made sense.
Having shot her bow, Trixie now almost collapsed,
mumbling, “I’m sorry, that’s all I can do. I’m tired.”
The spirit had left her in more ways than one, but it
was no longer important. Gently we led her downstairs,
and one of us took her home to the suburbs where she
lives a respectable, quiet life.
On examination of the tapes, it struck me at once
how both mediums hit on many similar details of the story.
Since neither medium had had any foreknowledge of the
place we were going to visit, nor, on arrival, any inkling as
to why we were there, nor any way of knowing of each
other, one cannot help but assume that both psychics were
tuning in on the same past.
There were a number of extraordinary details not
otherwise stressed in conventional history.
Both mediums described a triangle, with two men
fighting on the roof — where all the hauntings had been
observed — and one man going down in death. King
Charles, also mentioned by name, had sent one of them,
because someone had told him his mistress Nell was
deceiving him.
Hearn had described the two men as Captain John
Molyneaux of the Cavalry or Royal Guards (who were
horseguards), and a Lieutenant Fortescue, also of the
Guards. Captain John was the lover, who lived below in
the Saddlery, and whose job it had been to guard her for
the King. Instead, he had fallen in love with her. Lieu-
tenant Fortescue (sometimes the name is also spelled
Fortesque) was dispatched by the King to avenge him and
kill the unfaithful officer at the house of his mistress. No
first name is given for Fortescue by medium Hearn, but
medium Allingham refers to the initial R. Trixie had added
that money was involved, and I assumed that the murderer
had been promised a bounty, which would seem natural in
view of the fact that the killing was not the sort of thing a
court of law would condone even if it were the King who
had been cuckolded. Thus the need for an inducement to
the young officer who did Charles’ dirty work!
Evidently, Nell and John had planned to elope and
marry, but were betrayed by someone to the King, who
Her Name Was Trouble: The Secret
Adventure of Nell Gwyn
183
took revenge in the time -honored fashion of having the
rival killed and the ex-mistress disgraced. We do know
from the records that Nell fell into disfavor with the King
during her heyday and died in modest circumstances. The
plot became very clear to me now. Nell had seen a chance
at a respectable life with a man she loved after years as the
King’s mistress. That chance was brutally squashed and
the crime hushed up — so well, in fact, that none of the
official or respected books on the period mention it
specifically.
But then, who would know? In the dark of night, a
troop of horsemen arrives at the house in the suburbs;
quickly and quietly, Fortescue gains entrance, perhaps with
the help of the servant who had tipped off the Palace. Fie
races up the narrow stairs to Nell’s apartments, find John
Molyneaux there and a duel to the finish ensues, up the
stairs to the roof. The captain dies at his woman's feet,
sending her into a shock that lasts three centuries. The
murderer quickly identifies his foe, perhaps takes an object
with him to prove that he had killed him, and departs to
collect his bounty money.
Behind him a woman hysterical with grief awaits her
fate. That fate is not long in coming. Stripped of all her
wealth, the result of royal patronage, she is forced to leave
the house near the Deanery and retire to more modest
quarters. Her health and royal support gone, she slips into
obscurity and we know little about her later years.
* * *
But I needed objective proof that Nell Gwyn really
lived at that house and, more importantly, that these two
men existed. If they were officers, there would have to be
some sort of records.
Inquiry at the British Museum revealed that Nell
lived in a house at the junction of Meard Street and the
Deanery. This is the exact spot of the Gargoyle Club. As
far as Fortescue and Molyneaux are concerned, I discov-
ered that both names belonged to distinguished Royalist
families. From Edward Peacock’s The Army Lists of the
Roundheads and Cavaliers I learned also that these families
were both associated with the Royal Cavalry, then called
Dragoons. During the Royalist expedition against Ireland
in 1642, under the King’s father, Charles I, the third
“troop of horse,” or cavalry regiment, was commanded by
Sir Faithful Fortescue. With him served a younger member
of the family by the name of Thomas Fortescue, a cornet
at the time, but later most likely advanced to a lieutenancy.
I didn’t find any “R” Fortescue in the regimental records.
But I reread the remark Trixie Allingham had made about
his person, and discovered that she mentioned R is being
present to identify the body of a slain person! Very likely,
the murderer, Fortescue, had wanted to make sure there
was no doubt about Molyneaux ’s identity so he could col-
lect his bounty. Also, Molyneaux came from a family as
prominent as his own, and he would not have wanted to
leave the body of the slain officer unattended. No, the
thing to have done would have been to call in a member of
Molyneaux's own family both to provide identification —
and burial!
Was there an R Molyneaux?
I searched the records again, and in C. T. Atkinson’s
History of the Royal Dragoons I discovered that a Richard
Molyneaux, being head of the family at that time, had
raised two regiments for Charles II. I also found that the
name John was frequently used in the Molyneaux family
even though I haven’t located a John Molyneaux serving in
the Royal Guards at the exact period under discussion.
Was his name stricken from the records after the murder?
The King could order such drastic removal from official
records, of course.
* * *
I should emphasize at this point that linking the fam-
ily names of Molyneaux and Fortescue with Charles II and
his time is highly specialized knowledge of history, and not
the sort of thing that is taught in schools or found in well-
known books about the period.
Thus we knew who the ghostly woman at the Gar-
goyle Club was and why she could not find rest. We knew
the cause of the tragedy, and had discovered an obscure
chapter in the life of not-so-Good King Charles.
In the process of this investigation, a royal trollop
had turned into a woman who found love too late and
death too soon.
Judging from similar investigations and the tech-
niques employed in them, I can safely say, however, that
Nell and her John are at last united in a world where the
Royal Guards have no power and even King Charles can
walk around without a wig, if he so desires.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
184
♦ 21
Ghosts Around Vienna
WHAT GHOSTS are, you know by now, and those of my
readers who are unfamiliar with the term gemutlichkeit
ought to be told that it is a German word meaning ‘‘pleas-
ant, go-easy way of life.” When we flew into Hamburg, we
did not expect gemutlichkeit, which is mostly found in
southern countries like Switzerland and Austria anyway.
But we found a genuine interest in psychic matters among
radio and television people, although the vast masses of
Germans are quite unaware of the seriousness with which
sixth-sense experiences are studied in the Anglo-Saxon
world. A small, keenly intelligent minority is, of course,
trying to establish research on a respectable basis. Hans
Bender and his parapsychological laboratory at Freiburg are
unique, though. In Hamburg, we met with Erich Maria
Koerner, author and translator of books on extrasensory
perception, and Milo Renelt, a medium, called ‘‘the seer of
Hamburg.” But, simply because people are reluctant to
talk, we could not find any leads to haunted houses, of
which there must be many.
Upon arriving in Vienna, Austria, we went to see
Countess Zoe Wassilko-Serecki, the president of the Aus-
trian society for psychical research. She brought us up to
date on the situation in Austria, where the press was
openly hostile and derisive of any serious efforts to report
parapsychological studies. An American of Austrian
descent myself, I found the use of the local tongue most
helpful when I called on the television and radio people the
next day. I quickly found out that radio would have noth-
ing to do with me, since a local magician had convinced
the responsible producers that all psychic experiences were
hokum and could be reproduced by him at will. Somewhat
more of an open mind awaited me at the newly created
television headquarters of Austrian TV, which is about ten
years behind ours, but full of good will and operating
under great handicaps of low budgets and pressures.
Finally, a reporter named Kaiser agreed to accompany
Catherine and me on a ghost hunt and to do a straight
reporting job, without bias or distortion. I must say he
kept his word.
We drove to the Imperial Castle, which is a sprawl-
ing array of buildings in the very heart of Vienna. There
we went on foot into the portion known as Amalienburg,
the oldest part of the castle. All I had to go on was a slim
report that a ghost had been observed in that area.
Right off the bat, Kaiser turned to the police officer
at the gate and asked him if he knew of any ghosts.
“Ghosts?” the officer asked, somewhat perplexed, and
scratched his head. "None that I know of.” He suggested
we pay the Burghauptmann, or governor, a visit.
The governor was a fortyish gentleman with the
unusual name of Neunteufel, which means Nine Devils.
Far from being hellish, however, he invited us into his
office and listened respectfully, as Kaiser explained me to
him. Considering that we were in arch-Catholic Vienna, in
the inner offices of a high government official, I admired
his courage. But then Kaiser had admitted to me, privately,
that he had experienced an incident of telepathy he could
not dismiss. His open-mindedness was not a drafty head
but sincere.
“Well,” the governor finally said, “I am so sorry, but
I’ve only been in this post for five years. I know nothing
whatever about ghosts. But there is an old employee here
who might be able to help you.”
My heart had begun to falter and I saw myself being
ridiculed on television. "Please, boys,” I said inaudibly,
addressing my friends upstairs, “help us a little.”
Mr. Neunteufel dialed and asked to speak to a Mr.
Sunday. There was a pause. “Oh, I see,” he then said.
"You mean Mr. Sunday isn’t in on Friday?” Black Friday,
I thought! But then the governor’s face brightened. Mr.
Sunday would be over in a moment.
The man turned out to be a quiet, soft-spoken clerk
in his later years. He had worked here practically all his
adult life. “Yes,” he nodded. “There is indeed a ghost
here; but not in the Amalienburg. Come, I’ll show you
where.”
You could have heard a pin drop, or, for that matter,
a ghost walk, when he had spoken. Kaiser gave me a look
of mixed admiration and puzzlement. He and his camera-
man were already on their feet.
With the governor at our side, we followed Sunday
up and down a number of stairs, along corridors, through
musty halls, and again up a staircase into a back portion of
the castle.
“I've never been here myself,” the governor apolo-
gized to me, as we walked. “In fact, I didn’t even know
this part existed,” he added.
What the hell! I thought. It’s a big house.
Now we stood in front of a Marterl, a peculiarly Aus-
trian type of Blessed Virgin altar built into the wall and
protected by a metal screen. To the left were the stairs we
had come up on, and to our right was another, smaller
stairway, closed off by a wooden door.
"Where are we?” Kaiser asked.
"This is the private apartment of Baroness Vecera,”
Sunday said.
Baroness Vecera was the sweetheart of Crown Prince
Rudolph. They were central characters of the famed Mey-
erling tragedy, resulting in a major national scandal that
rocked the Austria of the 1880s.
"The Crown Prince arranged for this flat,” Sunday
explained, “so he could see his lady friend quietly and pri-
vately. These stairs are not marked on the plans of the
building.”
“No wonder!” The governor sighed with relief.
Ghosts Around Vienna
185
Part of the castle had evidently been rented out to
private citizens in recent years, since the Republic had top-
pled the monarchy, and the officials of the castle had paid
scant attention to that wing since then.
"Has anyone seen a ghost here?” I inquired.
Sunday nodded. “A Jaeger reported seeing a white
woman here some years ago, under the Empire.” A Jaeger
is a soldier belonging to a Tyrolean or other Alpine regi-
ment. “Then there is the guard Beran,” Sunday continued,
“who saw this white woman right here, by the altar of the
Virgin Mary. As a matter of fact, many servants have seen
her, too.”
"When did all this start — I mean, how far back has
she been seen?” I asked.
“Not too far back,” Sunday answered, “about eighty
years or so.”
Since the death of Rudolph and Vecera, then, I
thought. Of course! This was their home, the only refuge
where they could meet in secrecy. There are among histori-
ans growing voices that say the suicide of Meyerling wasn’t
a suicide at all, but an execution.
Would the restless ghost of Baroness Vecera demand
satisfaction or was the specter of her remorseful form pray-
ing by the shrine, seeking forgiveness for the tragedy she
had caused?
Sunday now took us farther down the narrowing cor-
ridor into what must have been the oldest part of the cas-
tle. The thick walls and tiny slit windows suggested a
fortress rather than a showplace of the Habsburgs.
“Not long ago,” he said, “a patient of Dr. Schaefer,
who had his offices here, saw a Capuchin monk walk down
the corridor.”
“What would a monk be doing here?” I demanded.
“In the early days, the Emperors kept a small num-
ber of monks here for their personal needs. There was a
Capuchin monastery built into the castle at this very spot.”
We waited for a while, but no Capuchin showed up.
They were probably all too busy down in the Imperial
Crypt, where the Capuchin Fathers do a thriving tourist
business letting visitors look at the gaudy Imperial coffins
for fifty cents a head.
I looked at Kaiser, and there was a thoughtful expres-
sion on his face.
We returned to the TV studio and filmed some
footage, showing me with photographs of haunted houses.
Then a reporter took down my dialogue, and the following
day, as is their custom, the daily newsreel commentator
read the story of our ghost hunt to some seven million
Austrians who had never before been told of psychic
research.
The chain of events is sometimes composed of many
links. A friend of a friend in New York introduced me to
Herta Fisher, a medium and student of the occult, who, in
turn, suggested that I contact Edith Riedl when in Vienna.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
Mrs. Riedl offered to take us to the two haunted cas-
tles I wanted to visit in southern Austria. In fact, even
before I arrived in Vienna, she was able to help me. The
Volksblatt, a local newspaper, had published a highly dis-
torted report of my activities two weeks before our arrival.
Mrs. Riedl sent me the clipping for such action as I might
see fit to take.
I picked up the phone and dialed the Volksblatt.
"The ‘responsible editor,’ please,” I said, in German.
Austrian newspapers employ "responsible editors," usually
minor clerks, who must take the blame whenever the news-
paper publishes anything libelous.
"Hello,” said a pleasantly soft voice on the other end
of the line.
“Hello, yourself,” I replied. “Did you not publish a
piece about Hans Holzer, the Ghost Hunter, recently?"
“Ja, ja," the voice said. “We did."
"Well,” 1 said in dulcet tones, “I am he, and I’m
suing you for five million schillings.”
There was a gasp at the other end. “Wait!” the voice
pleaded. “Let us talk this over.”
The following afternoon, Turhan Bey drove us to the
editorial offices of the newspaper, awaiting our return in a
nearby cafe. I had a 3 o’clock appointment with the pub-
lisher. At 3: 1 5 I reminded the receptionist that time was of
the essence. When nothing further had happened five min-
utes later, I sent in my card with a note: “Sorry can’t wait
— am on my way to my lawyer, from whom you will hear
further.”
Faster than you can say "S. O. B.,” the publisher
came running. I repaired to his offices, where I was joined
by his editor and a man named Hannes Walter, a reporter.
It was agreed that I could indeed sue for libel.
But they were willing to print another piece, far more
thorough and bereft of any libelous matter. Would I agree?
I always believe in giving felons a second chance.
When I read the piece a few weeks later, I realized I
should have sued instead. Mainly the brain child of Herr
Walter, it was still full of innuendoes, although it did
report my activities with some degree of accuracy. Austrian
TV is only ten years old and its press goes back several
hundred years — yet the only fair treatment I received in
public was on the home screens. As is the case in many
countries, newspapermen frequently underestimate the
intelligence of their readers. That is why so many TV sets
are sold.
Mrs. Riedl turned out to be a cultured lady in her
late fifties or early sixties, capable of speaking several lan-
guages, and full of intellectual curiosity. Of noble Hungar-
ian ancestry, she is married to one of the owners of the
Manners chocolate factory, and lives in a sprawling villa in
the suburb of Dornbach.
At first, she was to drive us to the Burgenland
Province in her car, but, when Turhan Bey offered to come
along, we switched to his larger car. The four of us made a
marvelous team as we discovered mutual bonds in many
186
areas. I wanted to know more about Edith Riedl’s medi-
umship, and asked her to tell me all about herself.
We were rolling towards the south, that part of Aus-
tria annexed in 1919 which had been a Hungarian province
for many centuries, although the people of the area always
spoke both German and Hungarian. Soon we left the
sprawling metropolis of Vienna behind us and streaked
down the southern highway towards the mountains around
Wiener Neustadt, an industrial city of some importance.
Here we veered off onto a less-traveled road and began our
descent into the Burgenland, or Land of Castles.
“Tell me, Mrs. Riedl,” I asked, “when did you first
notice anything unusual about yourself — I mean, being
psychic?”
Speaking in good English interlarded with an occa-
sional German or French word, the lively little lady talked
freely about herself. “I was only three years old when I had
my first experience,” she replied. “I was in my room when
I saw, outside my window smoke billowing, as if from a
fire. This, of course, was only an impression — there was no
smoke.”
‘“We’ll get a war!’ I cried, and ran to my mother.
Imagine a small child talking about war. I certainly did not
know the meaning of the word I was using!”
“Amazing,” Turhan Bey said, and I agreed. I had
never before heard of psychic experiences at such an early
age.
“Thirty years later, the house was hit by a bomb,
and smoke rose indeed at the spot where I had seen it as a
child, and the house burned down.”
“When was the next time you experienced anything
unusual along psychic lines?” I asked. The countryside was
getting more and more rustic and we encountered fewer
cars now.
“I was seventeen years old. A cousin of mine served
with the Hungarian Hussar Regiments, and we were
engaged to be married. The First World War was already
on, but he did not serve at the front. He was stationed
deep inside the country, near Heidenschaft.”
‘“I don’t mind fighting at the front,’ he often told
me. ‘I’m not afraid of the enemy. The only thing I’m
afraid of, somehow, is fog.”‘
"Fog?" I said. “Strange for a Hussar officer in Hun-
gary to worry about fog. You don’t have much fog down
here, do you?”
“No, I couldn’t understand why fog could be some-
thing for him to fear. Well, Christmas came, and I sent
him a card, showing an angel. Without thinking much
about it, I wrote the word ‘Peace’ into the halo of the
angel, and sent the card off to my fiance.”
“Later, I regretted this — after all, one should wish a
soldier victory, not peace — I wanted the card back, because
the whole idea bothered me. I got the card back all right —
with a notation by a strange hand across it, reading, ‘Died
in service, December 22nd. ”‘
“I couldn’t understand how he could have died in the
war at Heidenschaft, where there was no enemy within
many hundred miles. I felt terrible. I wanted to die, too. I
went to my room and put out the lights; I wanted to go to
bed early. I was not yet asleep — in fact, still wide awake —
when I saw a kind of light near me, and within this lumi-
nous disc I recognized a rock, a tree, and at the bottom of
the tree, a crumbled mass of something I did not have the
courage to look at closely. I knew at this moment that I
could either join him in death, or live on. Being very
young, my life force triumphed. As I decided to stick to
the world of the living, the vision slowly lost color and
faded away. But I still wondered how he could have died
where he was stationed. The vision immediately returned,
but my power of observation was weakening; perhaps the
excitement was too much for me. At any rate, I could not
make it out clearly.
“The next morning, I reported the incident to my
parents. Mother and father looked at each other. ‘It is bet-
ter to tell her,’ mother said, but my father shook, his head.
A year passed by, but I had never forgotten my fiance.
“One day I helped my father sort some papers in his
study. As I helped him go through his desk, my eyes fell
on a letter with a black border. I had the feeling it had to
do with Francis, my fiance. I asked my father if I could
take it, and my father, preoccupied with his own affairs,
nodded in affirmation.
"I immediately went to my own room and opened
the black -bordered letter. It was from one of Francis’
friends, and he told the family how my fiance had died. He
was flying a small plane on a reconnaissance mission
towards the Italian front, but he was stopped short by sud-
den fog. In the dense fog, he underestimated his altitude
and hit a rock. The plane broke into pieces and his body
was later found at the foot of a tree. Just as I had seen in
my vision!”
“I believe you mentioned to me some startling expe-
riences with premonitions — your ability to warn of
impending disaster,” I said.
“It happens quite often,” Mrs. Riedl replied. “During
the last war, for instance, on one occasion when my chil-
dren were away at Laa on Theyer, in school, I went to visit
them by school bus along with many children and a few
mothers. I was seated behind the driver, when there was
one of those sudden thunderstorms we have in the area.
Suddenly, I heard myself shout to the driver, ‘Stop, stop at
once!’
“He stopped and turned around. ‘Are you out of
your mind? What is it?’ he demanded. Before he had fin-
ished talking, a huge tree fell onto the road hitting the spot
where the bus would have been if I hadn't stopped it.
“On another occasion, after the last war, my daughter
and I were invited to go to Mistelbach, out in the country,
to a wedding. At that time it was not possible to use your
Ghosts Around Vienna
187
own car, trains weren’t running yet, and transportation was
quite primitive.
‘‘There were two groups of people: one was our wed-
ding party, the other was a funeral party also going in that
direction. Transportation was by bus. Our numbers were
called, and we were about to board the bus, when I cried
out to my daughter, ‘Come back, this isn’t our bus.’
“Our entire group turned back and I was asked why I
had recalled them, when our numbers had obviously been
called.
“I could not tell them. I never know why I do these
things. All I know is I must do it.
“Meanwhile the other party, those going to that
funeral, boarded the bus, taking our place. I said, ‘The bus
is supposed to return to take us next.”1
“Did it?" 1 asked.
“The bus was supposed to come back in half an
hour. Three hours went by and no bus. Then the news
came — there had been an accident. We were saved by my
warning, but the funeral party were badly hurt."
“How often have you had these warning flashes?”
“Maybe twenty times during the last five years.”
“You also have the ability to sense where objects
might be safe, as well as people, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Riedl nodded. “As you know my hus-
band has a valuable collection of rare books. When war
broke out, he decided to send the most valuable ones to a
safe place in the country. But as soon as the books had
been unloaded there, I had to order the driver to take them
back again. I felt the place was far from safe. We went to a
parish house and tried to hide them there, but again some-
thing warned me against the location. Finally, we did
unload the books at another parish house. The priest had
already received some books belonging to a Vienna book
seller and invited me to add ours to this pile. But I politely
refused. Instead, I went around until I found what my
inner voice told me was the only safe place in the house:
the washroom!”
“How did the priest take that?”
“Well, he didn't like it. He remonstrated with me,
but to no avail. As it turned out, the house was consumed
by fire, except the washroom, and our books were safe at
the end of the war!”
“Have you accepted this gift of yours as something
that is part of you?”
"Certainly. Just think how much good it has brought
me already.”
By now we had reached the border country where
Hungary met Austria, and we had to be careful not to
pierce the Iron Curtain accidentally by taking the wrong
road. The land was green and fertile and the road ran
between pleasant-looking hills sometimes crowned by
ancient castles or fortresses, a striking demonstration of
how the country got its name — Land of Castles.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
188
Our destination was Forchtenstein, a yellow-colored
compound of imposing buildings sitting atop a massive hill
that rises straight out of the surrounding landscape. As we
wound our way up the hill we could see its towers beckon-
ing to us.
Shortly after, we drove up at the imposing castle and
Turhan parked the car. This is one of the biggest of Ester-
hazy castles, of which there are many, since that family was
wealthy and powerful in Hungary and southeastern Austria
for many centuries, and though the Communists have
taken the Esterhazy lands in Hungary, the family still con-
trols huge estates in Austria, and is likely to continue to
do so. Today, Forchtenstein is run as a museum. Its for-
tifications, long, vaulted galleries and rooms, its magnifi-
cent collection of paintings, and enough medieval and
seventeenth-century arms to equip a small army make it a
major tourist attraction in this part of Central Europe.
Although it was started in the fourteenth century, it really
reached importance only in the time of the Turkish wars,
when the Crescent and Star were very near indeed.
During that time also the Court of Justice for the
entire land was held here and executions took place in the
courtyard.
We passed over the front ditch, over a wooden
bridge, into the outer courtyard.
“There are noises and all sorts of goings on in this
castle,” Mrs. Riedl explained.
“There is a well, four hundred and twenty feet deep,
dug out by Turkish prisoners of war. When the well was
completed, the prisoners were thrown into it. I am sure
some of them are still around.”
“How do you know?”
“Many people have heard sighing in the vicinity of
the well.”
Turhan Bey, who is half Turkish, half Austrian,
smiled. “I am here as an ambassador of peace,” he said.
“Also chain rattling,” Mrs. Riedl continued.
“Did you ever feel anything unusual here?”
“I was here once before,” Mrs. Riedl replied, “and
whenever I could be by myself, away from the others in
the group being shown around, I felt a presence. Someone
wanted to tell me something, perhaps to plead with me for
help. But the guide drove us on, and I could not find out
who it was.”
If there is one thing I dislike intensely, it is guided
tours of anything. I went to the local guide and asked him
for a private tour. He insisted I buy a dozen tickets, which
is the smallest number of people he could take around. We
started out at once, four humans, and eight ghosts. At least
I paid for eight ghosts.
We walked into the inner courtyard now, where a
stuffed crocodile hung high under the entrance arch, which
reminded us of the days when the Esterhazys were hunts-
men all over the world.
“This is supposed to scare away evil spirits,” Mrs.
Riedl remarked.
“They must have had a bad conscience, I guess,” I
said grimly. The Hungarians certainly equaled the Turks
in brutality in those days.
We walked past the monument to Paul Esterhazy,
ornamented with bas-reliefs showing Turkish prisoners of
war in chains, and into the castle itself. Our guide led us
up the stairs onto the roof which is now overgrown with
shrubbery and grass.
Suddenly, Mrs. Riedl grabbed my arm. “Over there,
I feel I am drawn to that spot. Somebody suffered terribly
here.”
We retraced our steps and followed to where she
pointed. The ground was broken here, and showed a small
opening, leading down into the castle.
“What is underneath?” I asked our guide.
"The dungeon,” he replied. He didn’t believe in
ghosts. Only in tourists.
Quickly we went down into the tower. At the gate
leading into the deep dungeon itself, we halted our steps.
Mrs. Riedl was trembling with deep emotion now.
"Somebody grabbed my skirts up there,” she said,
and pointed to the roof we had just left, “as if trying to call
attention to itself.”
I looked down into the dimly lit dungeon. A clammy
feeling befell all of us. It was here that the lord of the cas-
tle threw his enemies to die of starvation. One time he was
absent from the castle, leaving its administration to his
wife, Rosalie. She mistreated some of his guests and on his
return he had her thrown into this dungeon to die herself.
Her ghost is said to haunt the castle, although her
husband, taken with either remorse or fear of the ghost,
built a chapel dedicated to Rosalie, on a nearby hill.
“What do you feel here?” I asked Mrs. Riedl.
“A woman plunged down here from a very high
place. I feel her very strongly. ”
"What does she want?”
Mrs. Riedl kept still for a moment, then answered in
a trembling voice, “I think she wants us to pray for her.”
With the guide pointing the way, we walked up
another flight of stairs into the private chapel of the Ester -
hazys. To a man with twelve tickets there were no closed
doors.
Mrs. Riedl quickly grabbed the railing of the gallery
and started to pray fervently. Underneath, in the chapel
itself, the lights of many candles flickered.
After a moment or two, Edith Riedl straightened up.
"I think she feels relieved now,” she said.
We continued our inspection of the building. “This
is the execution chamber,” the guide said casually, and
pointed out the execution chair and sword. Then the guide,
whose name is Leitner, took us to the prisoners’ well,
showing us its enormous depth by dropping a lighted flare
into it. It took the flare several seconds to hit bottom.
"Five thousand Turks built it in thirteen years’ time,” he
said.
Mrs. Riedl stepped closer to the opening of the well,
then shrank back. “Terrible,” she mumbled. “I can’t go
near it.”
I wondered how many of the murdered Turks were
still earthbound in this deep shaft.
* * *
Outside, there was sunshine and one of those very
pleasant late-summer afternoons for which southern Aus-
tria is famous.
We passed the chapel dedicated to Rosalie, but in
our hearts we knew that it had not done much good. Quite
possibly our visit had done more for the tormented spirit of
the ancient Burgfrau than the self-glorifying building atop
the hill.
We consulted the maps, for our next destination,
Bernstein, lay some thirty miles or more to the west. We
drove through the backwoods of the land, quiet little vil-
lages with nary a TV aerial in sight, and railroad tracks that
hadn’t seen a train in years. It was getting cooler and
darker and still no sign of Bernstein!
I began to wonder if we had not taken a wrong turn
somewhere when all of a sudden we saw the castle emerge
from behind a turn in the road.
Not as imposing as Forchtenstein, Bernstein
impresses one nevertheless by its elegance and Renaissance-
like appearance within a small but cultured park. There is
a mine of semiprecious stones called smaragd nearby, and
the downstairs houses a shop where these stones are on
display. This is a kind of wild emerald, not as valuable as a
real one, of course, but very pretty with its dark green
color and tones.
Bernstein castle goes back to the thirteenth century
and has changed hands continuously between Austrian and
Hungarian nobles. Since 1892 it has belonged to the
Counts Almassy, Hungarian “magnates” or aristocrats.
We arrived at a most inappropriate time. The Count
had a number of paying guests which helped defray the
expenses of maintaining the large house, and it was close to
dinner time. Nevertheless, we were able to charm him into
taking us to the haunted corridor.
On November 11, 1937, Count Almassy, a tall, erect
man now in his late sixties, was sitting in his library when
one of his guests asked for a certain book. The library can
be reached only by walking down a rather narrow, long
corridor connecting it with the front portion of the
building.
“I left the library, walked down the passage with a
torch — I don’t like to turn on the main lights at night —
well, when I came to this passage, I saw by the light of my
torch [flashlight] a female figure kneeling in front of a
wooden Madonna that stands at that spot. It was placed
there in 1914 by my mother when both my brothers and I
were away in the war. Of course I had often heard talk of a
Ghosts Around Vienna
189
‘White Lady of Bernstein,’ so I realized at once that I was
seeing a ghost. My first impression was that she looked like
a figure cast in plaster of Paris with hard lines. She wore a
Hungarian noblewoman’s dress of the fifteenth century,
with a woman’s headgear and a big emerald-green stone on
her forehead which threw a dim, green light around her.
She had her hands folded under her left cheek.”
“What did you do when you saw her?” I asked.
“I had time to switch on the light in the passage,”
the Count replied, “so that I had her between two lights,
that of my torch and the electric light overhead. There was
no possible mistake, I saw her clearly. Then just as sud-
denly, she vanished.”
“What is the tradition about this ghost, Count
Almassy?” I asked.
“Well, she is supposed to be an Italian woman,
Catherine Freschobaldi — of a Florentine family which still
exists, in fact — mentioned in Dante’s Inferno. She married
a Hungarian nobleman, Count Ujlocky, of a very old Hun-
garian family. Her husband was the last King of Bosnia. The
family died out. He was very jealous, without any reason,
and so he killed her, according to one version, by
stabbing her; according to another, by walling her in. That
is the story.”
“Has anyone else seen the White Lady of Bernstein?”
“Many people. When I was a boy, I remember every
year someone or other saw her. When I was in the army,
* 22
The Secret of Mayerling
In A WORLD RIFE with dramatic narratives and passionate
love stories, with centuries of history to pick and choose
from, motion picture producers of many lands have time
and again come back to Mayerling and the tragic death of
Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria as a subject matter that
apparently never grows stale.
This is probably so because the romantic Mayerling
story satisfies all the requirements of the traditional tear-
jerker: a handsome, misunderstood prince who cannot get
along too well with his stern father, the Emperor; a loving
but not too demonstrative wife whom the prince neglects; a
brazen young girl whose only crime is that she loves the
prince — these are the characters in the story as seen
through Hollywood eyes.
To make sure nobody objects to anything as being
immoral, the two lovers are shown as being truly in love
with each other — but as the prince is already married, this
love cannot be and he must therefore die. The Crown
Princess gets her husband back, albeit dead. In the motion
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
190
between 1910 and 1913, she was seen many, many times.
In 1921 she was seen again when there were Hungarian
occupation troops garrisoned at Bernstein during the short-
lived Austro-Hungarian campaign of that year — and the
ghostly lady chased them away! Then, of course, in 1937,
as I told you, and that was the last time I saw her.”
"I believe also that a friend of yours saw her in
Africa in the Cameroons? How does this fit in?”
Count Almassy laughed. “Well, that’s another story,
that one. An Army friend of mine — I really did not know
him too well, I met him in 1916, and he left Austria in
1937 and bought a farm in the Cameroons. He became a
wealthy man. In 1946 he experienced a strange incident.
“An apparition very much like the White Lady of
Bernstein (although he knew nothing whatever about our
ghost) appeared to him and spoke to him in Italian.
"In 1954 he came to see me to check on the story
this ghost had told him. The ghost claimed to be the
famous White Lady and he decided to come to Austria to
see if there was such a ghost.”
"Remarkable,” I said. “I can only assume that the
apparition in the Cameroons was a thought projection,
unless, of course, your ghost is no longer bound to this
castle.”
The Count thought for a moment. “I do hope so,” he
finally said. “This is a drafty old castle and Africa is so
much warmer.”
picture version the political differences between father and
son are completely neglected, and the less-than-sterling
qualities of the young Baroness Vetsera are never allowed
to intrude on the perfect, idyllic romance.
The prince goes to the Prater Park in Vienna, sees
and falls in love with the young woman, secret meetings
are arranged, and love is in bloom. But then the piper must
be paid. Papa Franz Josef is upset, reasons of state must be
considered, and commoners (to a crown prince a mere
baroness is like a commoner!) do not marry the heir to the
imperial throne. They could run away and chuck it all —
but they don’t. In this perhaps, the movie versions come
closer to the truth than they realized: Rudolph would never
have run off, and Vetsera was too much in love with him to
do anything against his wishes.
Nothing is made of the Emperor’s political jealousy
or the total lack of love between the crown prince and the
wife that was forced upon him by his father. In the pic-
tures, she is the wronged woman, a pillar of moral concern
to the millions of married moviegoers who have paid to see
this opus.
There is apparently a never-ending attraction in the
yarn about an unhappy, melancholy prince in love with a
young woman who wants to die for and with him. Perhaps
the thrill of so close a juxtaposition of life-creating love and
life-taking death holds the secret to this powerful message,
or perhaps it is the age-old glamor of princely intrigue and
dashing romance that keeps moviegoers enthralled from
generation to generation.
But does this tell the true story of the tragedy that
came to a head at the imperial hunting lodge at Mayerling,
or were the real secrets of Mayerling quite different?
To seek an understanding of the unfortunately rather
grim facts from which the screenwriters have spun their
romantic versions, we must, first of all, look at the secret
undercurrents of political life in the Austrian Empire of the
1880s.
For decades, the military powers of the great empire
had been declining, while Germany's star had kept rising.
A reactionary political system holding sway over Austria
seemed out of step with the rest of Europe. A reluctance
on the part of a starchy court and its government to grant
any degree of self-determination to the many foreign ele-
ments in the empire's population was clearly leading
toward trouble.
Especially there was trouble brewing with the proud
Hungarians. Never reconciled to the incorporation of their
kingdom into the Austrian Empire, the Magyars had
openly rebelled in 1848 and done it with such force that
the Austrians had to call for Russian troops to help them.
In 1849 the revolt was quashed, and Hungary became
more enslaved than ever. But the struggle that had been
lost on the battlefield continued in Parliament and the cor-
ridors of the Imperial Palace. Hungary pressed for its
national identity until, in 1867, the government gave in:
the so-called Ausgleich, or reconciliation, acknowledged the
existence of a Hungarian nation, and the Empire was
changed into a dual monarchy, with separate Austrian and
Hungarian parliaments, ministers, and of course languages,
all under the rule of the Habsburg Emperor.
Austro-Hungary was now a weaker, but less turbu-
lent giant, united only around the person of its ruler, the
aging Emperor Franz Josef. Still, the Hungarian magnates
pursued a separatist policy, gradually driving wedges
between the two halves of the Danube monarchy, while the
Germanic Austrian ruling class tried everything within its
power to contain the Hungarians and to keep a firm upper
hand.
By the 1880s there was no question of another armed
insurrection. The Hungarians knew it would be unsuccess-
ful, and they weren’t going to take a chance unless they
were sure of positive results. But they thought they could
get greater attention for Hungarian affairs, greater influence
by Hungarians in the councils of state and in trade matters.
The Magyars were on the march again, but without a
leader.
Then they found a sympathetic ear in the most
unlikely quarter, however: Rudolph, the crown prince, who
had grown up in the shadow of his illustrious father, but
who was also very critical of his father’s political accom-
plishments, because he did not share his father’s conserva-
tive views.
Rudolph was born in 1858, and in 1888 he was
exactly thirty years old. Although he was the heir apparent
and would some day take over the reins of the government,
he was permitted little more than ceremonial duties. He
had himself partly to blame for this situation, for he was
outspoken, and had made his sympathies with the under-
dogs of the Empire well known. He did not hold his
tongue even among friends, and soon word of his political
views reached the Court. Even if his father had wanted to
overlook these views, the Prime Minister, Count Eduard
von Taaffe, could not. To him, an archconservative,
Rudolph was clearly not “on the team,” and therefore had
to be watched.
Hoping to keep Rudolph from the center of political
activity, Count von Taaffe managed to get the crown
prince and the crown princess sent to Hungary, but it
turned out to be a mistake after all. While residing in
Budapest, Rudolph endeared himself to the Hungarian par-
tisans, and if he had nurtured any doubts as to the justice
of their cause, he had none when he returned to Vienna.
Also, during his sojourn in Hungary, Rudolph had
learned to be cautious, and it was a sober, determined man
who re-entered the princely apartments of the Imperial
Castle. Located on the second floor in the central portion
of the palace and not very close to the Emperor’s rooms,
these apartments could easily be watched from both inside
the walls and from the outside, if one so desired, and
Count von Taaffe desired just that.
Perhaps the most fascinating of recent Mayerling
books is a bitter denunciation of the Habsburg world and
its tyranny underneath a fa9ade ofViennese smiles. This
book was written in English by Hungarian Count Carl
Lonyay, whose uncle married the widowed ex-Crown
Princess Stephanie. Lonyay inherited the private papers of
that lady after her death, and with it a lot of hitherto secret
information. He did a painstaking job of using only docu-
mented material in this book, quoting sources that still
exist and can be checked, and omitting anything doubtful
or no longer available, because of Franz Josef’s orders
immediately after the tragedy that some very important
documents pertaining to Rudolph’s last days be destroyed.
“Rudolph was a virtual prisoner. He was kept under
strict surveillance. No one could visit him unobserved. His
correspondence was censored.” Thus Lonyay describes the
situation after Rudolph and Stephanie returned to the old
Imperial Castle.
Under the circumstances, the Crown Prince turned
more and more to the pursuit of women as a way to while
away his ample free time. He even kept a diary in which
each new conquest was given a rating as to standing and
desirability. Although Rudolph’s passing conquests were
many, his one true friend in those days was Mizzi Kaspar,
The Secret of Mayerling
1
The Secret of Mayerling:The
hunting lodge, now a Carmelite
monastery
i
an actress, whom he saw even after he had met the
Baroness Vetsera.
Mizzi was more of a confidante and mother confessor
to the emotionally disturbed prince, however, than she was
a mistress. Moodiness runs in the Habsburg family, and
mental disease had caused the death of his mother’s cousin,
Louis II of Bavaria. Thus, Rudolph’s inheritance was not
healthy in any sense, and his knowledge of these facts may
have contributed to his fears and brooding nature, for it is
true that fear of unpleasant matters only hastens their
arrival and makes them worse when they do occur, while
rejection of such thoughts and a positive attitude tend to
smooth their impact.
There is a persistent hint that Rudolph’s illness was
not only mental, but that he had somehow also contracted
venereal disease along the highways and byways of love. In
the latter years of his life he often liked the company of
common people in the taverns of the suburbs, and found
solace among cab drivers and folksingers.
As Rudolph’s frustrations grew and he found himself
more and more shunted away from the mainstream of
political activity, he often hinted that he wished to commit
suicide. Strangely, he did not expect death to end all his
problems: He was not a materialist, but he had mystical
beliefs in a hereafter and a deep curiosity about what he
would find once he crossed the threshold.
Perhaps this direction of his thoughts got its start
after an incident during his residence in Prague some years
before. At that time, the daughter of a Jewish cantor saw
him pass by and immediately fell in love with the prince.
Her parents sent her away from Prague, but she managed
CHAPTER FIVE^ Famous Ghosts
192
to get back and spent the night sitting underneath his win-
dows. The next morning she had contracted pneumonia,
and in short order she died. Word got to the Crown Prince
and he was so touched by this that he ordered flowers put
on her grave every day. Although he had conquered many
women and immediately forgotten them, the attachment of
the one girl he had never even met somehow turned into a
romantic love for her on his part. Until he crossed paths
with Mary Vetsera, this was the only true love of his life,
unfulfilled, just as his ambitions were, and very much in
character with his nihilistic attitudes.
Now, in the last year of life, he kept asking people to
commit suicide with him so that he need not enter the new
world alone. “Are you afraid of death?” he would ask any-
one who might listen, even his coachmen. A classical Aus-
trian answer, given him a day before his own death, came
from the lips of his hired cab driver, Bratfisch:
“When I was in the Army, no, I wasn’t afraid of
death. I wasn’t permitted to. But now? Yes.”
It didn’t help to put Rudolph’s mind at rest. But
people who announce beforehand their intentions to do
away with themselves, seldom carry out their threat.
"Rudolph announced his decision to commit suicide,
verbally and in writing, to a number of persons. Of these,
not even his father, his wife, his cousin, or the two officers
on his staff ever made a serious attempt to prevent him
from carrying out his plan, although it was clear for all to
see that Rudolph’s state of mind gave rise to grave con-
cern,” Lonyay reports.
But despite this longing for death, Rudolph contin-
ued a pretty lively existence. It was on November 5, 1888
that he saw Mary Vetsera for the first time in the Freud-
enau, a part of the large Prater Park that was famed for its
racing. She was not yet eighteen, but had led anything but a
sheltered life. The daughter of the widowed Baroness
Helen Vetsera had already had a love affair with a British
officer in Cairo at age sixteen, and was developed beyond
her years. Her mother’s family, the Baltazzis, were of
“Levantine” origin, which in those days meant anything
beyond the Hungarian frontiers to the east. Lonyay calls
them Greeks, but Lernet-Holenia describes them as Jewish
or part -Jewish. Their main claim to fame was interest in,
and a knowledge of, horse breeding, and since Vienna was
a horsey city, this talent opened many doors to them that
would otherwise have remained closed. Helen’s husband,
Victor von Vetsera, had been an interpreter at the Austrian
Embassy in Constantinople, and this later enabled her to
move to Vienna with her daughter Mary.
What struck Rudolph immediately when he saw the
girl was her similarity to the cantor’s daughter who had
died for him in Prague. Although they had never spoken,
he had once glimpsed her and did remember her face.
Mary had lots to offer on her own: She was not beautiful
in the strictest sense, but she appeared to be what today we
call “very sexy.”
After the initial casual meeting in the Freudenau,
Mary herself wrote the prince a letter expressing a desire to
meet again. Rudolph was, of course, interested, and asked
his cousin, Countess von Larisch, to arrange matters for
him discreetly. Marie Larisch gladly obliged her cousin,
and the two met subsequently either in Prater Park or at
various social functions. So far there had been no intimate
relations between them. The relationship was a purely
romantic one as Rudolph found himself drawn to the
young woman in a way none of his other conquests had
ever attracted him. It wasn’t until January 13, 1889, that
the two became lovers in Countess Larisch’s apartment at
the Grand Hotel.
Eventually, Mary's mother found out about the meet-
ings, and she did not approve of them. Her daughter was
not about to become the crown prince’s mistress if she
could help it, and Rudolph became aware of the need to be
very circumspect in their rendezvous. Shortly after, he
requested Countess Larisch to bring Mary to him at the
Imperial Castle. This was a daring idea and Marie Larisch
didn’t like it at all. Nevertheless, she obeyed her cousin.
Consequently, she and Mary arranged for the visit at the
lion’s den.
Dressed in “a tight-fitting olive green dress,” accord-
ing to Countess Larisch’s own memoirs, Mary was led to a
small iron gate which already stood open, in the castle wall.
They were received by Rudolph’s valet, Loschek, who led
the two women up a dark, steep stairway, then opened a
door and stopped. They found themselves on the flat roof
of the castle! Now he motioned them on, and through a
window they descended into the corridor below. At the end
of this passage, they came to an arsenal room filled with
trophies and hunting equipment. From there, they contin-
The altar — site where the bedroom stood and the
murder took place in 1889
ued their journey through the back corridors of the castle
into Rudolph’s apartments.
Rudolph came to greet them, and abruptly took Mary
Vetsera with him into the next room, leaving his cousin to
contemplate the vestibule. Shortly after, Rudolph returned
and, according to Countess Larisch’s memoir, told her that
he would keep Mary with him for a couple of days. That
way Mary’s mother might realize he was not to be trifled
with. Countess Larisch was to report that Mary had disap-
peared from her cab during a shopping expedition, while
she had been inside a store.
Marie Larisch balked at the plan, but Rudolph
insisted, even threatening her with a gun. Then he pressed
five hundred florins into her hand to bribe the coachman,
and ushered her out of his suite.
* * *
Evidently Mary Vetsera was in seventh heaven, for
the next two weeks were spent mainly at Rudolph’s side.
She had returned home, of course, but managed to con-
vince her mother that she was serious in her love for the
Crown Prince. Baroness Helen had no illusion about the
The Secret of Mayerling
193
Madonna statue near the foot of the
bed site
outcome. At best, she knew, Rudolph would marry her
daughter off to some wealthy man after he tired of her.
Nevertheless, she acquiesced, and so Mary kept coming to
the castle via the secret stairs and passages.
The Imperial Castle is a huge complex of buildings,
spanning several centuries of construction. It is not difficult
to find a way into it without being seen by either guards or
others living at the castle, and the back door was reason-
ably safe. Although rumors had Rudolph meet his lady
love within the confines of the castle, nobody ever caught
them, and chances are that their relationship might have
continued for some time in this manner had not the
tragedy of Mayerling cut their lives short.
As we approach the momentous days of this great
historical puzzle, we should keep firmly in mind that much
of the known stories about it are conjecture, and that some
of the most significant details are unknown because of the
immediate destruction of Rudolph’s documents — those he
left behind without proper safeguard, that is.
The accounts given by Lonyay and the historian and
poet Alexander Lernet-Holenia are not identical, but on
the whole, Lonyay has more historical detail and should be
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
194
believed. According to his account, on January 27, 1889, at
a reception celebrating the birthday of German Emperor
William II, Franz Josef took his estranged son’s hand and
shook it — a gesture for public consumption, of course, to
please his German hosts, with whom he had just concluded
a far-reaching military alliance. This gesture was necessary,
perhaps, to assure the German allies of Austria’s unity.
Rudolph took the proffered hand and bowed. This was the
last time the Emperor and his only son met.
* * *
At noon, the following day, Rudolph ordered a light
carriage, called a gig, to take him to his hunting lodge at
Mayerling, about an hour’s drive from Vienna. He had
arranged with his trusted driver Bratfisch to pick up Mary
Vetsera at her home in the third district and to bring her to
Mayerling by an alternate, longer route. Mary, wearing
only a cloak over her negligee, slipped out from under her
mother’s nose and was driven by Bratfisch to the village of
Breitensee, halfway between Vienna and Mayerling. There
she joined her lover, who dismissed his gig and continued
the journey with Mary in Bratfisch ’s cab.
At this point, reports Lernet-Holenia, the carriage
was halted by a group consisting of Mary’s uncle Henry
Baltazzi, a doctor, and two seconds, who had come to chal-
lenge the crown prince to a duel. In the ensuing scuffle,
Henry was wounded by his own gun. This encounter is not
of great importance except that it furnishes a motive for
the Baltazzis to take revenge on Rudolph — Henry had
wanted Mary for himself, even though she was his niece.
As soon as the pair reached the safety of the Mayerling
castle walls, Lernet-Holenia reports, the Countess Lar-
isch arrived in great haste and demanded he send the girl
back to Vienna to avoid scandal. The mother had been to
the chief of police and reported her daughter as missing.
Lonyay evidently did not believe this visit occurred, for he
does not mention it in his account of the events at Mayer-
ling on that fateful day. Neither does he mention the fact
that Rudolph gave the countess, his favorite cousin, a
strongbox to safekeep for him.
"The Emperor may order my rooms searched at any
moment,” the countess quotes him in her memoirs. The
strongbox was only to be handed over to a person offering
the secret code letters R.I.U.O.
After the tragedy, this strongbox was picked up by
Archduke John Salvator, close friend to Rudolph, and it is
interesting to note that Henry W. Lanier, in a 1937 book
titled He Did Not Die at Mayerling, claims that Rudolph
and John Salvator escaped together to America after
another body bad been substituted for Rudolph’s. Both
archdukes, he says, had been involved in an abortive plot
to overthrow Franz Josef, but the plot came to the
Emperor’s attention.
However interesting this theory, the author offers no
tangible evidence which makes us go back to Lernet-
Holenia's account of Countess Larisch’s last words with
Rudolph.
She left Mayerling, even though very upset by the
prince’s insistence that he and Mary were going to commit
suicide. Yet, there was no privacy for that, if we believe
Lernet-Holenia’s version, which states that immediately
after the countess’s carriage had disappeared around the
bend of the road, Rudolph received a deputation of Hun-
garians led by none other than Count Stephan Karolyi, the
Prime Minister. Karolyi’s presence at Mayerling is highly
unlikely, for it surely would have come to the attention of
the secret police almost immediately, thereby compromis-
ing Rudolph still further. Lonyay, on the other hand,
speaks of severed telegrams Rudolph received from the
Hungarian leader, and this is more logical.
What made a contact between the Hungarians and
Rudolph on this climactic day so imperative really started
during a hunting party at Rudolph’s Hungarian lodge,
Giirgeny. Under the influence of liquor or drugs or both,
Rudolph had promised his Hungarian friends to support
actively the separation of the two halves of the monarchy
and to see to it that an independent Hungarian army was
established in lieu of the militia, at that time the only
acknowledgment that Hungary was a separate state.
Austria at this juncture of events needed the support
of the Hungarian parliament to increase its armed forces to
the strength required by its commitments to the German
allies. But Karolyi opposed the government defense bill for
increased recruiting, and instead announced on January 25
that he had been assured by Rudolph that a separate Hun-
garian army would be created. This of course turned the
crown prince into a traitor in the eyes of Count von Taaffe,
the Austrian Prime Minister and father of the defense bill,
and Rudolph must have been aware of it. At any rate,
whether the Hungarian deputation came in person or
whether Karolyi sent the telegrams, the intent was the
same. Rudolph was now being asked to either put up or
shut up. In the face of this dilemma, he backed down. The
telegrams no longer exist, but this is not surprising, for a
file known as “No. 25 — Journey of Count Pista Karolyi to
the Crown Prince Archduke Rudolph re defense bill in the
Hungarian parliament” was removed from the state
archives in May 1889, and has since disappeared. Thus we
cannot be sure if Karolyi did go to Mayerling on this day
in January or not.
But all existing sources seem to agree that two men
saw Rudolph on January 29: his brother-in-law, Philip von
Coburg, and his hunting companion, Count Joseph Hoyos.
Rudolph begged off from the shoot, and the two others
went alone; later Philip went back to Vienna to attend an
imperial family dinner, while Rudolph sent his regrets,
claiming to have a severe cold.
The next morning, January 30, Philip von Coburg
was to return to Mayerling and together with Hoyos, who
had stayed the night in the servants’ wing of the lodge,
continue their hunting. Much of what follows is the
The Imperial Castle, Vienna. Through this entrance
the Crown Prince and Mary went to their rooms.
account of Count Hoyos, supported by Rudolph’s valet,
Loschek.
Hoyos and Coburg were to have breakfast with
Rudolph at the lodge at 8 A.M. But a few minutes before
eight, Hoyos was summoned by Loschek, the valet, to
Rudolph’s quarters. Now the lodge was not a big house, as
castles go. From the entrance vestibule, one entered a
reception room and a billiards room. Above the reception
area were Rudolph's private quarters. A narrow, winding
staircase led from the ground floor directly into his rooms.
On the way across the yard, Loschek hastily in-
formed Hoyos why he had called him over. At 6:30, the
crown prince had entered the anteroom where Loschek
slept, and ordered him to awaken him again at 7:30. At
that time he also wanted breakfast and have Bratfisch, the
cab driver, ready for him. The prince was fully dressed,
Loschek explained, and, whistling to himself, had then
returned to his rooms.
When Loschek knocked to awaken the prince an
hour later, there was no response. After he saw that he was
unable to rouse the prince — or the Baroness Vetsera, who,
The Secret of Mayerling
195
An altar near the spot where Mary’s ghost had
been seen
he explained, was with the prince — he became convinced
that something was wrong, and wanted Count Hoyos pre-
sent in case the door had to be broken down. Hardly had
Hoyos arrived at the prince’s door, which was locked, as
were all other doors to the apartment, when Philip von
Coburg drove up. Together they forced the door open by
breaking the lock with a hatchet. Loschek was then sent
ahead to look for any signs of life. Both occupants were
dead, however. On the beds lay the bodies of the two
lovers, Rudolph with part of his head shot off seemingly
by a close blast, and Mary Vetsera also dead from a bullet
wound.
Hoyos wired the imperial physician, Dr. Widerhofer,
to come at once, but without telling him why, and then
drove back to Vienna in Bratfisch’s cab.
At the Imperial Castle it took some doing to get
around the protocol of priority to inform the imperial cou-
ple of the tragedy. Franz Josef buried his grief, such as it
was, under the necessity of protecting the Habsburg image,
and the first announcements spoke of the prince having
died of a heart attack. After a few days, however, this ver-
sion had to be abandoned and the suicide admitted. Still,
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
196
the news of Mary Vetsera ’s presence at the lodge was com-
pletely suppressed.
Rudolph had been found with his hand still holding a
revolver, but since fingerprints had not yet become part of
a criminal investigation procedure, we don’t know whose
revolver it was and whether he had actually used it. But
there wasn t going to be any kind of inquest in this case,
anyway. Mary’s body was immediately removed from the
room and hidden in a woodshed, where it lay unattended
for two days. Finally, on the thirty-first the Emperor
ordered Rudolph’s personal physician, Dr. Auchenthaler,
to go to Mayerling and certify that Mary Vetsera had com-
mitted suicide. At the same time, Mary’s two uncles,
Alexander Baltazzi and Count Stockau, were instructed to
attend to the body. Without any argument, the two men
identified the body and then cosigned the phony suicide
document which had been hastily drawn up. Then they
wrapped Mary’s coat around the naked body, and sat her
upright in a carriage with her hat over her face to hide the
bullet wound. In the cold of the night, at midnight to be
exact, the carriage with the grotesque passenger raced over
icy roads toward the monastery of Heiligenkreuz, where the
Emperor had decided Mary should be buried. When the
body threatened to topple over, the men put a cane down
her back to keep it upright. Not a word was spoken during
the grim journey. At the Cistercian monastery, there was
some difficulty at first with the abbot, who refused to bury
an apparent suicide, but the Emperor’s power was so great
that he finally agreed.
And so it was that Mary Vetsera was buried in the
dead of night in a soil so frozen that the coffin could be
properly lowered into it only with difficulty.
Today, the grave is a respectable one, with her name
and full dates given, but for years after the tragedy it was
an unmarked grave, to keep the curious from finding it.
Rudolph, on the other hand, was given a state
funeral, despite objections from the Holy See. His head
bandaged to cover the extensive damage done by the bullet,
he was then placed into the Capuchins’ crypt alongside all
the other Habsburgs.
However, even before the two bodies had been
removed from Mayerling, Franz Josef had already seized all
of Rudolph s letters that could be found, including farewell
letters addressed by the couple to various people. Although
most of them were never seen again, one to Rudolph’s
chamberlain, Count Bombelles, included a firm request by
the crown prince to be buried with Mary Vetsera. Strangely
enough, the count was never able to carry out Rudolph’s
instructions even had he dared to, for he himself died only
a few months later. At the very moment his death became
known, the Emperor ordered all his papers seized and his
desk sealed.
In a letter to a former lover, the Duke of Braganza,
Mary is said to have stated, “We are extremely anxious to
find out what the next world looks like,” and in another
one, this time to her mother, she confirms her desire to die
and asks her mother’s forgiveness. Since the letter to the
Duke of Braganza also bore Rudolph’s signature, it would
appear that Rudolph and Mary had planned suicide
together. But, according to Lonyay, a fragment of
Rudolph's letter to his mother somehow became known,
and in this farewell note, Rudolph confessed that he had
murdered Mary Vetsera and therefore had no right to live.
Thus, apparently, Rudolph shot the girl first but then had
lacked the courage to kill himself until the next morning.
Many years later, when the Emperor could no longer stop
the truth from coming out, reports were made by two
physicians, Kerzl and Auchenthaler, in further support of
the view that Mary had died some ten hours before
Rudolph.
In the letter to her mother, Mary had requested that
she be buried with Rudolph, but to this day, that desire has
not been honored: Her remains are still at the Heiligenkreuz
cemetery, and his are in the crypt in Vienna.
After the deaths, Mary Vetsera's mother was
brusquely told to leave Austria; the daughter's belongings
were seized by police and, on higher orders, were burned.
Ever since, speculation as to the reasons for the dou-
ble "suicide” had raced around the world. In Austria, such
guessing was officially discouraged, but it could hardly be
stopped. Lonyay dismisses various reasons often advanced
for the suicide: that Franz Josef had refused his son a
divorce so he could marry Mary Vetsera; that a lovers’ pact
between Rudolph and Vetsera had taken place; or that his
political faux pas had left Rudolph no alternative but a bul-
let. Quite rightly Lonyay points out that suicide plans had
been on Rudolph’s mind long before things had come to a
head. He also discounts Rudolph’s great love for the girl,
hinting that the crown prince simply did not wish to die
alone, and had made use of her devotion to him to take her
with him. Thus it would appear that Mary Vetsera, far
from being the guilty party, was actually the victim — both
of Rudolph's bullets, and of his motives. No one doubts
Mary’s intention to commit suicide if Rudolph did and if
he asked her to join him.
But — is the intention to commit suicide the same as
actually doing it?
Too many unresolved puzzles and loose ends
remained to satisfy even the subdued historians of those
days, to say nothing of the unemotional, independent
researcher of today, who is bent only on discovering what
really happened.
The official report concerning the two deaths was
finally signed on February 4, 1889, and handed to the
Prime Minister for depositing in the Court archives.
Instead, Count von Taaffe took it with him to his private
home in Bohemia for "safekeeping.” It has since
disappeared.
Of course, there was still Loschek, the valet. He
could not help wondering why the Prime Minister was in
such good spirits after the crown prince’s death, and espe-
cially when the report was filed, thus officially ending the
Dr. Hans Holzer interviewing castle employee who
witnessed the apparition of Mary Vetsera
whole affair. While the ordinary Viennese mourned for
their prince, von Taaffe seemed overjoyed at the elimina-
tion of what to him and his party had been a serious
threat. And in the meantime Franz Josef now maintained
that he and Rudolph had always been on the best of terms
and that the suicide was a mystery to one and all.
Helen Vetsera wrote a pamphlet telling the family’s
side of the story: but it was seized by the police, and so the
years passed and gradually the Mayerling events became
legendary.
The Austro-Hungarian monarchy fell apart in 1918,
just as Rudolph had foreseen, and the Habsburgs ceased to
be sacrosanct, but still the secret of Mayerling was never
really resolved nor had the restless spirit of the woman,
who suffered most in the events, been quieted.
True, the Emperor had changed the hunting lodge
into a severe monastery immediately after the tragedy:
Where the bedroom once stood there is now an altar, and
nuns sworn to silence walk the halls where once convivial-
ity and laughter prevailed. In Vienna, too, in the corridor
of the Imperial Castle where the stairs once led to
Rudolph’s apartment, a marterl, a typically Austrian niche
containing a picture of the Virgin Mary, has been placed.
But did these formal expressions of piety do anything
to calm the spirit of Mary Vetsera? Hardly. Nor was every-
thing as quiet as the official Court powers would have liked
it to be.
The English Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, had
some misgivings about the official version of the tragedy.
The Secret of Mayerling
197
In a letter that Edward, the Prince ofWales, wrote to his
mother, Queen Victoria, we find:
“Salisbury is sure that poor Rudolph and that unfor-
tunate young lady were murdered.”
But perhaps the most interesting details were sup-
plied by the autopsy report, available many years later:
"The gun wound of the crown prince did not go
from right to left as has been officially declared and would
have been natural for suicide, but from left, behind the ear
toward the top of the head, where the bullet came out
again. Also, other wounds were found on the body. The
revolver which was found next to the bed had not belonged
to the crown prince; all six shots had been fired.
“The shotgun wound of the young lady was not
found in the temple as has been claimed, but on top of the
head. She, too, is said to have shown other wounds.”
Had Count von Taaffe seized upon the right moment
to make a planned suicide appear just that, while actually
murdering the hesitant principals?
We have no record of secret agents coming to Mayer -
ling that day, but then we can’t be sure that they didn’t
come, either. So confusing is this comparatively recent
story that we can’t be too sure of anything, really. Certainly
there was a motive to have Rudolph eliminated. Von
Taaffe knew all about his dealings with Karolyi, and could
not be sure that Rudolph might not accept a proffered
Hungarian crown. To demand that Rudolph be restrained
or jailed would not have sat well with the image-conscious
Emperor. Yet the elimination of Rudolph, either as an
actual traitor or as a potential future threat to von Taaffe’s
concepts, was certainly an urgent matter, at that moment.
Just as von Taaffe was aware of the Hungarian moves
and had read the telegrams from Karolyi, so he knew of
Rudolph’s suicide talk. Had the Karolyi move prompted
him to act immediately, and, seeing that the crown prince
had gone to Mayerling with Mary Vetsera, given him an
idea to capitalize on what might happen at Mayerling. . .but
to make sure it did? Rudolph’s lack of courage was well
known. Von Taaffe could not be sure the crown prince
would really kill himself. If Rudolph returned from Mayer-
ling alive, it would be too late. The Hungarian defense bill
had to be acted upon at once. Rebellion was in the air.
P erhaps von Taaffe did not have to send any agents
to Mayerling. Perhaps he already had an agent there. Was
someone around the crown prince in von Taaffe’s employ?
These and other tantalizing questions went through
my mind in August of 1964 when I visited the old part of
the Imperial Castle with my wife Catherine. I was follow-
ing a slender thread: a ghostly white lady had been
observed in the Amalienburg wing. Our arrival was almost
comical: Nobody knew anything about ghosts and cared
less. Finally, more to satisfy the curiosity of this American
writer, the burghauptmann or governor of the castle sum-
moned one of the oldest employees, who had a reputation
for historical knowledge. The governor’s name was Neun-
teufel, or "nine devils,” and he really did have a devil of a
time finding this man whose Christian name was Sonntag,
or “Sunday.”
“Is Herr Sonntag in?” he demanded on the intercom.
Evidently the answer was disappointing, for he said,
“Oh, Herr Sunday is not in on Friday?”
Fortunately, however, the man was in and showed us
to the area where the phenomenon had been observed.
Immediately after the Mayerling tragedy, it seemed, a
guard named Beran was on duty near the staircase leading
up toward the late crown prince’s suite. It was this passage
that had been so dear to Mary Vetsera, for she had had to
come up this way to join her lover in his rooms. Suddenly,
the guard saw a white figure advancing toward him from
the stairs. It was plainly a woman, but he could not make
out her features. As she got to the marterl, she vanished.
Beran was not the only one who had such an unnerving
experience. A Jaeger, a member of an Alpine regiment
serving in the castle, also saw the figure one afternoon.
And soon the servants started talking about it. Several of
them had encountered the "white woman,” as they called
her, in the corridor used by Mary Vetsera.
I looked at the marterl, which is protected by an iron
grillwork. Next to it is a large wooden chest pushed flush
against the wall. And behind the chest I discovered a
wooden door.
"Where does this door lead to?” I asked.
“No place,” Sonntag shrugged, "but it used to be a
secret passage between the outside and Rudolph’s suite.”
Aha! I thought. So that’s why there is a ghost here.
But I could not do anything further at that moment to find
out who the ghost was.
On September 20, 1961 I returned to Vienna. This
time I brought with me a Viennese lady who was a
medium. Of course she knew where we were — after all,
everybody in Vienna knows the Imperial Castle. But she
had no idea why I took her into the oldest, least attractive
part of the sprawling building, and up the stairs, finally
coming to an abrupt halt at the mouth of the corridor lead-
ing toward the haunted passage.
It was time to find out what, if anything, my friend
Mrs. Edith Riedl could pick up in the atmosphere. We
were quite alone, as the rooms here have long been made
into small flats and let out to various people, mainly those
who have had some government service and deserve a nice,
low -rent apartment.
With us were two American gentlemen who had
come as observers, for there had been some discussion of a
motion picture dealing with my work. This was their
chance to see it in its raw state!
“Vetsera stairs. . Mrs. Riedl suddenly mumbled.
She speaks pretty good English, although here and there
she mixes a German or French word in with it. Of noble
Hungarian birth, she is married to a leading Austrian man-
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
198
ufacturer and lives in a mansion, or part of one, in the sub-
urb of Doebling.
"She stopped very often at this place,’’ she continued
now, “waiting, till she got the call. ...”
“Where did the call come from?” I asked.
“From below.”
Mrs. Riedl had no knowledge of the fact that Mary
Vetsera came this way and descended into Rudolph's rooms
by this staircase.
“The Madonna wasn’t here then. . .but she prayed
here.”
She walked on, slowly, as if trying to follow an invisi-
ble trail. Now she stopped and pointed at the closed-off
passage.
“Stairway. . .that’s how she went down to
Rudolph. . .over the roof. . .they met up here where the
Madonna now is. . .and sometimes he met her part of the
way up the stairs.”
No stairs were visible to any of us at this point, but
Mrs. Riedl insisted that they were in back of the door.
“She had a private room here, somewhere in the cas-
tle,” she insisted. Officially, I discovered, no such room
belonging to Mary Vetsera is recorded.
“There were two rooms she used, one downstairs and
another one farther up,” Mrs. Riedl added, getting more
and more agitated. "She changed places with her maid, you
see. That was in case they would be observed. In the end,
they were no longer safe here, that’s when they decided to
go to Mayerling. That was the end.”
I tried to pinpoint the hub of the secret meetings
within the castle.
“Rudolph’s Jaeger....” Mrs. Riedl replied, “Brat-
fisch. . .he brought the messages and handed them to the
maid. . .and the maid was standing here and let her
know. . .they could not go into his rooms because his wife
was there, so they must have had some place of their
own. ...”
We left the spot, and I followed Mrs. Riedl as she
walked farther into the maze of passages that honeycomb
this oldest part of castle. Finally, she came to a halt in a
passage roughly opposite where we had been before, but on
the other side of the flat roof.
“Do you feel anything here?” I asked.
“Yes, Ido,” she replied “this door. ..number 77. ..
79.. .poor child. .
The corridor consisted of a number of flats, each with
a number on the door, and each rented to someone whose
permission we would have had to secure, should we have
wished to enter. Mrs. Riedl’s excitement became steadily
greater. It was as if the departed girl’s spirit was slowly but
surely taking over her personality and making her relive
her ancient agony all over again.
“First she was at 77, later she changed. . .to 79. . .
these two apartments must be connected. ...”
Now Mrs. Riedl turned to the left and touched a
window giving onto the inner courtyard. Outside the win-
The oldest wing of the Imperial Castle,
Vienna, where the apartment of the Crown
prince was located
dow was the flat roof Countess Larisch had mentioned in
her memoirs!
“She same up the corridor and out this window,” the
medium now explained, “something of her always comes
back here, because in those days she was happiest here.”
“How did she die?” I shot at her.
"She wouldn’t die. She was killed.”
“By whom?”
“Not Rudolph.”
“Who killed him?”
“The political plot. He wanted to be Hungarian
King. Against his father. His father knew it quite well. He
took her with him to Mayerling because he was afraid to
go alone; he thought with her along he might not be
killed.”
"Who actually killed them?”
“Two officers.”
"Did he know them?”
“She knew them, but he didn’t. She was a witness.
That’s why she had to die.”
“Did Franz Josef have anything to do with it?”
“He knew, but he did not send them. . . . Das kann ich
nicht sagen!" she suddenly said in German, “I can’t say
this!”
What couldn’t she say?
“I cannot hold the Emperor responsible. . .please
don’t ask me....’’
Mrs. Riedl seemed very agitated, so I changed the
subject. Was the spirit of Mary Vetsera present, and if so,
could we speak to her through the medium?
The Secret of Mayerling
199
The stair leading up to the apartment of the
Crown prince
"She wants us to pray downstairs at that spot. she
replied, in tears now. "Someone should go to her
grave....”
I assured her that we had just come from there.
“She hoped Rudolph would divorce his wife and
make her Queen, poor child,” Mrs. Riedl said. “She comes
up those stairs again and again, trying to live her life over
but making it a better life. ...”
We stopped in front of number 79 now. The name
on the door read “Marschitz.”
“She used to go in here,” Mrs. Riedl mumbled. "It
was a hidden door. Her maid was at 75, opposite. This was
her apartment.”
At the window, we stopped once more.
“So much has changed here,” the medium said.
She had never been here before, and yet she knew.
Later I discovered that the area had indeed been
changed, passage across the flat roof made impossible.
"There is something in between," she insisted.
A wall perhaps? No, not a wall. She almost ran back
to the Madonna. There the influence, she said, was still
strongest.
"Her only sin was vanity, not being in love,” Mrs.
Riedl continued. “She wishes she could undo
something . . . she wanted to take advantage of her love, and
that was wrong.”
Suddenly, she noticed the door, as if she had not seen
it before.
“Ah, the door,” she said with renewed excitement.
“That is the door I felt from the other side of the floor.
There should be some connection. . .a secret passage so she
could not be seen. . .waiting here for the go-ahead
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
200
signal. . .no need to use the big door. . .she is drawn back
here now because of the Virgin Mary. . . . Mary was her
name also. . .she can pray here. ...”
I asked Mrs. Riedl to try to contact the errant spirit.
"She is aware of us,” my medium replied after a
pause in which she had closed her eyes and breathed
deeply. “She smiles at us and I can see her eyes and face. I
see this door open now and she stands in the door. Let us
pray for her release.”
On Mrs. Riedl’s urging, we formed a circle and
clasped hands around the spot. At this moment I thought I
saw a slim white figure directly in front of us. The power
of suggestion? "She is crying,” Mrs. Riedl said.
We then broke circle and left. My American friends
were visibly shaken by what they had witnessed, although
to me it was almost routine.
The following day, we returned to the castle. This
time we had permission from the governor to open the
secret door and look for the passage Mrs. Riedl had said
was there. At first, the door would not yield, although two
of the castle’s burly workmen went at it with heavy tools.
Finally, it opened. It was evident that it had not been
moved for many years, for heavy dust covered every inch
of it. Quickly, we grouped ourselves around the dark, gap-
ing hole that now confronted us. Musty, moist air greeted
our nostrils. One of the workmen held up a flashlight, and
in its light we could see the inside of the passage. It was
about a yard wide, wide enough for one person to pass
through, and paralleled the outer wall. A stairway had once
led from our door down to the next lower floor— directly
into Crown Prince Rudolph’s apartment. But it had been
removed, leaving only traces behind. Likewise, a similar
stairway had led over from the opposite side where it must
have once linked up with the corridor we had earlier been
in — the window Mrs. Riedl had insisted was significant in
all this.
* * *
The castle’s governor shook his head. The secret pas-
sage was a novelty to him. But then the castle had all sorts
of secrets, not the least of which were corridors and rooms
that did not show on his “official” maps. Some parts of the
Imperial Castle date back to the thirteenth century; others,
like this one, certainly as far back as Emperor Frederick III,
around 1470. The walls are enormously thick and can eas-
ily hide hollow areas.
* * *
I had taken a number of photographs of the area, in
Mrs. Riedl’s presence. One of them showed the significant
“reflections” in psychically active areas. The day of our
first visit here, we had also driven out to Mayerling with
the help of Dr. Beatrix Kempf of the Austrian Government
Press Service, who did everything to facilitate our journey.
Ghosts or no ghosts, tourists and movie producers are good
business for Austria.
At Mayerling, we had stood on the spot where the
two bodies had been found on that cold January morning
in 1889. I took several pictures of the exact area, now taken
up by the altar and a cross hanging above it. To my sur-
prise, one of the color pictures shows instead a whitish
mass covering most of the altar rail, and an indistinct but
obviously male figure standing in the right corner. When I
took this exposure, nobody was standing in that spot.
Could it be? My camera is double exposure proof and I
have occasionally succeeded in taking psychic pictures.
If there is a presence at Mayerling, it must be
Rudolph, for Mary Vetsera surely has no emotional ties to
the cold hunting lodge, where only misery was her lot. If
anywhere, she would be in the secret passageway in the
Vienna castle, waiting for the signal to come down to join
her Rudolph, the only place where her young heart ever
really was.
I should point out that the sources used by me in my
Mayerling research were only read long after our investiga-
tion, and that these are all rare books which have long been
out of print.
Like all Viennese, Mrs. Riedl certainly knew about
the Mayerling tragedy in a general way. But there had been
no book dealing with it in circulation at the time of our
visit to the castle, nor immediately before it; the personal
memoirs of Countess Maria Larisch, published back in
1913, which contained the reference to the walk across the
flat roof and entry by the window, is available only in
research libraries. Mrs. Riedl had not been told what our
destination or desire would be that hot September after-
noon in 1966. Consequently, she would have had no time
to study any research material even if she had wanted to —
but the very suggestion of any fraud is totally out of char-
acter with this busy and well-to-do lady of society.
Until I put the pieces together, no one else had ever
thought of connecting the meager reports of a ghost in the
old Amalienburg wing of the castle with Mary Vetsera’s
unhappy death. Amtsrat Josef Korzer, of the governor’s
staff, who had helped us so much to clear up the mystery
of the secret passage, could only shake his head: So the cas-
tle had some ghosts, too. At least it gave the Viennese
some competition with all those English haunts!
The question remains unanswered: Who killed the
pair, if murder it was? The medium had named two offi-
cers. Were they perhaps able to bring off their deed
because they were well known to the crown prince? Had
Count von Taaffe managed to pervert to his cause two of
Rudolph's good friends?
If that is so, we must assume that the Hoyos report is
nothing more than a carefully constructed alibi.
On the last day of his life, Rudolph had gotten into
an argument with his brother-in-law, Philip von Coburg.
The subject was the Habsburg family dinner that night. By
failing to make an appearance, Rudolph was, in fact, with-
drawing from the carefully laid plans of his cousins. The
young archdukes and their in-laws had intended to pres-
Mayerling today: turned into a Carmelite
Monastery soon after the tragedy
sure the aging Emperor into reforming the government,
which the majority of them felt could alone save the
monarchy from disaster. The most important link in this
palace revolution was Rudolph. In refusing to join up, was
he not in fact siding with the Emperor?
If Rudolph had been murdered, was he killed because
of his pro-Hungarian leanings, or because he failed to sup-
port the family palace revolution? And if it was indeed
death by his own hands, can one call such a death, caused
by unbearable pressure from conditions beyond his control,
a voluntary one? Is it not also murder, albeit with the
prince himself as the executioner?
There may be some speculation as to which of the
three alternate events took place. But there is no longer any
doubt about Mary Vetsera’s death. She did not commit sui-
cide. She was brutally murdered, sacrificed in a cause not
her own. Moreover, there is plenty of “unfinished busi-
ness’’ to plague her and make her the restless ghost we
found her to be: her last wish not granted — not buried
with Rudolph, as both had desired; her personal belongings
burned; her family mistreated; and her enemies
triumphant.
According to the autopsy report, Rudolph could have
killed Mary Vetsera, but he could not have killed himself.
Whose gun was it that was found in his hand? At the
funeral, Rudolph’s right hand had to be covered because
the fingers were still bent around the trigger of a gun. Had
someone forced the fingers after Rudolph’s death to make
it appear he pulled the trigger? The conditions of the hand
seem to suggest this. No investigation, of course, in the
usual criminal sense had been permitted; thus we cannot
The Secret of Mayerling
201
now answer such vital questions. It is now a century later
and still the mystery remains. No trace of any unknown
person or persons having had access to the hunting lodge at
Mayerling has turned up, nor has the strongbox Archduke
John Salvator claimed appeared. But then, John Salvator
himself got lost, not much later, “in a storm at sea,” or if
Henry Lanier’s tale is true, living a new life as a farmer in
South America.
We may never know the full truth about Rudolph’s
death. But we do know, at last, that Mary Vetsera was not
a suicide. A planned suicide never leads to the ghostly phe-
nomena observed in this case. Only a panic death, or mur-
der, leaving unresolved questions, can account for her
presence in the castle. To the unfortunate victim, a century
is as nothing, of course. All others who were once part of
this tragedy are dead, too, so we may never know if Count
von Taaffe ordered Rudolph killed, or the royal family, or
if he himself committed the act.
The strange disappearance of the most vital docu-
ments and the way things were hushed up leads me per-
sonally to believe that the medium had the right solution:
The Hungarian plot was the cause of Rudolph’s downfall.
There was neither suicide nor a suicide pact at the time the
pair was in Mayerling. There was an earlier intention, yes,
but those letters were used as a smoke screen to cover the
real facts. And without accusing some presently honorable
names, how can I point the finger at Rudolph’s murderers?
Let the matter rest there.
* * *
But the matter did not rest there, after all. In the late
1970’s, documents bearing on the case were discovered by
accident — apparently contained in the long-lost box of the
late Archduke John Salvator who had so mysteriously
"disappeared."
From these documents, it was clear that Mayerling
was not suicide, but cold-blooded murder.
m 23
Royalty and Ghosts
ACCORDING TO the German newspaper, Neues Zeitalter
of April 18, 1964, Queen Elizabeth II has had a number of
psychic experiences. She accepts the reality of spirit sur-
vival and maintains a lively interest in the occult. In this
respect she follows in the tradition of the House ofWind-
sor, which has always been interested in psychic phenom-
ena. King George V, for instance, took part in seances and,
after his death, communicated with noted researchers
through a number of mediums, including the late Geral-
dine Cummins. It was the same Miss Cummins, parenthet-
ically, who brought through some extremely evidential
messages from the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
This is not surprising, since Miss Cummins was a disci-
plined medium, well trained to receive intricate and
detailed messages.
Whenever word of Spiritualist seances at Buckingham
Palace gets out, the press has a field day, especially the
British press, which displays, with rare exceptions, a singu-
larly disrespectful attitude towards the reality of psychic
phenomena. Under the circumstances one cannot blame the
palace for the usual blanket denial of such rumors, even if
they happen to be based on fact.
But a Frenchman by the name of Francois Veran
claimed to have had reliable information that Spiritualist
seances were taking place in Buckingham Palace and that
Queen Elizabeth II had confided in friends that her late
father, King George VI, had appeared to her no fewer than
six times after his death. There had been a particularly
close relationship between father and daughter, and prior to
his death King George VI had assured his daughter he
would always be with her in times of need, even from the
beyond. The queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, is known to
be interested in psychic research, and Prince Philip, the
royal consort, has lent his name as patron to a research
effort by the great medical pioneer Dr. Douglas Baker, a
parapsychologist and member of the College of Surgeons.
This cautious involvement by members of the British royal
family is not a recent inclination, however, for Queen Vic-
toria maintained a close and continuing relationship with
seers of her time, notably John Brown, who served ostensi-
bly as the queen’s gilly or orderly, but whose real attraction
lay in his pronounced psychic gift, which he put at the dis-
posal of his queen.
Nearly all the royal residences of Britain are haunted.
There is a corridor in the servants’ quarters of Sandring-
ham, the castle where Queen Elizabeth II was born, where
servants have frequently observed the ghost of a footman
of an earlier age. There is Windsor Castle near London,
where the face of George III has appeared to witnesses, and
there is the Bloody Tower of London with all its grisly
memories and the ghost of at least two queens. There may
be others at the Tower, for nobody has yet had a chance to
go in with a competent trance medium and ferret out all
the psychic remains. British authorities, despite reputations
to the contrary, take a dim view of such endeavors, and I
for one have found it difficult to get much cooperation
from them. Cooperation or not, the ghosts are there.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
202
Probably the most celebrated of British royal ghosts
is the shade of unlucky Queen Anne Boleyn, the second
wife of Henry VIII, who ended her days on the scaffold.
Accused of infidelity, which was a form of treason in the
sixteenth century, she had her head cut off despite protes-
tations of her innocence. In retrospect, historians have well
established that she was speaking the truth. But at the time
of her trial, it was a political matter to have her removed
from the scene, and even her uncle, who sat in judgment of
her as the trial judge, had no inclination to save her neck.
Anne Boleyn’s ghost has been reported in a number
of places connected with her in her lifetime. There is, first
of all, her apparition at Hampton Court, attested to by a
number of witnesses over the years, and even at Windsor
Castle, where she is reported to have walked along the
eastern parapet. At the so-called Salt Tower within the
confines of the Tower of London, a guard observed her
ghost walking along headless, and he promptly fainted.
The case is on record, and the man insisted over and over
again that he had not been drinking.
Perhaps he would have received a good deal of sym-
pathy from a certain Lieutenant Glynn, a member of the
Royal Guard, who has stated, also for the record, ‘‘I have
seen the great Queen Elizabeth and recognized her, with
her olive skin color, her fire-red hair, and her ugly dark
teeth. There is no doubt about it in my mind.” Although
Elizabeth died a natural death at a ripe old age, it is in the
nature of ghosts that both the victims and the perpetrators
of crimes sometimes become restless once they have left the
physical body. In the case of good Queen Bess, there was
plenty to be remorseful over. Although most observers
assume Queen Elizabeth “walks” because of what she did
to Mary Queen of Scots, I disagree. Mary had plotted
against Elizabeth, and her execution was legal in terms of
the times and conditions under which the events took
place. If Queen Elizabeth I has anything to keep her rest-
less, it would have to be found among the many lesser fig-
ures who owed their demise to her anger or cold cunning,
including several ex -lovers.
Exactly as described in the popular English ballad,
Anne Boleyn had been observed with “her 'ead tucked
under,” not only at the Tower of London, but also at
Hever Castle, in Kent, where she was courted by King
Henry VIII. To make things even more complicated, on
the anniversary of her execution she allegedly drives up to
the front door of Blickling Hall, Norfolk, in a coach driven
by a headless coachman and drawn by four headless horses,
with herself sitting inside holding her head in her lap.
That, however, I will have to see before I believe it.
A number of people have come forward to claim, at
the very least, acquaintanceship with the unlucky Anne
Boleyn in a previous life, if not identity with her. Natu-
rally, one has to be careful to differentiate between the real
thing and a romantically inclined person’s fantasizing her-
self or himself back into another age, possibly after reading
some books dealing with the period or after seeing a film.
The circumstances surrounding Anne are well known; her
history has been published here and abroad, and unless the
claimant comes up with some hitherto unknown facet of
the queen’s life, or at the very least some detail that is not
generally known or easily accessible in the existing litera-
ture, a prima facie case cannot really be established.
As I am firmly convinced of the reality of reincarna-
tion and have published two books dealing with this sub-
ject, I am perhaps in a position to judge what is a real
reincarnation memory and what is not. Thus, when Mrs.
Charlotte Tuton of Boston contacted me in early 1972 with
a request to regress her hypnotically, I was impressed with
her attitude and previous record. To begin with, Mrs.
Tuton is the wife of a prominent professional man in her
community, and her attitude has been one of cautious
observation rather than firm belief from the beginning. "I
feel such a strong attachment to the person of Anne
Boleyn,” she explained to me, “and have from the time I
was about eleven or twelve years old. Many features of my
own life and circumstances lead me to believe that I either
was she or was very closely associated with her.”
It didn’t occur to Mrs. Tuton until recently to put all
these so-called clues together, although she has lived with
them all her life. Her interest in the subject of reincarna-
tion was aroused by the literature in the field, notably Ruth
Montgomery’s work. Eventually she read my book Born
Again and approached me. “At the age of eleven I read a
book called Brief Gaudy Hour by Margaret Campbell. It
concerned the life of Anne Boleyn and her short time as
Queen of England. The odd fact is that though I read
scores of historical novels and literally hundreds of other
books all through childhood and adolescence, majoring
eventually in French literature at Wellesley, I never had a
feeling — visceral knowledge — to compare with that which I
had experienced as a child reading the short life of Anne
Boleyn."
From early childhood, Mrs. Tuton had an almost
pathological terror of knives and sharp metallic objects,
while other weapons did not affect her in the least. The
very mention of a blade produced an attack of goose
bumps and shivers in her. “I also have frequently experi-
enced a severe sensation of the cutting of a major nerve at
the back of my neck, a physical feeling intense enough for
me to have consulted a neurosurgeon at the Lahey Clinic
about it. No known physiological cause for the sensation
could be found, yet it continues to appear from time to
time.”
Mrs. Tuton also pointed out to me that her given
names were Charlotte and Anne, yet from her earliest rec-
ollections she had told her mother that Charlotte was the
wrong name for her and that she should have been known
only as Anne. Her mother had named her Charlotte after
her own name but had selected Anne as the second name
from an obscure relative, having given the choice of a sec-
Royalty and Ghosts
203
ond name for her child a great deal of thought and finally
settling upon one that she considered perfect.
“Another theme has run through my life which is
rather twofold,” Mrs. Tuton continued her account. "It is a
sense of having lost a way of life in high places, among
people whose decisions affected the course of history at
every turn, and an accompanying sense of having been
wrongly accused of some act that I did not commit, or
some attitude that I did not hold. None of these feelings
can be explained in any way by my present lifetime.”
* * *
Mrs. Betty Thigpen of South Carolina spent her
childhood and adolescence in what she describes as
“uneventful middle-class surroundings” and worked for
some time as private secretary to a local textile executive.
Later she became the personal secretary of a well-known
United States senator and eventually managed his South
Carolina office. After her marriage to a banking executive,
she retired and devoted herself to her children. Mrs. Thig-
pen’s interest in reincarnation is of comparatively recent
origin and was prompted by certain events in her own life.
"Since early childhood, I have had certain strong
identification feelings with the personality of Anne Boleyn.
From the time I was old enough to read, I have also been
captivated by sixteenth-century English history,” Mrs.
Thigpen explained. “I have never been to England but feel
strong ties with that country, as well as with France. When
I saw the movie, Anne of the Thousand Days, sitting almost
hypnotized, I felt somehow as if all of it had happened
before, but to me. I am almost embarrassed to admit feel-
ings of spiritual kinship with a queen, so I keep telling
myself that if there is some connection, perhaps it is just
that I knew her, maybe as scullery maid or lady in waiting,
but in any event I do feel a definite identification with
Anne Boleyn and that period of history that I have never
felt with anyone or anything else.”
I would like to note that I tried to hypnotize both
Mrs. Tuton of Boston and Mrs. Thigpen of South Car-
olina, but without much success. Both ladies seemed too
tense to be able to relax sufficiently to go under to the
third stage of hypnosis where regression into a possible
previous life might be attempted. Under the circumstances,
it is difficult to assess the evidential value of the ladies’
statements, but there were far more glamorous and luckier
queens to identify with, if this were merely a question of
associating oneself with someone desirable. Possibly, as
time goes on, these individuals will remember some histor-
ical detail that they would not otherwise know, and in this
way the question of who they were, if indeed they were, in
Queen Anne Boleyn ’s days may be resolved.
* * *
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
204
If Anne Boleyn had just cause to be dissatisfied with
her sudden death, a relative of hers who also made it to the
throne was not so innocent of the charges leveled against
her. I am speaking, of course, of Catherine Howard, whom
Henry VIII married when he was of advanced years and she
was much younger. Catherine took a lover or two and
unfortunately was discovered in the process and accused of
high treason. She too lost her head. According to the maga-
zine Country Life, Hampton Court is the place where she
does her meandering, causing all sorts of disturbances as a
result. “Such was the fear of an apparition,” states Edward
Perry, “that for many years the haunted gallery was shut
off. Servants slipped past its doors hastily; the passage out-
side it is rarely used at night. And still inexplicable screams
continue.”
* * *
No other historical figure has attracted so much iden-
tification attention as Mary Queen of Scots, with the possi-
ble exception of Cleopatra. This is not surprising, as Mary
was a highly controversial figure in her own time. She has
been the subject of several plays and numerous books, the
best of which is, I believe, Elizabeth Byrd’s Immortal
Queen. Her controversial status is due not so much to an
untimely demise at the hands of the executioner, acting on
orders from her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, as to the rea-
sons why Mary was dispatched into eternity in the first
place. Nearly all dramatizations and books make a great
deal of Queen Elizabeth’s hatred and envy of her cousin,
and a lot less of the fact that Mary was next in line to the
English throne and conspired to get it. While the justice of
Mary’s imprisonment by Elizabeth may be open to ques-
tion and could be construed as an act of envy and hatred,
Mary’s execution, after so many years of imprisonment "in
style” in a country castle, is directly traceable to overt
actions by Mary to remove Elizabeth from the throne.
Under the circumstances, and following the rather stern
dictates of her time, Elizabeth was at least legally justified
in ordering Mary’s execution.
Much has also been made in literature of Queen
Mary’s four ladies in waiting, all first-named Mary as well.
They shared her triumphant days at Holyrood Castle in
Edinburgh, and they shared her exile in England. “The
Four Marys” are reasonably well known to students of his-
tory, although these details are not taught on the high
school or even average college level in the United States. I
think it is important to know the background of what I am
about to relate in order to evaluate the relative likelihood of
its being true.
In July of 1972 I was approached by Marilyn Smith,
a young housewife from St. Louis, Missouri, who had
strong reincarnation memories she wished to explore fur-
ther. At least two of the reincarnation memories, or previ-
ous lives, had nothing to do with Scotland, but seemed
rather evidential from the details Mrs. Smith was able to
communicate to me when we met the following spring in
St. Louis. Despite the reincarnation material, Mrs. Smith
does not have a strong history of ESP, which is in line with
my thinking that true reincarnation memories preclude
mediumship. Her involvement with Scottish history began
eighteen years before she met me, in 1954.
“When I was seventeen years old, I was curled up in
a chair reading and halfway watching television, where a
live performance of Mary Queen of Scots was being pre-
sented. One particular scene caught my attention. In it,
Mary, the Queen, is ready to board a boat for an ill-fated
journey to England. A woman is clinging to Mary, plead-
ing with her not to go to England. Suddenly I said to
myself, ‘That woman there, the one who is pleading, is
me,' but immediately I dismissed this notion. When the
queen did get into the boat, I felt a terrible, cowardly
guilt.”
Mrs. Smith has no Scottish blood in her, has never
been to Scotland or England, and has not even read much
about it. A few months later she had a vision. “I lived in
the country at the time, and because it was a hot summer
night, I took my pillow and a blanket and crawled upon a
huge wagonload of hay to sleep. I lay there looking up at
the beautiful starlit sky, wondering why I hadn't appreci-
ated its beauty before. Then I felt a magnetic force engulf
me, and I began predicting the future for myself. ‘The
stars will play a very important role in my life someday
and I’m going to be very rich and famous because of
them.’ Then I saw the face of a very beautiful blond
woman, and somehow I knew she would play an important
role in my future. 'We were almost like sisters,’ I said to
myself. But then I caught myself. How could we have been
like sisters when I hadn’t even met her yet? At this
moment I suddenly recalled the television program I had
watched with such strange feelings, and the word Mary
seemed to be connected with this face. Also, something
about a Mary Beaton or Mary Seaton came through, but I
didn’t understand it.”
During the ensuing years, bits and pieces from a pre-
vious lifetime seemed to want to come through to the sur-
face, but Mrs. Smith repressed them. Years passed, and
Mrs. Smith became interested in the occult, reincarnation,
and especially astrology. She began to study astrology and
is now erecting horoscopes professionally.
“At my very first astrology lesson,” Mrs. Smith
explained, “I met another student whose name was Pat
Webbe, a very attractive blonde woman. There was an
almost instant rapport between us. Hers was the face I had
seen in my vision many years before, and I decided to tell
her of it. However, I didn’t inform her of the fact that the
name Mary had also been attached to her face, assuming
that it had referred to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom I
was very devoted at all times."
About a year before she met Marilyn Smith, Pat
Webbe had a strange dream. In the dream she was dressed
in a period gown of several centuries ago. She was in what
seemed to be a castle and was waiting to escape.
“It was a large castle and cold, and I remember going
into one room, and there were men in it with long halberds
who were jabbing at each other. I saw two headgears
crushed, and then I was back in the other room and there
seemed to be fire everywhere in front of the castle. I hear
myself tell a servant to hurry and get the children and
make sure they have their coats on, because we have to go
out into the snow. I can see the light coming down from
where the servant is getting the children, and we go out
through a little trap door and there is a large dog out there,
but I am not afraid of the dog for some reason, although in
my present life I am very much afraid of dogs. The dream
ends, but I know at the very end that I am concerned
about my oldest daughter not being there.”
“Did you see yourself in this dream?” I asked.
“Yes, but it was really just a form; I couldn't distin-
guish a face or anything.”
“What other details do you recall?”
“I recall the period costume and the hooped dresses,
but everything was sort of gray, except for the snow and
the fire, which was red, and the swords, which were black.
I heard thunder, but I can’t explain it. But ever since I was
a child I have had a recurrent dream. My mother and I
were in a boat, and it looked as though we were glad we
were in that boat, escaping.”
Mrs. Webbe has no strong feeling of having lived
before. She has never been to Europe, and she does not
have a strong desire to visit Scotland or England, though
she does feel she would like to go to France.
"When you met Marilyn Smith for the first time, did
you have any peculiar feelings about her, as if you had
known her before?” I asked.
“No, but we took up with each other immediately.
We were like sisters within six months, almost as if we had
been friends all our lives.”
Some time after meeting Marilyn Smith, Pat had
another unusual dream. In it, she saw herself in bed, and a
woman who was supposed to take care of her. Somehow
Mrs. Webbe got the name Merrick.
“I remember she had to leave, but I didn’t want her
to. I begged her to stay, but she had to go anyway. I
remember I was sitting at a child-sized piano and playing it
beautifully. I could see a great massive door, and a man
came in wearing a period costume. It was gray and had
some kind of chain belt around it; he had blond hair, and I
remember throwing myself at his feet and saying. ‘Help
her, help her,’ and adding, ‘She’s leaving in a boat, help
her,’ but he swore and said something about 'Goddamn
insurrectionists,’ and that was the end of the dream.”
“Pat and I often discussed our dreams with each
other,” Marilyn Smith said. “One day she called me very
excitedly about a dream she had just had.”
“Well, I thought it was rather silly," Mrs. Webbe
explained, “but in the dream my husband and I were at
Royalty and Ghosts
205
some sort of banquet and we were walking through a long
corridor which was very ornately decorated in the French
style. There was a couch in one corner with two swords on
it. One was very large and ornate, the other small and
made of silver, and I handed the latter to my husband. As
I handed him the sword, I pricked my finger, and I went
to a little room to clean the blood from my hand, and the
blood disappeared. When I looked into a mirror in this
room, I saw myself dressed as a French boy. Then I said
to myself, ‘I am Mary Queen of Scots,’ and I ran back into
the other room and told my husband, ‘I am Mary Queen
of Scots.’ Shortly afterwards I awoke from my dream,
singing a song with the words, ‘I am Mary Queen of
Scots!”’
The two ladies came to the conviction that they had
been together in a previous life in Scotland; to be exact, as
Mary Queen of Scots and Mary Beaton or Seaton, one of
the four ladies in waiting. At first, the idea of having been
a Scottish queen was difficult for Pat to accept, and she
maintained a healthy attitude of skepticism, leaving the
more enthusiastic support of this theory to her friend Mari-
lyn. Nevertheless, the two ladies discussed the matter intel-
ligently and even went so far as to compare horoscopes,
since both of them were now immensely interested in
astrology. There were a number of incidents into which
they read some significance, incidents which taken individ-
ually seem to me to have no meaning whatever, but which,
taken together in relation to this particular situation, are, at
the very least, curious. These include such incidents as
Marilyn Smith visiting a folk theater in Arkansas while on
vacation and hearing a folk singer render “The Ballad of
Mary Queen of Scots” the minute she arrived. Similarly,
there was the time when Pat Webbe attended a floor show
in Las Vegas, with one of the principal performers imper-
sonating Mary Queen of Scots.
“I also thought it kind of strange that I never liked
the name Mary,” Pat Webbe added. “I have five daugh-
ters, and my husband had wanted to call our first daughter
Mary, but I just wouldn’t have it. I wanted something dif-
ferent, but somehow I was compelled to add the name
Mary to each one of my daughters somewhere, not because
my husband suggested it, but for some unknown reason. So
it happened that every one of my daughters has Mary as
part of her name.”
Since the two ladies, professional astrologers by now,
tried to tie in their own rebirth with the horoscope of Mary
Queen of Scots and her lady in waiting, they asked that I
ascertain the birth data of Mary Beaton and Mary Seaton,
if I could. With the help of my friend Elizabeth Byrd, I
was able to establish that Mary Queen of Scots was born
December 8, 1542, but the inquiry at the Royal Register
House supplied only the rather vague information that
Mary Seaton seems to have been born around 1541, and
there was no reference to the birth of Mary Beaton. Mari-
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
206
lyn Smith found it significant that the queen’s rising sign
had been 29° Taurus, and Pat Webbe, supposed reincarna-
tion of the queen, had a moon in 29 ° Taurus in her natal
chart. She believes that astrology can supply valid informa-
tion concerning reincarnation identities.
Elizabeth Page Kidder, who lives with her parents
near Washington, D.C., happened to be in Scotland at age
seven.
“We were on the bus from the airport, going to
Edinburgh. Suddenly my father said, ‘Look up at the hill;
that’s where Mary Queen of Scots used to live.’ At that, I
went into trance, sort of a deep sleep.” Somehow her
father’s reference to Mary Queen of Scots had touched off
a buried memory in her. Two days after their arrival in the
Scottish capital the Kidders went shopping. While they
were looking at kilts, Elizabeth insisted upon getting a Stu-
art plaid, to the exclusion of all others. In the end, she set-
tled for a MacDonald plaid, which fit in with her family
background. A while later, the family went to visit
Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in London. When Eliz-
abeth got a good look at the representation of Mary Queen
of Scots being beheaded, she was shattered. Although the
seven-year-old girl had never heard of the queen before,
she insisted that the execution had been unjust and became
extremely vehement about it. None of the other exhibits in
the museum affected her in the least. When the family vis-
ited Westminster Abbey, Elizabeth went straight to Mary’s
grave and began to pray for her. Now eighteen years old,
Elizabeth Kidder has read a number of books dealing with
Mary Queen of Scots, and in particular the references to
Mary Seaton have interested her.
Her daughter’s strange behavior in Edinburgh and
London made Mrs. Kidder wonder about reincarnation and
the validity of such incidents. Many years later, when she
heard of an organization called The Fellowship of Univer-
sal Guidance in Los Angeles, specializing in life studies
along the lines of Edgar Cayce’s work, she submitted the
necessary data to them for a reading concerning her daugh-
ter. Did her daughter have any connection with Mary
Queen of Scots, she wanted to know. Back came the
answer that she had been her lady-in-waiting. Mrs. Kidder
went further, accepting the so-called life reading at face
value, and began to put her daughter into hypnosis, finding
her a good subject. Under hypnosis Elizabeth disclosed
further details of her life as lady-in-waiting to Mary Queen
of Scots and claimed that her school friend Carol was, in
fact, Mary Queen of Scots reincarnated. Carol Bryan
William, who had come along to visit me in New York,
had often dreamed that she was a richly dressed person
standing in an ornately carved room with royal-blue hang-
ings. Bent on proving the truth of these amazing claims,
Mrs. Kidder contacted Ruth Montgomery and, in her own
words, "was able to verify through her that her daughter
Elizabeth was Mary Seaton and her friend Carol was Mary
Queen of Scots.”
Carol, who is a little older than Elizabeth, said that
when she was little she always thought that she was from
England. Her father is of English descent, but since she is
an adopted child, that would have little meaning in this
instance. She does have recurrent dreams involving a castle
and a certain room in it, as well as a countryside she likes
to identify as English.
I had previously put Elizabeth under hypnosis, but
without significant results. I next tried my hand with
Carol. She turned out to be a better subject, sliding down
to the third level easily. I asked her to identify the place
she was now in.
"I think it is the sixteenth century. I see lots of
townspeople. They are dressed in burlap, loose-fitting cloth
gathered in by a rope around the waist. I see myself stand-
ing there, but it is not me. I am a boy. He is small, has fair
hair, and is kind of dirty."
On further prodding, it turned out that the boy’s
name was John, that his mother was a seamstress and his
father a carpenter, working for the king. The king’s name
was James. He had dark hair and a beard and was on the
tall side.
“Do you know anyone else in the city?” I asked.
“I know a woman. People don't like her very much
because she is not Catholic. She is Episcopal.”
“What are you?”
“Catholic.”
“Is everybody Catholic in your town?”
“Some people aren’t, but if you are not, you are in
trouble. It is the law.”
“Who is the man who leads the ones who are not
Catholic?”
“Henry VIII.”
“Does he like King James?”
“I don’t think so."
“What happened to King James?”
“He is killed. He died a violent death.”
“Did Henry VIII have anything to do with it?”
“There was a discrepancy over the religions. Henry
VIII did not want to be Catholic, and the only way he
could abolish Catholic rule was to get rid of James.”
"Who wins?"
“I think Henry VIII does, but he does and he doesn’t.
Everybody does not follow Henry VIII. There are still peo-
ple who are faithful to the Catholic religion.”
After I returned Carol to the conscious state, I ques-
tioned her about her studies. It turned out she was taking
an English course at college and had had one year of Eng-
lish history thus far. She had no particular interest in Scot-
tish history, but she seemed unusually attached to the
subject of the Catholic religion. She can’t understand why,
because she is an Episcopalian.
Mrs. Kidder wasn’t too pleased that her protege,
Carol, remembered only having been a boy in sixteenth-
century England, and not the eminent Mary Queen of
Scots. But then where would that leave Pat Webbe of St.
Louis? It was all just as well.
* * *
Linda Wise is a young lady living in the Midwest
whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. She is part
Scottish, part English and part German, and just about her
only link with Scotland is a family legend from her grand-
mother’s side that several members of the family were
forced to leave Scotland in the 1700s on very short notice.
These cousins, if they were that, were named Ewing, but
Miss Wise hasn’t researched it further. She has never had
any particular interest in Scotland or Great Britain, hasn’t
studied the history of the British Isles, and, living in the
Midwest, has very little contact with English or Scottish
people. Nevertheless, she has had periodic feelings of want-
ing to go back to Scotland, as if she had been there before.
In 1971 she became acquainted with a Scottish couple and
they became pen pals. As a result, she went to visit them
in August, 1972. As soon as she arrived in Scotland, she
had a strange experience.
“When I first got there, we took a bus from
Aberdeen to Elgin, where my friends live. I could see the
mountains in a certain area and suddenly I had goose
bumps. I just felt as if I had come home, as if I had known
the area from before.”
Later she went to visit England, but all the time she
was in England she felt extremely uneasy, wanting to
return to Scotland as soon as possible. “For some reason, I
felt much safer once the train crossed the border at
Berwick-on-Tweed.”
But the most haunting experience of her journey took
place at the battleground of Culloden, where Bonnie Prince
Charlie led the Scottish clans against King George in the
Uprising of 1745. This battlefield, situated several miles
east of Inverness, is now a historical site. Miss Wise had a
vague knowledge that an important battle had taken place
at Culloden, and that it had been extremely bloody. The
forest at Culloden contains many grave markers, and peo-
ple go there to observe and sometimes pray.
“Suddenly I felt as if I were being pulled in two
directions — to continue and yet to get back to the main
road as fast as I could,” Linda Wise explained to me. “At
a certain point I could not take it any longer, so I left to
rejoin the friends I had come with. They too commented
on the eerie sensations they were having.”
“What exactly did you feel at Culloden?”
“I felt that something or someone was after me, that
I wasn’t alone,” Miss Wise explained. “I really didn’t feel
as if I were by myself.” When Miss Wise rejoined her
friends, she took with her some small stones from the area.
On returning to the Midwest, she handed a small stone
from Culloden to her mother to use in an attempt at psy-
chometry. Immediately Mrs. Wise picked up the impres-
Royalty and Ghosts
207
sion of a group of men, wearing predominantly red and
yellow uniforms, coming over a hill. This experiment was
part of a regular session undertaken by a home develop-
ment circle among people interested in psychic research.
“We asked my mother to describe the uniform she
was impressed with,” Miss Wise continued. “She said
Scottish; she did not see any kilts or straight -legged pants,
however. She physically felt her own eyes becoming very
heavy as if they were being pushed in. Since my mother
knew that there was nothing wrong with her own eyes, she
mentally asked what was the cause of it and in her mind’s
eye saw a form, or rather the etheric image of a large man
who said he wanted his eyeballs back! He explained that he
had been hanging around for a long time for that reason
and did not know what to do.”
“You mean, he had lost his eyes?”
"Yes,” Linda confirmed. “My mother realized that
this was an emotional situation, so she calmed his fears and
told him his eyes were well again and to go on, sending
him love, energy, and assurance at the same time.”
Some time after her return to the United States, Miss
Wise bought a record on which the famous Black Watch
Regiment was playing. It upset her greatly, but her emo-
tional involvement became even stronger when she went to
♦ 24
A Visit with Robert Louis Stevenson
Helen Lillie Marwick is a newspaperwoman and
writer who lives with her science -writer husband Charles in
a delightful old house in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. It
was on her insistence that I decided to pay a visit to the
house once owned by Robert Louis Stevenson in Heriot
Row, Edinburgh.
“A delightful Irish girl, Mrs. John Macfie, has
bought the old Robert Louis Stevenson house and reports
that the friendly ghost of R. L. S. himself has been around,
and she hopes to keep him,” Helen wrote.
I arranged for a visit during my stay in Edinburgh,
and on May 4, 1973, 1 arrived at the Stevenson House
barely in time for tea. We had been asked for 5 o’clock,
but our adventures in the countryside had caused us to be
an hour late. It wasn’t so much the countryside as the
enormous downpour which had accompanied this particular
ghost hunt, and though it gave it a certain aura, it created
havoc with our schedule. But Kathleen Macfie shook hands
with us as if we were old friends and led us into the high-
ceilinged drawing room, one flight up. The large French
windows allowed us to look out on what is probably one of
the finest streets in Edinburgh, and I could see at a glance
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
208
a midwestern festival where various ethnic groups partici-
pated. “It was the first pipe band I had seen since I had
been to Scotland, and I got tears in my eyes and felt like
being back in Scotland.”
The battle of Culloden, and the fate of Bonnie Prince
Charlie, at one time King Charles III of Scotland and Eng-
land, has also affected my own life for many years, because
of some as yet indistinct memories of having lived during
that time. People have given me objects from Culloden, or
concerning Prince Charles; books, sometimes of very
obscure origin, have found their way into my hands. More-
over, I own a silver touch piece with the name of Charles
III, a great rarity as medals go, acquired under strange cir-
cumstances. At the time I saw it listed in the catalogue of a
well-known London art dealer, the catalogue had been on
its way to me for some time, having been sent by sea mail.
Nevertheless, undaunted, I sent away for the piece but had
very little hope that the modestly priced touch piece would
still be there. Picture my surprise when I was nevertheless
able to acquire it. How the many Scottish collectors of such
items passed over this most desirable medal, so that it
could await my letter, seems to me beyond pure chance or
logic. It was almost as if the medal were meant to be mine.
—
that Mrs. Macfie had refurbished the Stevenson House in a
manner that would have made Stevenson feel right at
home: a gentle blend of Victorian and earlier furniture
pieces and casual displays of artwork in the manner of a
home rather than a museum. Her own strong vibrations, as
the owner, filled the place with an electrifying atmosphere
of the kind that is so very conducive to psychic occur-
rences. Our hostess had blue eyes, red hair, and a direct
practical approach to everything, including ghosts. After
we had had a glass of sherry, she gave us the grand tour of
the house. It had been the home of Robert Louis Stevenson
from 1857 to 1880.
"This was Mrs. Stevenson's domain,” our hostess
explained. The magnificently furnished drawing room was
pretty much the way it must have been in Stevenson’s day,
except for the addition of electric light and some of the
personal belongings of the Macfies. In particular, there was
a chair by the window which Stevenson is said to have sat
in when resting from his work. As we walked in, I felt a
distinct chill down my back, and I knew it wasn’t due to
the weather. It was a definite touch of some sort. I asked
Alanna whether she had felt anything. She confirmed that
she too had been touched by unseen hands, a very gentle
kind of touch. “I feel a presence. There is definitely some-
one here other than ourselves.” I turned to Mrs. Macfie.
"What exactly have you felt since you came to this house?”
"I am most sensitive to a feeling when I am alone in
the house, but maybe that isn’t right, because I never feel
alone here. There is always somebody or something here, a
friendly feeling. Actually, there are two people here. At
first I thought, perhaps because of what I had read about
Robert Louis Stevenson, I was imagining things. But then
the Irish writer James Pope Hennessey came to stay with
us. Mr. Hennessey had been to Vailina, on Samoa, where
Robert Louis Stevenson lived and ended his days. There,
in the South Seas, he had seen an apparition of Stevenson,
and in this house he had seen it also. It happened in his
own room because he slept back there in what we called
the master bedroom.”
“Have you seen anything?”
"No, but I feel it all the time. It is as though I would
look around and there was somebody behind me. Some-
times, when I wake up early in the morning, especially in
the winter, I feel as if there is somebody moving about. It
is very difficult to talk about it. You see, my husband is an
utter skeptic. He thinks it is the central heating. Even my
small son would say ‘Oh, don’t listen to Mother. She sees
ghosts everywhere.’ You see, the family doesn’t support me
at all.”
Kathleen Macfie admits to having had similar “feel-
ings” in other houses where she has lived. When she
arrived at the Stevenson House eighteen months prior to
our conversation, she soon realized that it was happening
again.
"While the movers were still bringing the stuff in, I
didn’t pay any attention to what I felt or heard. I thought
it was just the noise the movers were making. But then the
feeling came: you know, when you are looking in a certain
way you have peripheral vision and feelings; you don’t
have to look straight at anything to see it. You know that it
is there. But it is a comforting, marvelous feeling.”
Some of the poet’s personal belongings were still in
the house, intermingled with period pieces carefully chosen
by the Macfies when they bought the house. "There is an
invitation which he sent to his father’s funeral, with his
own signature on it,” Mrs. Macfie commented. “But when
his father died, his mother took nearly all the furniture out
of here and went to live in Samoa with her son. When
Stevenson himself died, the mother came back to Edin-
burgh to live with her sister, but Robert Louis Stevenson’s
widow brought all the furniture back to St. Helena, Cali-
fornia, where she ended her days. By the way, this is his
parents’ room. His own room is up one flight. Originally
the top story was only half a story, and it was for the ser-
vants, but Stevenson’s parents wanted him to have proper
accommodations up there, so that he could study and
work. The house was built between 1790 and 1810. The
Stevensons bought it from the original builders, because
they wanted a house on drier ground.”
Mrs. Macfie explained that she was in the process of
turning part of the house into a private museum, so that
people could pay homage to the place where Robert Louis
Stevenson lived and did so much of his work.
We walked up to the second floor, Stevenson’s own
study. The room was filled with bookcases, and next to it
was a bedroom, which Mr. Macfie uses as a dressing room.
Nowadays there is a bed in the study, but in Stevenson’s
time there was no bed; just a large desk, a coal scuttle, and
of course lots of books. I turned to Alanna and asked if she
received any impressions from the room. She nodded.
“Near the fireplace I get an impression of him. When
I just came in through the door it was as if somebody were
there, standing beside the door.”
While she was speaking, it seemed to me as if I, too,
were being shown some sort of vague scene, something that
sprang to my mind unexpectedly and most certainly not
from my own unconscious. Rather than suppress it or
attribute it to our discussion of Robert Louis Stevenson, of
whom I knew very little at that point, I decided to “let it
rip,” saying whatever I felt and seeing if it could be sorted
out to make some sense.
“Is there a person connected with this house wearing
a rather dark coat and a light-colored or white shirtwaist
type of thing with a small tie? He has rather dark eyes and
his hair is brushed down. He has bushy eyebrows and he
seems rather pale and agitated, and at this moment he is
tearing up a letter.”
Miss Macfie seemed amazed. “Yes, that is him
exactly. His desk used to be where you’re standing, and
this was where his mother used to leave food for him on a
little stool outside. She would come back hours later and it
would still be there.”
“I get something about age thirty-four,” I said.
“Well, he was married then. On May 9, 1880, in
fact.” This was May 4, almost an anniversary.
We stepped into the adjacent room, which was once
Stevenson’s bedroom. I asked Alanna whether she felt any-
thing special. “The presence is much stronger here than in
the other room,” she said. Even while she was talking, I
again had the strange urge to speak about something I
knew nothing about.
“I have the impression of someone being desperately
ill from a high fever and very lonely and near death. He’s
writing a letter to someone. He expects to die but survives
nevertheless.”
Both ladies nodded simultaneously. “During his
teenage period, he was always desperately ill and never
expected to survive,” Alanna commented. “It was con-
sumption, which today is called emphysema, an inflamma-
tion of the lungs.”
Alanna Knight was eminently familiar with Robert
Louis Stevenson, as she was working on a play about him.
My knowledge of the great writer was confined to being
aware of his name and what he had written, but I had not
known anything about Stevenson’s private life when I
entered the house. Thus I allowed my own impressions to
A Visit with Robert Louis Stevenson
209
take the foreground, even though Alanna was far more
qualified to delve into the psychic layer of the house.
“Was there any kind of religious conflict, a feeling of
wanting to make up one’s mind one way or the other? Is
there any explanation of the feeling I had for his holding a
crucifix and putting it down again, of being desperate, of
going to consult with someone, of coming back and not
knowing which way to turn?” I asked.
"This is absolutely accurate,” Mrs. Macfie confirmed,
“because he had a tremendous revulsion from the faith he
had been brought up in, and this caused trouble with his
father. He was Presbyterian, but he toyed with atheism and
the theories of the early German philosophers. All of this
created a terrible furor with his father.”
“Another thing just went through my mind: was he
at any time interested in becoming a doctor, or was there a
doctor in the family?”
“He was trained as a lawyer, very reluctantly,” Mrs.
Macfie replied; “his father wanted him to become an engi-
neer. But because of his uncertain health he never practiced
law. His uncle, Dr. Louis Balfour, insisted that he leave
Edinburgh for his health. His wife, Fannie Osborne, was
very interested in medicine; she helped keep him alive.”
Alanna seemed puzzled by something she “received”
at this moment. “Was there a dog of a very special breed,
a very elegant dog? When he died, was there great
upheaval because of it? I feel that there was a very strong
attachment to this dog.” Mrs. Macfie beamed at this.
“There was a West Highland terrier that he took all over.
The dog’s name was Rogue and he was very attached
to it.”
We thanked our hostess and prepared to leave the
house. It was almost dinner time and the rain outside had
stopped. As we opened the heavy door to walk out into
Heriot Row, I looked back at Kathleen Macfie, standing on
the first-floor landing smiling at us. Her husband had just
returned and after a polite introduction excused himself to
go upstairs to his room- -formerly Robert Louis Steven-
son’s study and bedroom. Except for him and for Mrs.
Macfie on the first-floor landing, the house was empty at
this moment. Or was it? I looked back into the hallway and
had the distinct impression of a dark-eyed man standing
there, looking at us with curiosity, not sure whether he
should come forward or stay in the shadows. But it proba-
bly was only my imagination.
» 25
Bloody Mary’s Ghost
SAWSTON Hall LIES a few miles south of the great Eng-
lish university town of Cambridge, and can be reached
from London in about two and a half hours. When I heard
that reliable witnesses had seen a ghost in this old manor
house, I contacted the owner, Captain Huddleston, about a
visit. The Captain’s nephew, Major A. C. Eyre, wrote back
saying how delighted they would be to receive us. Like so
many British manor houses, Sawston Hall is open to the
public at certain times and, of course, I wanted to avoid a
day when the tourists were sure to interfere with our quest.
Although I usually avoid getting secondhand information
on hauntings, and prefer to talk to the witnesses directly
when I see them, I like to know the general background of
a haunted house before I approach it. This gives me a bet-
ter idea as to what I might encounter in the way of atmos-
phere, mementos, and such. As a trained historian, I have
no trouble finding my way around English history. 1 picked
up one of the little booklets the Major had prepared for the
visitors, to familiarize myself with the history of Sawston
Hall while the car, driven by the imperturbable Mr.
Brown, rolled quietly through the picturesque countryside.
The booklet read:
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
Sawston Hall has been the home of the Huddleston
family for over 400 years and is noteworthy for being
one of the few old manor houses in Cambridgeshire
built out of stone. In 1 553 Edward VI was ailing and
entirely dominated by the ambitious Duke of Northum-
berland. The King was already dead when his half sis-
ter, Princess Mary, afterwards Queen Mary Tudor, who
was living in Norfolk, received a message purporting to
be from him, begging her to come to him. Mary imme-
diately set out for London and at Hoddesdon she
received word that the message was a trap. On her way
back, she accepted the hospitality of John Huddleston,
the then Squire of Sawston, and spent the night at the
Hall. During the night, however, the Duke’s supporters
from Cambridge who learnt she was there, set out to
capture her. John Huddleston just got her to safety in
time by disguising her as a dairy maid.
When we arrived at Sawston Hall, it was already
4 o’clock, a little late for tea, but our gracious hosts, the
Huddlestons, had waited to serve until we got there. By
now the light was not quite so strong as I would have liked
it for the sake of my motion -picture camera. But I never
use artificial lighting, only the available light.
We started up the stairs, and Mrs. Huddleston
explained the treasures of the house to us. We admired,
but quickly passed through the imposing Great Hall with
its magnificent portrait of Queen Mary Tudor, the drawing
room with its harpsichord in perfect playing condition, as if
Queen Mary were about to use it, and proceeded past the
Little Gallery and a paneled bedroom into the Tapestry
210
Bedroom, so called because its walls are hung with a set of
Flemish tapestries showing the life of King Solomon. Dom-
inating this room is a four-poster bed in which Queen
Mary is said to have slept, back during the dark days of
1553 when she was running for her life. To the right of the
bed, there is a small marble fireplace and farther down the
wall an oaken door opening onto a passage which ulti-
mately leads to the priest’s hiding hole. I think these con-
nections are of some importance if the ghost is that of
Queen Mary, who was Catholic.
We stood in front of the four-poster when I started
my examination.
"Tell me, Mrs. Huddleston, what are the facts about
the hauntings here?”
Mrs. Huddleston, a soft-spoken, well-organized lady
in her middle years, smiled a friendly smile. "Something
always seems to take place in this room we’re standing in.
The original story is that in the middle of the night you
suddenly hear three slow knocks at the door, and the door
slowly swings open and a lady in gray slowly floats across
the room and disappears into that tapestry. A great many
people have slept in this room and there are a great many
different stories of various things that have happened to
them.”
“What sort of things?”
“One girl woke up in the night very frightened,
because she heard someone next to her in the bed breathe
very heavily.”
“What did she do, scream?”
"No, she just crawled to the bottom of the bed and
tried to forget all about it.”
"I can’t say that I blame her under the circumstances.
Did anyone else have trouble in this bed?”
“Well, there was a young man who was sleeping in
this room, and he wasn’t very well when he went to bed.
When he came down to breakfast the next morning, he
said, ‘You know I was quite all right last night, you
needn’t have bothered to come to see me.’ So I said, ‘But I
didn’t.’ He insisted, ‘Oh, yes, you did; you knocked on the
door three times, and rattled on the latch, and I got awfully
frightened, and kept saying, “Come in, come in,” and
nothing happened, and I suddenly felt really, really fright-
ened, so I crept down to the bottom of the bed and tried to
forget all about it.”'
“Seems habit-forming,” 1 said, “that bottom-of-the-
bed business. Of course, it is a huge bed.”
“Well, he insisted, ‘it must have been you; you must
have come to see me,’ but I told him, ‘No, I’m sorry. I
never came near you; you weren’t nearly sick enough.’
That was that.”
“How long ago did this take place?”
“Four years ago.”
"Did you yourself ever hear or see anything
unusual?”
“When I was first married and came here as a bride,
I heard distinctly some very tinkly music rather like a
spinet or virginal, and I asked my husband who it was, and
he said, oh, he had heard nothing and that it was all non-
sense. However, I heard it again the next night and again a
little later. He kept telling me this was all rubbish, so I felt
very triumphant when about a month later a visitor came
down to breakfast, and said, ‘Do tell me, what is this
music I keep hearing.”'
“Who do you think is playing the instrument?”
“The general opinion is that it is Queen Mary Tudor
herself.”
“You mean her ghost?”
“Yes. Of course, you know she slept in this bed and
was very fond of this house. But the reason I think that it
is really she is that she was a very good performer on the
virginal, in fact she was so good that her father, Henry
VIII, had her brought down from the nursery as a child to
play for the Flemish ambassadors when they came over.”
“And you are sure you heard the music?”
"Absolutely. It was quite clear.”
“Has anyone else had psychic experiences in this
room?”
“Oh, yes; quite a few, really,” Mrs. Huddleston said
with typical English understatement. To her, a ghost was
no worse than a famous actor or politician in the family. In
England, one need not be looked at askance just because
one believes in ghosts. It is rather respectable and all that.
“One day I was taking a rather large group around
the house, and when we were in this room an old lady sud-
denly stepped forward, and said, ‘You know, I knew this
house long before you did! You see I was employed here as
a young girl, as a house maid. Once I was kneeling down,
attending to the fire, and suddenly I felt very cold, looked
up, and I saw the door slowly opening and a gray figure
swept across the room and disappeared into the tapestry
there. I was so frightened I flung myself out of the room
and fell headlong from the top to the bottom of the stairs
and hurt myself so badly that I’ve never dared come back
to this house until this very day.”'
“That’s quite a story,” I said. “Did you check on it?”
“Yes. You see, you can’t see the bottom of the stairs
when you’re upstairs, and so she must have been absolutely
right in the way she remembered things, because when
we’d finished the round, and were at the bottom of the
stairs, she suddenly called out, ‘Oh, that’s the place, I
remember it, that’s where I fell!”1
“And there was such a place?”
“Yes, there was.”
“Have there been any manifestations here lately?”
“Not long ago, Tom Corbett, the well-known psy-
chic, slept in this bed. He reported a presence bending over
him every hour of the night. His alarm clock, which he had
set for 7 o’clock, went off at one, two, three, four, five, six.
When it did so this presence kept bending over him. Mr.
Corbett had the impression the ghost was that of a night
Bloody Mary’s Ghost
211
Bloody Mary’s haunted bed
watchman with one eye, and a name that sounded to him
like Cutlass or Cutress.”
“Did this make sense to you?”
“Well, I thought it simply meant he was carrying a
cutlass with him, but Tom Corbett insisted it was a name.
I made inquiries after Mr. Corbett had left, and I found to
my amazement there was a man named Cutress living in
the village. I had never heard of him. But the people who
did the research for me said, ‘That can't possibly have any
connection with the night watchman, since he’s only just
arrived from London.’
“About a month later, the butler here was standing
next to a stranger in the local pub, and he said, 'What is
your name?’ The stranger replied, ‘Oh, my name is
Cutress, and I’ve just come here a short time ago.’ The
butler wondered why he had come to this rather out-of-
the-way place. ‘Oh.’ the man replied, ‘my family’s lived in
Sawston for generations. I wanted to come back to the old
family place.’”
“Tom Corbett certainly hit the nail on the head on
that one,” I acknowledged. “Any other interesting wit-
nesses to uncanny phenomena?”
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
“I was taking an old lady round, and it was broad
daylight, and I was showing her the tapestries, and was so
busy with that, I didn’t notice the change that had come
over her face. When I looked around at her, she looked
simply terrible, as if she were going to pass out. I asked
her if I should get a doctor, but she assured me she would
be all right.
"It’s really this room,’ she explained. ‘It’s the ghosts
in this room.’”
We left the haunted bedroom and went along the
Long Gallery to the priest’s hiding hole, which was inge-
niously hidden in the thickness of the wall, barely large
enough for a man to sit in, and accessible to the outer
world only through a small trapdoor which could easily be
covered during a raid.
I wondered if any hauntings had been observed in
connection with the hiding hole, since so much tragedy and
emotional turmoil adhered to the atmosphere around it.
"Not by the hole itself, but there is a nearby bed-
room where there have been some ghostly experiences dur-
ing the last few years. That room just above the staircase.
A friend of ours, a well-known Jesuit priest, was sleeping
in it, and he had so much disturbance during the night,
knocking at the door, and noises outside, that he got up
several times to see what was happening.”
212
“Did he find anything or anyone?”
"No, of course not. They never do.”
“Was there anyone else who experienced anything
out of the ordinary around that staircase?”
“A lady from South Africa came here for a first visit.
She arrived rather unexpectedly, so we put her into the
haunted room, but the next morning she reported that she
had had a good night and not been disturbed at all. Maybe
the ghost had moved away? ‘Anyway,’ she bragged, ‘I
always know when there is a ghost around, because I get
very cold and get goose pimples all up my arms.’ So we
forgot all about the ghost and started to show her around
the house. But when she got to this same big staircase,
which leads to this room I have just talked about, she sud-
denly gave a little scream and said, ‘Oh, there’s no doubt
about it, this is where the ghost is!’ I hurriedly looked at
her arms, and she was, in fact, covered with goose pimples.
“Tom Corbett also went up these stairs and he dis-
tinctly felt someone walking after him, so much so, he
turned around to speak to him, but there was nobody
there."
There we had it.
The Gray Lady floating across the haunted bedroom,
and the haunted staircase.
During the years of religious persecution, Sawston
Hall was the principal refuge for those of the Catholic
faith, including a number of priests and lay brothers. Many
atrocities were perpetrated in those days in the name of the
Reformed Religion, and the atmosphere at Sawston Hall is
soaked with the tragedy and suffering of those martyrs.
Then, too, one must realize that Mary Tudor, later
known as Bloody Mary, had found the old manor house
her salvation when the Huddlestons saved her life by hid-
ing her. Her ghost might, indeed, be drawn back there
even though she did not die there. I don’t think the Gray
Lady is merely an etheric impression without personality;
the behavior is that of a bona fide ghost.
♦ 26
Spectral Mary, Queen of Scots
BACK OF Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, residence of
Mary Queen of Scots and other Scottish monarchs, stands
a little house of modest appearance going by the quaint
name of Croft -en-Reigh. This house was once owned by
James, Earl of Moray, half brother of Mary, and Regent of
Scotland in her absence. Today, the house is subdivided
into three apartments, one of which belongs to a Mrs.
Clyne. But several years ago this was the official residence
of the warden of Holyrood Palace. The warden is the chief
guide who has charge of all tourist traffic. David Graham,
the onetime warden, has now retired to his house in nearby
Portobello, but fourteen years ago he had a most unusual
experience in this little house.
“There were twelve of us assembled for a seance, I
recall,” he said, “and we had Helen Duncan, who is now
dead, as our medium. There we were, seated quietly in the
top floor of Croft-en-Reigh, waiting for developments.”
They did not have to wait long. A figure materialized
before their astonished eyes and was recognized instantly:
Mary Queen of Scots herself, who had been to this house
many times in moments of great emotional turmoil. Within
a moment, she was gone.
On several occasions, Mr. Graham recalls, he saw the
ghost of a short man in sixteenth-century clothes. “I am
French,” the man insisted. Graham thought nothing of it
until he accidentally discovered that the house was built by
an architect named French!
» 27
Renvyle
All ALONG THE Irish countryside, whenever I got to talk
about ghosts, someone mentioned the ghost at Renvyle.
Finally, I began to wonder about it myself. In Dublin, I
made inquiries about Renvyle and discovered that it was a
place in the West of Ireland. Now a luxury hotel, the old
mansion of Renvyle in Connemara was definitely a place
worth visiting sometime, I thought. As luck would have it,
the present manager of the Shelbourne in Dublin had
worked there at one time.
I immediately requested an interview with Eoin Dil-
lon, and that same afternoon I was ushered into the man-
ager’s office tucked away behind the second floor suites of
the hotel.
Mr. Dillon proved to be an extremely friendly, mat-
ter-of-fact man, in his early middle years, impeccably
dressed as is the wont of hotel executives.
“I went to Renvyle in 1952,” he explained, “as man-
ager of the hotel there. The hotel was owned originally by
the Gogarty family, and St. John Gogarty, of course, was a
Renvyle
213
famous literary figure. He had written a number of books;
he was also the original Buck Mulligan in Joyce’s Ulysses,
and he was a personal friend of every great literary figure
of his period.
“The house itself was built by Sir Edward Lutchins
about 1932, but it stood on the site of the original Gogarty
house, which was burnt down in the Troubled Times,
some say without any reference to critical facts.”
What Mr. Dillon meant was that the I.R.A. really
had no business burning down this particular mansion.
More great houses were destroyed by the Irish rebels for
reasons hardly worthy of arson than in ten centuries of
warfare. Ownership by a Britisher, or alleged ownership by
an absentee landlord, was enough for the partisans to
destroy the property. It reminded me of the Thirty Years’
War in Europe when mere adherence to the Catholic or
Protestant faith by the owner was enough to have the
house destroyed by the opposition.
"What happened after the fire?” I asked.
“The site being one of the most beautiful in Ireland,
between the lake and the sea, the hotel was then built.
This was in 1922. Following the rebuilding of the house,
Gogarty, who ran it as a rather literary type of hotel, col-
lected there a number of interesting people, among them
the poet and Nobel-prize winner W. B. Yeats, whose cen-
tenary we are celebrating this year. And Yeats, of course,
was very interested in psychic phenomena of one kind or
another and has written a number of plays and stories on
the subject. He also went in for seances. We were told that
some of the seances held at Renvyle were very successful.
"Now the background to the piece of information
which I have is that during the years preceding my arrival
it had been noted that one particular room in this hotel was
causing quite a bit of bother. On one or two occasions peo-
ple came down saying there was somebody in the room, and
on one very particular occasion, a lady whom I knew as a
sane and sensible person complained that a man was look-
ing over her shoulder while she was making her face up at
the mirror. This certainly caused some furor.”
"I can imagine — watching a lady put on her ‘face’ is
certainly an invasion of privacy — even for a ghost,” I
observed.
“Well,” Mr. Dillon continued, “when I went there
the hotel had been empty for about a year and a half. It
had been taken over by a new company and I opened it for
that new company. My wife and I found some very
unpleasant sensations while we were there.”
“What did you do?”
“Finally, we got the local parish priest to come up
and do something about it.”
“Did it help?”
“The entire house had this atmosphere about it. We
had Mass said in the place, during which there was a vio-
lent thunderstorm. We somehow felt that the situation was
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
under control. About August of that particular year, my
wife was ill and my father was staying in the hotel at the
time. I moved to that particular room where the trouble
had been. It is located in the center of the building facing
into a courtyard. The house is actually built on three sides
of a courtyard. It is one flight up. This was thirteen years
ago now, in August of 1952.”
“What happened to you in the haunted room, Mr.
Dillon?" I asked.
“I went to sleep in this room,” he replied, “and my
father decided he would sleep in the room also. He is a
particularly heavy sleeper, so nothing bothers him. But I
was rather tired and I had worked terribly hard that day,
and as I lay in bed I suddenly heard this loud, clicking
noise going on right beside my ears as if someone wanted
to get me up! I refused to go — I was too tired — so I said,
‘Will you please go away, whoever you are?’ — and I put
my blanket over my head and went to sleep.”
"What do you make of it?” I said.
"There is a strong tradition that this room is the very
room in which Yeats carried out these seances, and for that
reason there was left there as a legacy actually some being
of some kind which is certainly not explainable by ordinary
standards.”
“Has anyone else had experiences there?”
“Not the finger clicking. I assume that was to get my
attention. But the wife of a musician here in town, whom I
know well, Molly Flynn — her husband is Eamon O’Gall-
cobhair, a well-known Irish musician — had the experience
with the man looking over her shoulder. He was tall and
dressed in dark clothes.”
“Have more people slept in this room and had
experiences?”
“Over the years, according to the staff, about ten dif-
ferent people have had this experience. None of them knew
the reputation the house had as being haunted,
incidentally.”
The reports of an intruder dated back only to Yeats’
presence in the house, but of course something might have
been latently present, perhaps “held over” from the earlier
structure, and merely awakened by the seances.
It was not until the following summer that our hopes
to go to Renvyle House were realized. Originally we had
asked our friend Dillon to get us rooms at this renowned
resort hotel so we could combine research with a little loaf-
ing in the sun — but as fate would have it, by the time we
were ready to name a date for our descent upon the Emer-
ald Isle, every nook and cranny at Renvyle House had been
taken. Moreover, we could not even blame our ever-present
countrymen, for the American tourist, I am told, waits far
too long to make his reservations. The Britisher, on the
other hand, having been taught caution and prevision by a
succession of unreliable governments, likes to “book
rooms,” as they say, early in the season, and consequently
we found that Connemara was once again British — for the
summer, anyway.
214
We were given the choice of bedding down at nearby
Leenane where Lord French is the manager of a rather
modern hotel built directly upon the rocky Connemara soil
on the shore of a lough several miles deep. These loughs,
or fjords, as they are called in Norway, are remnants of the
ice ages, and not recommended for swimming, but excel-
lent for fishing, since the Connemara fish apparently don’t
mind the cold.
I should explain at this point that Connemara is the
name of an ancient kingdom in the westernmost part of
Ireland, which was last — and least — in accepting English
custom and language, and so it is here in the cottages along
the loughs and the magnificent Connemara seacoast that
you can hear the softly melodic tongue of old Erin still
spoken as a natural means of expression. The lilting brogue
and the strange construction of sentences is as different
from what you can hear across the Straits as day and night.
There is, of course, a small percentage of literary and
upper-class Irish, especially in Dublin, whose English is so
fine it out-shines that spoken in Albion, and that, too, is a
kind of moral victory over the English.
But we have left Lord French waiting for our arrival
at the Hotel Leenane, and await us he did, a charming,
middle-thirtyish man wild about fishing and genially aware
of the lure the area has for tourists. Leenane was pleasant
and the air was fresh and clear, around 65 degrees at a time
when New York was having a comfortable 98 in the shade.
My only complaint about the hotel concerned the walls,
which had the thickness of wallpaper.
The weather this month of July, 1966, was exception-
ally fine and had been so for weeks, with a strong sun
shining down on our heads as we set out for Renvyle after
lunch. The manager, Paul Hughes, had offered to come
and fetch us in his car, and he — the manager, not the car
— turned out to be far younger than I had thought. At 27,
he was running a major hotel and running it well. It took us
about three-quarters of an hour, over winding roads cut
through the ever-present Connemara rock, to reach the
coastal area where Renvyle House stands on a spot just
about as close to America — except for the Atlantic — as any
land could be in the area. The sea was fondling the very
shores of the land on which the white two-story house
stood, and cows and donkeys were everywhere around it,
giving the entire scene a bucolic touch. Mr. Hughes left us
alone for a while to take the sun in the almost tropical gar-
den. After lunch I managed to corner him in the bar. The
conversation, in Sybil Leek’s presence, had avoided all ref-
erences to ghosts, of course. But now Sybil was outside,
looking over the souvenir shop, and Hughes and I could
get down to the heart of the matter.
Mr. Hughes explained that the hotel had been rebuilt
in 1930 over an older house originally owned by the
Blakes, one of the Galway tribes, who eventually sold it to
Oliver St. John Gogarty. I nodded politely, as Mr. Dillon
had already traced the history of the house for me last
“He was a doctor in Dublin,” Hughes explained,
“and he came here weekends and entertained people such
as Joyce and Yeats and Augustus John. ”
Thank goodness, I thought, they did not have auto-
graph hounds in Connemara!
Mr. Hughes had been the manager for three years, he
explained.
"Ever notice anything unusual about any of the
rooms?" I prodded.
“No, I haven’t, although many of the staff have
reported strange happenings. It seems that one of the
maids, Rose Coine, saw a man in one of the corridors
upstairs — a man who disappeared into thin air.”
Miss Coine, it developed, was middle-aged, and
rather shy. This was her week off, and though we tried to
coax her later, at her own cottage, to talk about her experi-
ences, she refused.
“She has experienced it a few times,” Mr. Hughes
continued. “I don’t know how many, though.”
“Has anyone else had unusual impressions anywhere
in the hotel?”
“They say since the hotel was rebuilt it isn’t as
strong anymore.”
“But didn’t Miss Coine have her experience after the
fire?”
"Yes," the manager admitted, “last year.”
I decided to pay the haunted room, number 27, a
visit. This was the room mentioned by Eoin Dillon in
which he had encountered the ghostly manifestations. We
ascended the wooden staircase, with Sybil joining us — my
wife and I, and Mr. Hughes, who had to make sure the
guests of number 27 were outside for the moment. The
room we entered on the second floor was a typical
vacation -time hotel room, fairly modern and impersonal in
decor, except for a red fireplace in the center of the left
wall. I later learned that the two rooms now numbered 27
and 18 were originally one larger room. I took some pho-
tographs and let Sybil gather impressions. Hughes quickly
closed the outside door to make sure nobody would disturb
us. Sybil sat down in the chair before the fireplace. The
windows gave onto the courtyard.
“I have the feeling of something overlapping in
time,” Sybil Leek began. Of course, she had no idea of the
“two Renvyles” and the rebuilding of the earlier house.
“I have a peculiar feeling around my neck,” she con-
tinued, “painful feeling, which has some connection with
this particular room, for I did not feel it a moment ago
downstairs."
“Do you feel a presence here?” I asked directly.
“Yes,” Sybil replied at once, “something. . .connected
with pain. I feel as if my neck’s broken.”
I took some more pictures; then I heard Sybil mur-
mur “1928.” I immediately questioned her about the sig-
nificance of this date. She felt someone suffered in the
summer.
Renvyle
215
room we were in at that time. Also, the size of the room
has been changed since.
“There is a presence in this area,” she finally said
with resolution. "A noisy presence. This person is rough.”
After Sybil remarked that it might be difficult to get
the fireplace going, we went to the adjoining room to see if
the impressions there might be stronger.
"What do you sense here?” I asked.
"Fear.”
"Can it communicate?”
"It is not the usual thing we have. . .just pain, strong
pain.”
“Someone who expired here?”
"Yes, but did not finish completely.”
"Is the person here now?”
“Not the person, but an impression.”
“How far back?”
“I only get as far back as 1928.”
I questioned Paul Hughes. That was indeed the time
of the Yeats seances.
“What sort of people do you feel connected with this
room?”
"There is this overlapping period. ..1928 I feel very
vital, but beyond that we go down in layers. . .traveling
people, come here, do not live here. . .does the word ‘off-
lander’ mean anything?”
It did not to me.
"We’re in 1928 now. Men in long dresses. . .reli-
gious, perhaps. . .men in long clothes? A group of men, no
women. Perhaps ten men. Long coats. Sitting in front of a
big fire.”
“The one you feel hung up in the atmosphere here —
is he of the same period?”
"No,” Sybil replied, “this is of a later period.”
“How did he get here?”
"This is someone who was living here. . .died in this
room. . .fire. . .the people in the long clothes are earlier,
can’t tell if they’re men or women, could be monks,
too. . .but the one whom I feel in the atmosphere of this
room, he is from 1928.”
We left the room and walked out into the corridor,
the same corridor connecting the area in which we had just
been with number 2, farther back in the hotel. It was here
that the ghost had been observed by the maid, I later
learned. Sybil mentioned that there were ten people with
long clothes, but she could not get more.
“Only like a photograph,” she insisted.
We proceeded to the lovely library, which is adorned
with wooden paneling and two rather large paintings of
Saints Brigid and Patrick — and I noticed that St. Brigid
wore the long, robe-like dress of the ancient Gaelic women,
a dress, incidentally, that some of Ireland’s nineteenth-
century poets imitated for romantic reasons. It reminded
Sybil of what she had felt in the room upstairs.
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
From her own knowledge, she recalled that William
Butler Yeats had a lady friend fond of wearing such ancient
attire! Far-fetched though this sounded, on recollection I
am not so sure. We left the house, and Paul Hughes drove
us up a mountain road to the cottage in which the maid
who had seen the ghost lived.
Hughes would go in first and try and persuade her to
talk to me. Should he fail, he would then get the story once
more from her and retell it to us afresh. We waited about
fifteen minutes in his car while the manager tried his native
charm on the frightened servant woman. He emerged and
shook his head. But he had at least succeeded in having her
tell of her experiences to him once more.
“About a year ago,” Hughes began, "in the ground
floor corridor leading to room number 2, Mrs. Coine saw a
man come through the glass door and go into room 2.”
“What did she do?” I interrupted.
"It suddenly struck Miss Coine that there was
nobody staying in room 2 at the time. So she went down
into room 2 and could not see anybody! She suddenly felt
weak, and the housekeeper was coming along wondering
what had happened to her. But she would not talk about it
at first for she thought it would be bad for business at the
hotel.”
“Ridiculous,” I said. "American tourists adore
ghosts.”
“Well,” Hughes continued, "earlier this year — 1966
— there was a lady staying in room 2. Her daughter was in
room 38. After two nights, she insisted on leaving room 2
and was happy to take a far inferior room instead. There
were no complaints after she had made this change.”
I discovered that rooms 2 and 27 were in distant
parts of the hotel, just about as far apart as they could be.
There was a moment of silence as we sat in the car
and I thought it all over.
“Did she say what the man looked like that she saw?”
I finally asked, referring to Miss Coine ’s ghost.
“Yes,” Hughes replied and nodded serenely. “A tall
man, a very tall man.”
"And a flesh and blood man could not have left the
room by other means?”
"Impossible. At that stage the new windows had not
yet been put in and the windows were inoperable with the
exception of a small fan window. This happened about
lunchtime, after Mass, on Sunday. In 1965.”
“And the strange behavior of the lady?”
“Between Easter and Whitsun, this year, 1966.”
We walked back into the main lobby of the hotel.
There, among other memorabilia, were the framed pictures
of great Irish minds connected with Renvyle House.
Among them, of course, one of William Butler Yeats.
I looked at it, long and carefully. Yeats was a tall
man, a very tall man. . . .
* * *
216
In the winter of 1952-1953, Oliver St. John Gogarty
wrote a brief article for Tomorrow magazine, entitled “Yeats
and the Ghost of Renvyle Castle.”
To begin with, the term castle was applied by Tomor-
row’s editors, since Gogarty knew better than to call Ren-
vyle House a castle. There is a Renvyle castle all right and
it still stands, about two miles south of the hotel, a charred
ruin of medieval masonry, once the property of the cele-
brated Irish pirate queen Grania O’Malley.
Gogarty ’s report goes back to the house that stood
there prior to the fire. Our visit was to the new house,
built upon its ruins. The popular tale of seances held at the
Renvyle House must refer to the earlier structure, as none
were held in the present one, as far is I know.
Gogarty ’s report tells of Yeats and his own interest in
the occult; of one particular time when Mrs. Yeats, who
was a medium, told of seeing a ghostly face at her window;
of a seance held in an upstairs room in which the restless
spirit of a young boy manifested who had died by his own
hands there. Morgan Even, a Welshman who apparently
was also a trance medium, was among the guests at the
time, and he experienced an encounter with the ghost
which left him frightened and weak.
“I felt a strange sensation. A feeling that I was all
keyed up just like the tension in a nightmare, and with that
terror that nightmares have. Presently, I saw a boy, stiffly
upright, in brown velvet with some sort of shirt showing at
his waist. He was about twelve. Behind the chair he stood,
all white-faced, hardly touching the floor. It seemed that if
he came nearer some awful calamity would happen to me. I
was just as tensed up as he was — nightmare terrors, tin-
gling air; but what made it awful was my being wide
awake. The figure in the brown velvet only looked at me,
but the atmosphere in the room vibrated. I don’t know
what else happened. I saw his large eyes, I saw the ruffles
on his wrists. He stood vibrating. His luminous eyes
reproved. He looked deeply into mine.
“The apparition lifted his hands to his neck and then,
all of a sudden, his body was violently seized as if by invisi-
ble fiends and twisted into horrible contortions in mid-air.
He was mad! I sympathized for a moment with his mad-
ness and felt myself at once in the electric tension of Hell.
Suicide! Suicide! Oh, my God, he committed suicide in this
very house.”
As it transpired, the ghost had communicated with
Yeats through automatic writing. He objected to the pres-
ence of strangers in his house. But Yeats responded to his
objection with a list of demands of his own such as the
ghost could hardly have expected. First, he must desist
from frightening the children in their early sleep. He must
cease to moan about the chimneys. He must walk the
house no more. He must not move furniture or terrify
those who sleep nearby. And, finally, he was ordered to
name himself to Yeats. And this he did.
How could Yeats, a visitor, have known that the chil-
dren used at times to rush down crying from their bed-
room? Nor could he have guessed that it was the custom of
the Blake family to call their sons after the Heptarchy. And
yet he found out the ghost's particular name. A name Gog-
arty had never gleaned from the local people though he
lived for years among them.
The troubled spirit had promised to appear in the
ghost room to Mrs. Yeats, as he was before he went mad
sixty years before.
Presently, Mrs. Yeats appeared carrying a lighted
candle. She extinguished it and nodded to her husband.
"Yes, it is just as you said.”
“My wife saw a pale-faced, red-haired boy of about
fourteen years of age standing in the middle of the north
room. She was by the fireplace when he first took shape.
He had the solemn pallor of a tragedy beyond the
endurance of a child. He resents the presence of strangers
in the home of his ancestors. He is Harold Blake.”
And now it became clear to me what Sybil Leek had
felt! Upstairs, in the room nearly on the same spot where
the ghostly boy had appeared in the old house, she had
suddenly felt a terrible discomfort in her neck — just as the
psychic Welshman had, all those years ago! Was she reliv-
ing the tragedy or was the pale boy still about?
But the maid had seen a tall stranger, not a young
boy, and not in the haunted room, but far from it. Yeats
had been terribly attached to this house, and, being a man
of great inquisitiveness, was just the type to stay on even
after death. If only to talk to the melancholy boy from his
own side of the veil!
* 28
Is This You, Jean Harlow?
If ANY MOVIE actress deserved the name of “the vamp,” it
certainly was Jean Harlow. The blonde actress personified
the ideal of the 1930s — slim and sultry, moving her body
in a provocative manner, yet dressing in the rather elegant,
seemingly casual style of that period. Slinky dresses,
sweaters, and colorful accessories made Jean Harlow one of
the outstanding glamor girls of the American screen. The
public was never let in on any of her personal secrets or,
for that matter, her personal tragedies. Her life story was
carefully edited to present only those aspects of her person-
ality that fit in with the preconceived notion of what a
glamorous movie star should be like. In a way, Jean Har-
Is This You, Jean Harlow?
217
Jean Harlow’s former living
room— Beverly Hills
low was the prototype of all later blonde glamor girls of the
screen, culminating with Marilyn Monroe. There is a strik-
ing parallel, too, in the tragic lives and sometimes ends of
these blonde movie queens. Quite possibly the image they
projected on the screen, or were forced to project, was at
variance with their own private achievements and helped
pave the way to their tragic downfalls.
To me, Jean Harlow will always stand out as the
glamorous goddess of such motion pictures as Red Dust,
which I saw as a little boy. The idea that she could have
had an earthbound life after death seems to be very far
from the image the actress portrayed during her lifetime.
Thus it was with some doubt that I followed up a lead
supplied by an English newspaper, which said the former
home of the screen star was haunted.
The house in question is a handsome white stucco
one-family house set back somewhat from a quiet residen-
tial street in Westwood, a section of Los Angeles near the
University generally considered quiet and upper middle
class. The house itself belonged to a professional man and
his wife who shared it with their two daughters and two
poodles. It is a two-story building with an elegant staircase
winding from the rear of the ground floor to the upper
story. The downstairs portion contains a rather large
oblong living room which leads into a dining room. There
are a kitchen and bathroom adjacent to that area and a
stairway leading to the upper floor. Upstairs are two bed-
rooms and a bathroom.
When I first spoke on the telephone to Mrs. H., the
present occupant of the house, asking permission to visit,
she responded rather cordially. A little later I called back to
make a definite appointment and found that her husband
was far from pleased with my impending visit. Although
he himself had experienced some of the unusual phenom-
ena in the house, as a professional, and I suppose as a man,
he was worried that publicity might hurt his career. I
assured him that I was not interested in disclosing his
name or address, and with that assurance I was again wel-
comed. It was a sunny afternoon when I picked up my tape
recorder and camera, left my taxicab in front of the white
house in Westwood, and rang the bell.
Mrs. H. was already expecting me. She turned out to
be a petite, dark- blonde lady of around thirty, very much
given to conversation and more than somewhat interested
in the occult. As a matter of fact, she had read one of my
earlier books. With her was a woman friend; whether the
friend had been asked out of curiosity or security I do not
know. At any rate the three of us sat down in the living
room and I started to ask Mrs. H. the kind of questions I
always ask when I come to an allegedly haunted house.
“Mrs. H., how long have you lived in this house?”
“Approximately four years.”
"When you bought it, did you make any inquiries as
to the previous owner?”
“I did not. I didn’t really care. I walked into the
house and I liked it and that was that.”
"Did you just tell your husband to buy it?”
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
218
"Yes. I told him, ‘This is our house.’ I had the real-
tor go ahead and draw up the papers before he saw it be-
cause I knew he would feel as I did.”
"Where did you live before?”
“All over — Brentwood, West Los Angeles, Beverly
Hills. I was born in Canada.”
“How many years have you been married?”
“Seventeen.”
“You have children?”
"I have two daughters, nine and twelve.”
“Did the real-estate man tell you anything about the
house?”
“He did not.”
"After you moved in and got settled, did you make
some changes in it?”
“Yes; it was in kind of sad shape. It needed some-
body to love it.”
“Did you make any structural changes?”
"No. When we found out the history of the house we
decided we would leave it as it was.”
“So at the time you moved in, you just fixed it?”
“Yes.”
“When was the first time that you had any unusual
feelings about the house?”
"The day before we moved in I came over to direct
the men who were laying the carpet. I walked upstairs and
I had an experience at that time.”
“What happened?”
“My two dogs ran barking and growling into the
upstairs bedrooms; I went up, and I thought I heard some-
thing whisper in my ear. It scared me.”
“That was in one of the upstairs bedrooms?”
“No, in the hallway just before the master bedroom.
The dogs ran in barking and growling as if they were going
to get somebody, and then when they got in there they
looked around and there was nobody there.”
“What did you hear?”
“I could swear I heard somebody say, ‘ Please help
me!’ It was a soft whisper, sort of hushed.”
“What did you do?”
“I talked to myself for a few minutes to get my bear-
ings. I had never experienced anything like that, and I fig-
ured, ‘Well, if it’s there, fine.’ I’ve had other ESP
experiences before, so I just went about my business.”
“Those other experiences you’ve had — were they
before you came to this house?”
“Yes. I have heard my name being called.”
“In this house or in another?”
“In other homes.”
“Anyone you could recognize?”
“No, just female voices.”
"Did you see anything unusual at any time?”
“I saw what I assume to be ectoplasm. ... It was like
cigarette smoke. It moved, and my dogs whined, tucked
their tails between their legs, and fled from the room.”
“Did you tell your husband about the whisper?”
Jean Harlow’s old bed upstairs
“I did not. My husband is skeptical. I saw no reason
to tell him.”
“When was the next time you had any feeling of a
presence here?”
“The night we moved in, my husband and I were
lying in bed. Suddenly, it was as if the bed were hit by a
very strong object three times. My husband said ‘My God,
I’m getting out of here. This place is haunted.’ I replied,
‘Oh, shush. It’s all right if someone is trying to communi-
cate. It’s not going to hurt.’ And to the ghost I said,
‘You’re welcome — how do you do; but we’ve got to get
some sleep — we’re very, very tired — so please let us be.’”
“And did it help?”
“Yes.”
“How long did the peace last?”
“Well, the jerking of the bed never happened again.
But other things happened. There is a light switch on my
oven in the kitchen. For a long time after we moved in, the
switch would go on every so often — by itself.”
“Would it take anyone to turn it physically, to turn
on the light?”
“Yes, you’d have to flip it up.”
“Was there anybody else in the house who could
have done it?”
“No, because I would be sitting here and I’d hear the
click and I would go there and it would be on. It’s hap-
pened ten or fifteen times, but recently it has stopped.”
“Any other phenomena?”
"Something new one time, at dusk. I was walking
from one room to the other. I was coming through the din-
ing room, and for some reason I looked up at the ceiling.
There it was, this light — ”
“Did it have any particular shape?”
"No. It moved at the edges, but it really didn’t have
a form. It wasn’t a solid mass, more like an outline. It was
floating above me.”
Is This You, Jean Harlow?
219
“Did you hear anything?”
“Not at that time. I have on one occasion. I was sit-
ting right in the chair I am in now. My Aunt Mary was in
that chair, and we both heard sobs. Terrible, sad, wrench-
ing sobs coming from the comer over there by the mailbox.
It was very upsetting, to say the least.”
"Were these a woman’s sobs?”
“Definitely.”
“Did you see anything at the time?”
“No. I just felt terribly sad, and the hair stood up on
my arms. Also, in this house there are winds at times,
when there is no window open.”
“Are there any cold spots that cannot be explained
rationally?"
“Very frequently. Downstairs, usually here or in the
upstairs bedroom, sometimes also in the kitchen.”
“At the time your Aunt Mary was sitting here and
you heard the sobs, did she also hear them?”
“Oh, she did, and I had to give her a drink.”
“Have you heard any other sounds?”
“Footsteps. Up and down the stairs when nobody
was walking up or down.”
“Male or female?”
“I would say female, because they are light. I have
also felt things brush by my face, touching my cheek.”
"Since you came to this home, have you had any
unusual dreams?”
"Definitely. One very important one. I was in bed
and just dozing off, when I had a vision. I saw very vividly
a picture of the upstairs bathroom. I saw a hand reaching
out of a bathtub full of water, going up to the light switch,
the socket where you turn power on and off. It then turned
into a vision of wires, and brisk voltage struck the hand;
the hand withered and died. It upset me terribly. The next
morning my husband said, ‘You know, I had the strangest
dream last night.’ He had had the identical dream!”
“Identical?”
“Practically. In his version, the hand didn’t, wither,
but he saw the sparks coming out of it. I went into the
bathroom and decided to call in an electrician. He took out
the outdated switch. He said, ‘Did you know this is out-
lawed? If anybody had been in the tub and reached up and
touched the switch, he would have been electrocuted!’ We
moved the switch so the only way you can turn the switch
on is before you go into the bathroom. You can no longer
reach it from the tub. Whoever helped me with this — I’m
terribly grateful to her.”
“Is there anything else of this kind you would care to
tell me?”
“I have smelled perfume in the upstairs children’s
bedroom, a very strong perfume. I walked into the room.
My little daughter who sleeps there doesn’t have perfume.
That’s the only place I smell it, my little girl’s bedroom.”
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
220
“Has any visitor ever come to this house without
knowledge of the phenomena and complained about any-
thing unusual?”
"A friend named Betty sat in the kitchen and said,
'My gosh, I wish you’d close the windows. There’s such a
draft in here.’ But everything was shut tight.”
“Has your husband observed anything unusual except
for the dream?”
“One evening in the bedroom he said, ‘Boy, there’s a
draft in here!’ I said there couldn’t be. All the windows
were closed.”
“What about the children?”
“My youngest daughter, Jenny, has complained she
hears a party in her upstairs closet. She says that people are
having a party in it. She can hear them.”
“When was the house built?”
“I believe in 1929.”
“Was it built to order for anyone?”
“No. It was just built like many houses in this area,
and then put up for sale.”
“Who was the first tenant here?”
“It was during the Depression. There were several
successive tenants.”
“How did Jean Harlow get involved with the house?”
“She was living in a small home, but the studio told
her she should live in a better area. She rented this house
in the early ’30s and moved into it with her parents.”
“How long did she live here?”
“About four years. She paid the rent on it longer,
however, because after she married, her folks stayed in this
house. I believe she married her agent.”
“How did she die?”
“She died, I understand, as the result of a beating
given to her by her husband which damaged her kidneys.
The story goes that on the second night, after their honey-
moon, he beat her. She came back to this house, took her
mother into the bathroom and showed her what he had
done to her. She was covered with bruises. She tried to
make up with him, but to no avail. The night he killed
himself, she was in this house. There was a rumor that he
was impotent or a latent homosexual. He shot himself.
When she heard the news, she was in her upstairs bed-
room. She tried to commit suicide, because she thought she
was the reason. She took an overdose of sleeping pills.”
“Did she succeed?”
“She did not. Her parents put pressure on her to
move out of this house. She built another one and subse-
quently died of a kidney disease.”
"Not immediately after the beating?”
“No — a few years later. Her parents were Christian
Scientists, and she didn’t have ordinary medical help at the
time.”
“Then what took place in this house, emotionally
speaking? The marriage to Paul Bern, the news of his sui-
cide, and her own attempt to commit suicide upstairs.
Which rooms were particularly connected with these
events?”
“The living room. She was married there. And the
bathroom upstairs. I left it as it was.”
“Do you have any feelings about it?”
“I have a feeling about the bathroom. I know she’s
been in that bathroom many times. I don't know if she
tried to commit suicide in the bathroom or if she took the
pills in the bedroom."
“Where did the actual beating take place?”
"They say it was in the bathroom downstairs.”
“Which is the bathroom you have such a weird feel-
ing in, the downstairs or the upstairs?”
“Downstairs.”
“Anything pertaining to the front or the outside of
the house?”
“There are knocks at our front door when there is
nobody there; visitors would say, ‘There’s someone at your
door,’ and there wasn’t. . . . It happens all the time.”
“Are you sure other people hear the knocks too?”
“Yes.”
"Somebody couldn’t have done it and run away in a
hurry?”
“No: It’s a funny knock. Kind of gentle. It isn’t like a
‘let-me-in’ type knock. Flesh-and-blood people wouldn’t
knock on a door that way.”
“When was the last time you had any feeling of a
presence in this house?”
“Maybe two or three months ago.”
“Do you feel she’s still around?”
"Yes. Also, I feel she was very upset at the way she
was portrayed as a kind of loose woman without morals.
Her biography presents her as something she was not.”
“Do you think she’s trying to express herself through
you?”
“No, but I think it’s terrible what they’ve done to her
reputation. They had no right to do that.”
“Do you feel that she’s trying to set the record
straight?”
“I would imagine. I can only put myself in her place.
If I were to cross over under those circumstances, I would
be very unhappy. I hope some day somebody will write
another book about Harlow and go into it with a sensitive,
loving attitude instead of sensationalism as a way to make a
fast buck.”
I thanked Mrs. H. and prepared to leave the house
that had once been Jean Harlow’s. Perhaps the lady of the
house was merely reliving the more emotional aspects of
the late screen star’s life, the way an old film is rerun from
time to time on television. Was she picking up these vibra-
tions from the past through psychometry? Or was there
perhaps something of the substance of Jean Harlow still
present in the atmosphere of this house? As I walked out
the front door into the still-warm late afternoon, I looked
back at Mrs. H., who stood in the doorway waving me
good-bye. Her blonde hair was framed by the shadow cast
by the door itself. For a fleeting moment, some of the
blonde glamor of the late Jean Harlow seemed to have
impressed itself upon her face. Perhaps it was only my
imagination, but all of a sudden I felt that Jean Harlow
hadn’t really left the house where so much of her emotional
life had taken place.
* 29
Do The Barrymores Still Live Here?
PAULA Davidson IS A charming, introspective woman
from Cleveland, Ohio, who decided that a career in the
entertainment field could be best achieved by moving to
Los Angeles. In 1969 she arrived in Beverly Hills and took
a job with a major advertising agency. The job was fine,
but there was something peculiar about the house into
which she had moved. In the first place, it was far too large
to be a one-family home, and yet she had been told that it
once belonged to one family — the family of Lionel Barry-
more. Perched high in the Hollywood hills, the house gives
a deceptive impression if one approaches it from the street.
From that side it presents only two stories, but the rear of
the house looks down into a deep ravine, perhaps as much
as five or six stories deep. There is even a private cable car,
no longer in use. The once-beautiful gardens have long
since fallen into disrepair and now present a picture of sad
neglect.
On the whole, the house was and is the kind of pala-
tial mansion a Barrymore would have felt at home in.
Although the gardens have been neglected for years, the
house itself is still bright, having been painted recently,
and its Spanish decor adds to the mystique of its back-
ground. When Paula Davidson took up residence there, the
owner had been forced to sublet part of the house in order
to hold on to the house itself. One of the rooms in what
used to be the former servants’ quarters was rented to
Heidi, a composer who wrote musical scores for films. She
was in the habit of practicing her music in the music room
on the first level. Since the house was quiet during the day-
time, everyone having gone off to work, Heidi liked to
practice during that part of the day. In the stillness of the
empty house she would frequently hear footsteps approach-
ing as if someone unseen were listening to her playing. On
one occasion she clearly heard a baby cry when there was
no baby in the house.
Do The Barrymores Still Live Here?
221
I promised Paula to look into the matter, and on May
31 , 1969, she picked me up at the Continental Hotel to
take me to the Barrymore mansion. With us was another
friend named Jill Taggart. Jill had worked with me before.
A writer and parttime model, Jill had displayed ESP talents
at an early age and shown amazing abilities with clairvoy-
ance and psychometry. It occurred to me that taking her to
a place she knew nothing about, without of course telling
her where we were going and why, might yield some inter-
esting results. Consequently I avoided discussing anything
connected with the purpose of our visit.
When we arrived at the mansion, the owner of the
house greeted us cordially. Paula, Heidi, the owner and I
started out following Jill around the house as my psychic
friend tried to get her bearings. Unfortunately, however, we
had picked an evening when some of the other tenants in
the house were having a party. What greeted us on our
arrival was not the serene stillness of a night in the Holly-
wood hills but the overly loud blaring of a jukebox and the
stamping of many feet in one of the basement rooms.
I have never worked under worse conditions. Under
the circumstances, however, we had no choice but to try to
get whatever we could. Even before we entered the house
Jill remarked that she felt two people, a man and a woman,
hanging on in the atmosphere, and she had the feeling that
someone was watching us. Then she added, “She died a
long time after he did.” 1 questioned her further about the
entities she felt present. “She’s old; he’s young. He must
have been in his thirties; she is considerably older. 1 get the
feeling of him as a memory. Perhaps only her memory of
him, but whichever one of the entities is here, it is madder
than hell at the moment.” With the noise of the music
going on downstairs I couldn’t rightly blame the ghost for
being mad. Jill then pointed at a corner of the house and
said, “I keep seeing the corner of the house up there.”
I later discovered that the top room was a kind of
ballroom with a balcony. In it Heidi frequently heard a
telephone ring, but that was not the only part of the house
where an invisible telephone kept ringing. "I used to be
down in the bottom room, the one right next to where the
noise is now,” Heidi explained, "practicing my music, but
I’d constantly have to stop, thinking I heard the telephone
ring. Of course there was no telephone.” I took Heidi aside
so that Jill could not hear her remarks. Jill would not have
been interested anyway, for she was engrossed in her study
of the house now, walking up and down the stairs, peering
into rooms with a quizzical expression on her face.
“Tell me,” I asked Heidi, “what else did you experi-
ence in this house?”
“Frequently when I was down in that room playing
the piano I would hear people walking on the stairs; this
happened at all times of the day, and there was never any-
one up there.”
Jill was passing by us now. “I picked up a name,”
she said. “Grace — and then there is something that sounds
like Hugen.” I looked at the owner of the house. Jill was
out of earshot again. “The party who had the house before
us was Arty Erin,” the owner said, shrugging.
“Did anyone ever die of violence in this house?” I
asked.
"I’ve heard rumors, something having to do with the
cable car, but I don’t know for sure.”
We all walked over to the cable car, covered with
rust and dirt and long out of commission. Jill placed her
hands on it to see if she could get any psychometric
impression from it. “This cable car has been much loved, I
should say, and much enjoyed.” Then her facial expression
changed to one of absolute horror. Quickly she took her
hands off the cable car.
“What is it, Jill?” I asked.
“Someone came down violently, down the hill in the
cable car. Later he wound up here near the pulley.”
We walked down to the bottom of the ravine, where
there was a magnificent swimming pool. The pool itself
was still in operating condition, and there was a pool house
on the other side of it. Down here the sound of the music
was largely muted, and one could hear one’s voice again.
Jill obviously had strong impressions now, and I asked her
what she felt about the place.
“I feel that a very vicious man lived here once, but I
don’t think he is connected with the name Grace I got
before. This may have been at a different time. Oh, he had
some dogs, kind of like mastiffs. I think there were two
and possibly three. They were vicious dogs, trained to be
vicious.”
"What did this man do?”
"I see him as a sportsman, quick with words. There
were also two young people connected with this man, a boy
and a girl. I see them laughing and romping about and
having a wonderful time here as teenagers. He seems not to
like it at all but is tolerating it. But the dogs seemed to
have played a very big part in his life. Nobody would dare
enter his property without his permission because of those
dogs. Permission, I feel, was rarely given except with a
purpose in mind. He has exerted the strongest influence on
this house, but I don’t think he was the first owner.”
“Do you feel that anyone well-known was connected
with this house?”
“Yes. More than one well-known person, in fact.” I
asked Jill to describe the personality that she felt was
strongest in the atmosphere of the house.
"I see this man with a small moustache, dark thin-
ning hair, exceedingly vain, with a hawklike nose. He has
brownish eyes; they have dark circles under them. He
doesn’t look dissipated by an excess of drink or food, but
he does look dissipated through his own excesses. That is,
his own mind’s excesses. He prides himself on having the
eye of the eagle and so affects an eagle-eyed look. I also
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
suspect that he is nearsighted. I see him wearing a lot of
smoking jackets. One in particular of maroon color.”
The description sounded more and more fascinating.
What profession did she think the man followed?
“I see him with a microphone in his hand, also a cig-
arette and a glass. He might be an actor or he might be a
director.”
I asked Jill whether this man owned the house or was
merely a visitor.
The question seemed to puzzle her. “He might be a
visitor, but I see him down here so much he might be stay-
ing here. The young people I described before might
belong to the owner of the house.”
I wondered if the man in the maroon jacket was one
of the disturbing entities in the house.”
Jill nodded. “I think this man is as well aware now of
what he does as when he was alive. I think he is still here."
“Can you get an indication of his name?"
“I get the letter S, but that’s because he reminds me
so much of Salvador Dali.”
“Anything else?"
"Yes, there is an L connected with him. The L
stands for a name like Lay or Lee or Leigh, something like
that. Oh, and there is something else. A Royal typewriter
is important. I don’t know if it’s important to him because
he writes letters or what, but Royal is important.”
I was about to turn to the owner of the house when
Jill's arm shot up, pointing to the balcony. “That woman
up there — she acts very much the owner of the house. I
imagine it’s Grace.” Since none of us could see the woman,
I asked Jill for description of what she saw.
“She’s a woman in her sixties, with gray or white
hair. And it's very neat. She is very statuesque — slender
and tall — and she wears a long flowing dress that has pleats
all over. She seems to be raising her hand always, very dra-
matically, like an actress.”
I thanked Jill for her work and turned to Marie, the
owner of the house. How did all this information stack up
with the knowledge she had of the background of her
house — for instance, the business of telephones ringing
incessantly when there were no telephones about?
“At one time this house was owned by a group of
gamblers. They had a whole bunch of telephones all over
the house. This goes back several years.”
“What about this Grace?”
“The name rings a bell with me, but I can’t place it.”
“And the baby Heidi keeps hearing?”
"Well, of course, the house used to belong to actor
Lionel Barrymore. He and his wife had two babies who
died in a fire, although it was not in this house.”
Apparently Lionel Barrymore had owned this house,
while his brother John lived not far away on Tower Road.
Thus John was in a very good position to visit the house
frequently. Jill had spoken of a man she saw clairvoyantly
as reminding her of Salvador Dali. That, we all agreed, was
a pretty good description of the late John Barrymore. Jill
had also mentioned the name Lee or Leigh or something
like it. Perhaps she was reaching for Lionel.
The mention of the word Royal I found particularly
fascinating. On the one hand, the Barrymores were often
referred to as the royal family of the theater. On the other
hand, if a typewriter was meant, one must keep in mind
that John Barrymore had been hard at work on his autobi-
ography in his later years, though he had never completed
it. Yet the matter of finishing it had been very much on his
mind. As for the teenagers Jill felt around the premises, the
two children, Diana and John, Jr., had been at the house a
great deal when they were teenagers. John Barrymore, how-
ever, didn't like children at all; he merely tolerated them.
I asked Marie (who had been here for more than a
year prior to our visit) if she had ever seen or heard any-
thing uncanny.
"No, but I can feel a presence.”
The house has twelve rooms altogether, but according
to local tradition, the three bottom rooms were added on
somewhat later. “Has anything tragic ever occurred in this
house, to your knowledge?”
“A man fell down those stairs head first and was
killed. But it was an accident.”
Obviously the house had been lived in for many
years both before and after the Barrymore tenancy. It
seems only natural that other emotional events would leave
their mark in the atmosphere of the old house. Despite all
this, Jill was able to pick up the personalities of both John
and Lionel Barrymore and perhaps even of sister Ethel, if
she was the lady in the gray robe. We left the house with a
firm promise to dig into the Hall of Records for further
verification.
Two weeks later I received a letter from Paula David-
son. She was having lunch with a friend of hers, director
William Beaudine, Sr., who had been well acquainted with
both John and Lionel Barrymore. Paula mentioned her
experience at the house with Jill and me and the descrip-
tion given by Jill of the entity she had felt present in the
house. When she mentioned the vicious dogs, Mr. Beau-
dine remarked that he remembered only too well that John
had kept some Great Danes. They might very well have
been the vicious dogs described by Jill.
Since that time Paula Davidson has moved away from
the house on Summit Ridge. Others have moved in, but no
further reports have come to me about the goings-on at the
house. If the noisy party we witnessed during our visit was
any indication of the present mood of the house, it is most
unlikely that the Barrymores will put in an appearance. For
if there was one thing the royal family of the theater dis-
liked, it was noisy competition.
Do The Barrymores Still Live Here?
223
* 30
The Latest Adventures of
The Late Clifton Webb
WHEN I WAS in my twenties Clifton Webb was one of the
funniest men on the screen. To me, at least, he represented
the epitome of Anglo-Saxon coolness and wit. Only later
did I learn that Mr. Webb came from the Midwest and
that his English accent and manner were strictly stage-
induced. There is hardly anyone in this country who
doesn’t remember his capers as Mr. Belvedere, the deadpan
babysitter, or his many other roles in which he portrayed
the reserved yet at times explosive character that contained
so much of Clifton Webb himself. I saw him on the New
York stage in one of Noel Coward’s plays, and in the flesh
he acted exactly as he had on the screen: cool, deadpan,
with a biting, satirical sense of humor.
With the success of his Mr. Belvedere and several
motion pictures based on it, Webb moved into a new-
found financial security and consequently went casting
about for a home corresponding to his status in the movie
industry. His eyes fell upon a white stucco building in one
of the quieter parts of Beverly Hills. The house, set back
somewhat from a side street not far from busy Sunset
Boulevard, had a vaguely Spanish-style wing paralleling the
street, to which a shorter wing toward the rear of the house
was attached, creating an enclosed courtyard — again in the
Spanish tradition. The house was and still is surrounded by
similar buildings, all of them belonging to the well-to-do of
Beverly Hills. It has had a number of distinguished own-
ers. Grace Moore, the singer, spent some of her happiest
years in it. Later, actor Gene Lockhart lived there, and his
daughter June, who is quite psychic, had a number of
uncanny experiences in it at that time. Clifton Webb him-
self was on friendly footing with the world of the unseen.
He befriended Kenny Kingsley, the professional psychic,
and on more than one occasion confided that he had seen
Grace Moore’s spirit in his house. Evidently the restless
spirit of the late singer stayed on in the house throughout
its occupation by Clifton Webb and his mother, Maybelle.
For it appears to me that the “dancing figure of a woman,”
which the current lady of the house has reportedly seen,
goes back to the Grace Moore period rather than to the
time of Clifton Webb.
Clifton Webb was inordinately happy in this house.
At the height of his motion picture career, surrounded by
friends, he made up for the arid years of his youth when he
had had to struggle for survival. In 1959 his mother passed
away, bringing an end to a close and sometimes overpower-
ing relationship. Webb had never married, nor would he
have wanted to. His leanings had never been hidden from
the world, and he was quite content to let matters be as
they were. When his mother died, Webb became more and
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
more of a recluse. In semi-retirement, he kept to his house
most of the time, seeing fewer friends as the years went on.
In mid-October of 1966 he himself died, almost eight years
after his mother. During those eight years, he probably
continued his relationship with Maybelle, for Clifton Webb
was psychic and believed in life after death. Her clothes
and belongings remained in a locked room in the house
right up to the time of Clifton’s death.
During his twenty years of residence in this house,
Webb had remodeled it somewhat and added a room that
he dubbed the Greek room, which he had furnished and
decorated to his particular taste, taking great care that
everything should be exactly as he wanted it to be. By
mid-January of 1967 the house was on the market. Word
of the availability of this house came to the attention of a
producer at one of the major motion picture studios in
Hollywood. He and his writer-wife had been looking for
precisely such a house. Within a matter of days they pur-
chased it and prepared to move in. With the need for
redecorating and making certain alterations on the house,
the C.s were not able to move in until sometime in May.
Two days before their actual move, they were showing the
house to a friend. While they were busy in another part of
the house, the gentleman found himself alone in the Greek
room. He was wearing contact lenses and felt the need to
clean his lenses at that point. There is a bathroom, deco-
rated in gray, off the Greek room. He entered the bath-
room, put the contact lenses on the shelf and turned on the
water faucet. When he raised his head from the sink the
lenses were no longer there. He searched everywhere but
couldn’t locate them, and they were never found.
The new owners of the house thought nothing of the
matter, but shortly afterwards another event took place that
shook their confidence. On the first night of their stay in
the house Mr. C.’s mother happened to be staying in the
Greek room. Unfamiliar with the bathroom, she found her-
self unable to locate either a toothbrush receptacle or a
glass. She therefore left her toothbrush on the sink. I'he
next morning when she entered the bathroom she found
the wall receptacle open and exposed and her toothbrush
firmly placed into it. Since there had been no one in the
room during the night but herself, she became frightened
and tried to run from the room. To her amazement the
door was locked and resisted opening. In panic, she fled
through the window. Later, calmed down, she returned to
the room.
The following morning she awoke in bed and found
her cigarettes broken in half, tobacco scattered all over the
bed and the package crushed. It then occurred to Mr. and
Mrs. C. that the late Clifton Webb had been vehemently
against smoking in his final years.
Earlier that night Mr. and Mrs. C and Mr. C.’s
mother had been standing near the pool in the courtyard.
All three were looking toward the house through the mas-
ter bedroom into what was then Mrs. C.’s bathroom. Sud-
denly they saw a ghostly swaying figure looking somewhat
like the legendary ectoplasmic ghost. They rubbed their
eyes and looked again, but the figure had disappeared.
Over the next few weeks several more apparitions
were observed by the C.s. In the courtyard in front of the
house they always saw the same tall gray forms, shadowy,
yet with some substance. There was no doubt in their
minds that they were seeing human figures.
Late in July Mrs. C. was coming home one night
around midnight. Stepping into the courtyard, she saw a
form like an hourglass (this time completely stationary) in
the living room to the left of the couch. Finally she got up
enough courage to move closer; when she did so, the form
remained still until it gradually dissolved.
All during those first few weeks the animals in the
house behaved strangely. The C.s had several cats and
dogs, and whenever they would go to certain spots in the
house they would scream in terror and bolt from the area.
One of the dogs would not go into the Greek room no
matter how much he was coaxed. Instead he would howl at
it, and his hackles would rise.
Even the master bedroom was not free from phenom-
ena. Frequently the C.s would awaken in the middle of the
* night to the sound of curtains rustling and perceive a form
of sorts standing in the corner of the room, observing
them.
At first the producer and his wife wondered whether
their own imagination and their knowledge of the back-
ground of the house were creating fantasies in them. Their
doubts were dispelled, however, when they gave a dinner
party and were showing a number of guests through the
house. One friend, a producer who was staying with the
C.s, suddenly stopped dead while walking from the master
bedroom into the hallway, which was then being used as
Mr. C.’s study. He claimed he felt something cold envelop-
ing him. Since he is a man not given to hallucinations and
has no interest in the occult, his statement carried weight
with the C.s. At the time, the producer employed two ser-
vants, a' Mexican maid and a butler who slept in a cottage
to the rear of the house. On several occasions the maid
claimed that a cold presence had attacked her and that
lights had gone on and off without explanation. It terrified
her and she wanted to know what was going on. The pro-
ducer could only shake his head, saying he wished he knew
himself.
The Greek room seemed to be the center of the
activities. Women, especially, staying in the Greek room
often had personal articles moved. Mr. C.’s sister, a great
skeptic, visited them and was put up in that room. On the
third night of her stay she awoke toward dawn feeling a
warm, enveloping embrace from behind her. She screamed,
jumped out of bed, and turned on the lights. There was no
one in the room. The bathroom adjoining that room was
also the scene of many experiences. The toilet paper in it
unrolled itself on numerous occasions. Even more fantastic,
the toilet had several times been used by parties unknown
during the night and left unflushed, even though no human
being had been in the bathroom.
In September Mrs. C. took on additional duties as a
writer and hired a secretary and assistant who worked in
the house with her. But it appeared as if “someone” wasn’t
too pleased with the arrangements. All during the winter,
things kept disappearing from her office or getting moved
about. Her engagement calendar would turn up in the
Greek room, and certain files that were kept in cabinets in
her office would disappear and turn up in other parts of the
house, although no one had placed them there. It appeared
that someone was creating havoc in her professional life,
perhaps to discourage her or perhaps only to play a prank
and put the new owners of the house on notice that a pre-
vious resident hadn’t quite left.
The worst was yet to come. In October there was an
occurrence the C.s will never forget. All that evening the
dog had been howling and running about the house wildly
as if anticipating something dreadful. Sounds were heard
for which there seemed to be no natural explanation. Then,
in the middle of the night, Mr. and Mrs. C. woke up
because of noises both of them heard. Someone was moan-
ing in their bedroom, and as they looked up they saw a
gray figure forming in the corner of the room.
The next morning they realized they had been
through the night on which Clifton Webb had died,
exactly one year to the day. What they had heard was a
reenactment of that terrible moment. From then on the
moaning seemed to abate.
Although neither Mr. nor Mrs. C. were exactly
believers in the occult, they were open-minded enough to
realize that something was terribly wrong in their house.
By now they knew that the previous owner, most likely
Clifton Webb, was dissatisfied with their presence in the
house. They did not understand why, however. True, they
had made certain changes in the house; they had
rearranged the furniture, and they had used the Greek
room as a guest room. They had also made some changes
in the garden and courtyard, especially around the rose
bushes, which had been Mr. Webb’s favorites. But was
that enough of a reason for Mr. Webb to want them out of
the house?
In January of 1968 they were approached by a real
estate agent, out of the blue, on behalf of a couple who had
passed the house once and immediately become interested
in acquiring it. The C.s had no intention of selling, so they
named a fantastically high price, thinking this would end
the matter. They discovered to their surprise that the cou-
ple wanted to buy the house anyway. The C.s then recon-
sidered and decided to look for another house. But they
discovered that prices for similar houses had risen so much
that they might as well stay where they were, and after
some discussion they decided to turn down the offer.
The Latest Adventures of
The Late Clifton Webb
225
That very night Mrs. C. was awakened at 3:30 A.M.
by a rustling sound among the curtains in the master bed-
room. She looked toward the disturbance and noticed an
ectoplasmic form moving across the room and back. As she
stared at it in disbelief, she heard a voice saying, “Well,
well,” over and over. It had the sound of a fading echo and
gradually disappeared along with the apparition. Several
days in a row Mrs. C. saw the same figure and heard the
voice exclaim, as if in amusement, “Well, well, well, well.”
At the same time, she received the telepathic impression
that the ghost was not feeling unfriendly toward her any-
more and that he wanted her and her husband to know
that he didn’t mind their staying on in the house.
By now Mrs. C. was convinced that the ghost was
none other than Clifton Webb, and she approached F. M.,
another producer, who had been a close personal friend of
the actors, with a view toward asking some personal ques-
tions about him. When she reported the voice’s saying,
“Well, well, well, well” over and over, Mr. M. remarked
that Webb had been in the habit of saying “Well, well”
frequently, sometimes for no apparent reason. With that
Mrs. C. felt that the identity of the ghostly visitor was
firmly established.
That night she was awakened again by a feeling that
she was not alone. She looked up and saw the silhouette of
a man. This time it was clearly Clifton Webb. He was
standing just outside the bedroom window in the court-
yard. As she looked at the apparition, it occurred to her
that he seemed taller than he had been in his movie roles.
For what seemed to her several minutes, but may have
been only a few seconds, she was able to observe the shad-
owy apparition of the actor looking into the house directly
at her. Shortly afterward it dissolved into thin air. The tall
appearance of the figure puzzled her somewhat, so she
checked into it. To her amazement she discovered that
Webb had actually been six feet tall in life.
A few days later she encountered Mr. Webb again.
Her attention was drawn by the strange behavior of her
cats, which ran into her office from the courtyard. She was
in the habit of taking a shortcut from her office to the
kitchen by walking diagonally across the courtyard. As she
did so this time, she noticed the tall, erect figure of Mr.
Webb in the living room. He seemed to be walking slowly
across the living room as if in search of something.
It had become clear to Mr. and Mrs. C. that Webb
was not altogether satisfied with the way things were, even
though he seemed to be somewhat more friendly toward
them. So they invited me to the house to investigate the
situation with the help of a reputable psychic. I in turn
asked Sybil Leek to come along with me.
On a Thursday night in October 1968 a group of us
met at the house. Besides Sybil and me there were my wife
Catherine, Sybil's son Julian, and several people who had
known Clifton Webb intimately. They had been asked not
out of curiosity but to help identify any material of an evi-
dential nature that might come through Sybil in trance.
There was the distinguished playwright Garson Kanin, his
actress wife, the late Ruth Gordon, Rupert Allen, a public
relations man who had worked for Webb for many years,
and two or three others who had known him.
Sybil, of course, knew nothing about the circum-
stances of the case, nor why she had been brought to this
house. During dinner I was careful to steer the conversa-
tion away from the occult, and Sybil and I stayed out of
the Greek room. But on her way to the house Sybil had
already had her first clairvoyant impression. She described
a tall, slender and "sexless” individual who had not been
born in California. She also mentioned that she felt the ini-
tial V or something sounding like it connected with a per-
sonality in the house.
After we had grouped ourselves around Sybil in the
Greek room, I began the proceedings, as is my custom, by
asking the medium for clairvoyant impressions. My hope
was that Mr. Webb might pay us a visit, or at any rate tell
Sybil what it was that he wanted or what had kept him tied
to his former home in so forceful and physical a manner.
"Sybil,” I said, “do you get any impressions about
the room?”
"I don’t like this room,” Sybil said sternly. "I
wouldn t choose to be in it. I have a strange feeling on my
right-hand side toward the window. I feel somebody died
here very suddenly. Also I’ve had for some time now the
initial V and the word Meadows on my mind. I would say
this is the least likable room in the house. The strange
thing is, I don’t feel a male or a female presence; I feel
something sexless.”
"What sort of person is this?”
“I feel an atmosphere of frustration, an inability to do
anything.”
"Why is this personality frustrated?”
"Bad relationships.”
I decided it was time to begin trance. After brief sug-
gestions Sybil went under quickly and completely. I
addressed myself now to the unseen presences in the
atmosphere. "Whoever might be present in this room,
come forward, please, peacefully and as a friend, so that we
may speak to you. We have assembled here as friends. We
have come to help you find peace and happiness in this
house. Use this instrument, the medium; come peacefully
and speak to us so that we may be of help to you in what-
ever may trouble you.”
After a moment Sybil started to toss, eyes closed,
breathing heavily. “Can’t do it, won’t do it. No, I won’t do
it,” she mumbled.
I asked that whoever was speaking through her speak
somewhat louder since I had difficulty making out the
words. A sardonic smile stole across Sybil’s face now, very
unlike her own expression. "I’m thirsty, I want a drink, get
me a drink.”
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
226
I promised the entity a drink a little later, but first I
wanted to know who it was who had come to speak to us.
Instead, Sybil sighed, “It’s so cold here, chill, chill. I want
to sing and sing. Sing, sing, sing, la, la, la, jolly good
time.’’
"What kind of a song do you want to sing?” I asked,
going along with the gag.
"Dead men tell no tales.”
"Wouldn’t you like to talk to us and tell us about
yourself?”
“I want to sing.”
"What are you doing here?”
“Writing, writing a song.”
“Are you a writer?”
"I do a lot of things.”
“What else can you do?”
"Anything, anything.”
“Come on, tell me about it.”
“No.”
“How do I know you can do those things?” I said,
using the teasing method now. “You haven't even told me
your name.”
A snort came from Sybil’s lips. “Webb of intrigue.”
"What did you say? Would you mind repeating it?”
"Webb, Webb, W-E-B-B.”
“Is that your name?”
"Webb, Webb, Webb.”
"Why are you here?”
"I need friends.”
"Well, you’ve got them.”
“Need friends. I’m lonely. I need to sing.”
“Are you a singer?”
"I sing music; music is good.”
"Why are you in this particular house?”
“I have a right to be here.”
"Tell us why. What does it mean to you?”
"Money, friendship.”
“Whose friendship?”
"Where is Wade? Wade, to drink with. People drive
me mad.”
"What is it that troubles you?” I asked, as softly as I
could.
“I won’t tell anyone. No help from anyone. There is
no help.”
“Trust me.”
“I’ll drink another glass.”
“I’ve come all the way from New York to help you.”
“New York — I’ll go to New York and watch the peo-
ple, shows, singing.”
"Are you alone?”
“Yes. Nobody wants people like me.”
“That isn’t true, for I wouldn’t be here if we didn’t
have the feeling of friendship toward you. Why do you
think we’ve come here?”
“Curiosity. There is a reason behind everything.
Who are you?”
I explained who I was and that I’d come to try and
understand him and if possible set him free from his
earthly ties. He had difficulty understanding what I was
talking about.
"I want to help you.”
“Late.”
"Please let me help you.”
“Webb.”
“Yes, I heard the name,” I acknowledged.
"It means nothing.”
“I believe there was an actor by that name.”
Sybil started to sob now. "Acting, acting all my life.”
“What about this house: why are you here?”
“I like it.”
"What does it mean to you?”
“What does it mean to me? Lots of money here.
Friends. Friends who look after me.”
“Do I know them?”
“A newspaperman; I hate newspapermen. Nosey bas-
tards. Let’s have a drink. Why don’t we have some
music?”
“What do you do here all day long?”
“I’m here to drink, look around for a friend or two.
I’d like to know a few people. Get some work.”
"What kind of work?”
“Contracts. Contracts must be somehow fulfilled.”
"Contracts with whom?”
"There’s a man called Meadows. Harry Meadows.”
“Do you have a contract with him?”
“No good.”
“What were you supposed to do?”
“Sign away the house.”
“What sort of business is he in?”
“Don’t know what to tell you.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“He came here. Sixty -four.”
“I’d like to help you find peace, Mr. Webb,” I said
seriously.
The entity laughed somewhat bitterly. “Mr. Webb.”
“How else would you want me to call you?”
"Mr. Webb — it’s finished.”
"Perhaps I can help you.”
“Who cares, Cathy.”
“Who’s Cathy?”
"Where am I, I am lost.”
I assured the entity that he was not lost but merely
speaking through the medium of another person. Webb
obviously had no idea that such things as trance medi-
umship were possible. He was, of course, quite shocked to
find himself in the body of Sybil Leek, even temporarily. I
calmed him down and again offered to help. What was it
that troubled him most?
The Latest Adventures of
The Late Clifton Webb
227
“I can't do anything now. I am drunk, I want to
sing.”
Patiently I explained what his true status was. What
he was experiencing were memories from his past; the
future was quite different.
"I want to say a lot, but nobody listens.”
“I am listening.”
“I’m in trouble. Money, drink, Helen,”
“What about Helen?”
"I’m peculiar.”
"That’s your own private affair, and nobody’s criti-
cizing you for being peculiar. Also you are very talented.”
“Yes.” One could tell that he liked the idea of being
acclaimed even after his death.
"Now tell me about Helen. Is she in one of your
wills?”
“She’s dead, you idiot. I wouldn’t leave anything to a
dead woman. She was after my money.”
“What was Helen’s full name?”
"Helen T. Meadows.”
“How old were you on your last birthday?”
"We don’t have birthdays here.”
“Ahah,” I said, "but then you know where you are and
what you are.”
“I do,” the entity said, stretching the oo sound with
an inimitable comic effect. Anyone who has ever heard
Clifton Webb speak on screen or stage would have recog-
nized the sound.
"You know then that you’re over there. Good. Then
at least we don’t have to pretend with each other that I
don’t know and you don’t know.”
"I’m tired.”
“Was there any other person who knew you and
Helen?”
“Cathy, Cathy was a little thing that came around.”
“Was there a male friend you might remember by
name?”
There was distrust in Sybil’s voice when the entity
answered. "You’re a newspaperman.”
"I’m not here as a journalist but primarily to help
you. Does the name Conrad mean anything to you?” I’d
been told by friends of the late Clifton Webb to ask this. I
myself had no idea who this Conrad was or is.
“Hmmm,” the entity replied, acknowledging the
question. "Initial V, V for Victory.” At the same time,
Sybil took hold of a chain she used as a belt and made an
unmistakable gesture as if she were about to strangle some-
one with it.
“Who was Conrad? Are you trying to show me some-
thing?”
Unexpectedly Sybil broke into sobbing again. “Damn
you, leave me alone.”
The sobbing got heavier and heavier. I decided it was
time to release the entity. “Go in peace then; go in peace
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
228
and never be drawn back to this house where you’ve had
such unhappy experiences. Go and join the loved ones
awaiting you on the other side of life. Good-bye, Mr.
Webb. Go in peace. Leave this instrument now and let her
return to her own body without any memory of what has
come through her entranced lips.”
A few moments later Sybil awoke, startled, rubbing
her eyes and trying to figure out where she was for a
moment. “I do feel a bit peculiar,” Sybil said, slightly shak-
en. “Maybe I will have a glass of wine.”
After everyone had recovered from the tense attention
given to Sybil's trance performance, I invited discussion of
what had just transpired. Those who had known Clifton
Webb in life volunteered the information that at times
Sybil’s face had looked somewhat like Webb’s, at least to
the extent that a woman’s face can look like a man's. Her
voice, too, had reminded them of the actor’s voice — espe-
cially in the middle of the session when the trance seemed
to have been deepest. As for the names mentioned, Rupert
Allen explained that the “Cathy” Sybil had named was a
secretary whom Webb had employed for only a week.
Also, the Helen Meadows mentioned was probably Helen
Mathews, a long-time secretary and assistant of the late
actor. There had been a great deal of discussion about a
will in which the assistant figured. Quite possibly, Webb
and Miss Mathews had been at odds toward the end of his
life. As for his wanting to sing, Rupert Allen reminded us
that long before Clifton Webb had become a famous actor
he had been one of the top song-and-dance men on Broad-
way, had appeared in many musicals and musical revues
and had always loved the musical theater. The mannerisms
and some of the phrases, Mr. Allen confirmed, were very
much in the style of Clifton Webb, as was his negative
reaction to the idea of having a newspaperman present.
There had been no near relatives living at the time of
Webb’s death. Under the circumstances the estate, includ-
ing the house, would go to whomever he had chosen in his
will. Was there a second will that had never been found?
Was it this need to show the world that a second will
existed that kept Clifton Webb tied to his former home?
After the memorable seance with Sybil Leek, I
inquired of the owners from time to time whether all was
quiet. For a while it was. But then reports of Mr. Webb’s
reappearance reached me. I realized, if course, that the pro-
ducer’s wife herself, being phychic to a great extent, was
supplying some of the energies necessary for Webb to
manifest himself in this manner. But I was equally sure
that she did not do so consciously. If anything, she wanted
a quiet house. But the apparition of Webb and perhaps of
Grace Moore, if indeed it was she in the garden, managed
to convince Mrs. C. of the reality of psychic phenomena.
She no longer feared to discuss her experiences in public.
At first her friends looked at her askance, but gradually
they came to accept the sincerity and objectivity of her tes-
timony. Others who had never previously mentioned any
unusual experiences admitted they had felt chills and
uncanny feelings in various parts of the house while visit-
ing the place.
Clifton Webb continues to maintain a foothold in the
house, for better or for worse. Perhaps he likes the atten-
tion, or perhaps he’s merely looking for that other will. At
any rate, he no longer seems to delight in surprising the
current owners of the house. After all, they know who he is
and what he’s up to. Mr. Webb always knew the value of a
good entrance. In time, I am sure, he will also know how
to make his exit.
* 31
The Haunted Rocking Chair
at Ash Lawn
Not ONLY HOUSES are haunted, even furniture can be the
recipient of ghostly attention. Not very far from Castle
Hill, Virginia is one of America’s most important historical
buildings, the country home once owned by James Mon-
roe, where he and Thomas Jefferson often exchanged con-
versation and also may have made some very big political
decisions in their time. Today this is a modest appearing
cottage, rather than a big manor house, and it is well kept.
It may be visited by tourists at certain hours, since it is
considered an historical shrine. If any of my readers are in
the area and feel like visiting Ash Lawn, I would suggest
they do not mention ghosts too openly with the guides or
caretakers.
Actually the ghostly goings-on center around a cer-
tain wooden rocking chair in the main room. This has been
seen to rock without benefit of human hands. I don’t know
how many people have actually seen the chair rock, but
Mrs. J. Massey, who lived in the area for many years, has
said to me when I visited the place, “I will tell anyone and
I have no objection to its being known, that I’ve seen not
once but time and time again the rocking chair rocking
exactly as though someone were in it. My brother John has
seen it too. Whenever we touched it it would stop rock-
ing.”
This house, though small and cozy, nevertheless was
James Monroe’s favorite house even after he moved to the
bigger place which became his stately home later on in his
career. At Ash Lawn he could get away from his affairs of
state, away from public attention, to discuss matters of
great concern with his friend Thomas Jefferson who lived
only two miles away at Monticello.
Who is the ghost in the rocking chair? Perhaps it is
only a spirit, not an earthbound ghost, a spirit who has
become so attached to his former home and refuge from
the affairs of state, that he still likes to sit now and then in
his own rocking chair thinking things over.
The haunted chair at Ash Lawn
The Haunted Rocking Chair at Ash Lawn
229
# 32
A Visit with Carole Lombard’s Ghost
In 1967 I first heard of a haunted house where the late
Carole Lombard had lived. Adriana S. was by vocation a
poet and writer, but she made her living in various ways,
usually as a housekeeper. In the late forties she had been
engaged as such by a motion picture producer of some
renown. She supervised the staff, a job she performed very
well indeed, being an excellent organizer. Carefully inspect-
ing the house before agreeing to take the position, she had
found it one of those quiet elegant houses in the best part
of Hollywood that could harbor nothing but good.
Confidently, Adriana took the job.
A day or two after her arrival, when she was fast
asleep in her room, she found herself aroused in the middle
of the night by someone shaking her. Fully awake, she
realized that she was being shaken by the shoulder. She
sat up in bed, but there was no one to be seen. Even though
she could not with her ordinary sight distinguish any
human being in the room, her psychic sense told her
immediately that there was someone standing next to her
bed. Relaxing for a moment and closing her eyes, Adriana
tried to tune in on the unseen entity. Immediately she saw,
standing next to her bed, a tall, slim woman with blonde
hair down to her shoulders. What made the apparition or
psychic impression the more upsetting to Adriana was the
fact that the woman was bathed in blood and quite obvi-
ously suffering.
Adriana realized that she had been contacted by a
ghostly entity but could not get herself to accept the reality
of the phenomenon, and hopefully ascribed it to an upset
stomach, or to the new surroundings and the strains of
having just moved in. At the same time, she prayed for the
restless one. But six or seven days later the same thing
happened again. This time Adriana was able to see the
ghost more clearly. She was impressed with the great
beauty of the woman she saw and decided to talk about her
experience with her employers in the morning. The pro-
ducer’s wife listened very quietly to the description of the
ghostly visitor, then nodded. When Adriana mentioned
that the apparition had been wearing a light suit covered
with blood, the lady of the house drew back in surprise. It
was only then that Adriana learned that the house had once
been Carole Lombard’s and that the late movie star had
lived in it very happily with Clark Gable. Carole Lombard
had died tragically in an airplane accident during World
War II, when her plane, en route to the East where she was
going to do some USO shows, hit a mountain during a
storm. At the time, she was wearing a light-colored suit.
Several years afterward I investigated the house in the
company of an actress who is very psychic. It so happened
that the house now belonged to her doctor, a lady by the
name of Doris A. In trance, my actress friend was able to
make contact with the spirit of Carole Lombard. What
kept her coming back to the house where she once lived
was a feeling of regret for having left Clark Gable, and also
the fact that she and Gable had had a quarrel just before
her death. Luckily, we were able to pacify the restless
spirit, and presumably the house is now peaceful.
» 33
Mrs. Surratt’s Ghost at Fort McNair
Fort McNair is one of the oldest military posts in the
United States and has had many other names. First it was
known as the Arsenal, then called the Washington Arsenal,
and in 1826 a penitentiary was built on its grounds, which
was a grim place indeed. Because of disease, President
Lincoln ordered the penitentiary closed in 1862, but as
soon as Lincoln had been murdered, the penitentiary was
back in business again.
Among the conspirators accused of having murdered
President Lincoln, the one innocent person was Mrs. Mary
Surratt, whose sole crime consisted of having run a board-
ing house where her son had met with some of the conspir-
ators. But as I have shown in a separate investigation of the
boarding house in Clifton, Maryland, her son John Surratt
CHAPTER FIVE: Famous Ghosts
230
was actually a double-agent, so the irony is even greater.
She was the first woman hanged in the United States, and
today historians are fully convinced that she was totally
innocent. The trial itself was conducted in a most undemo-
cratic manner, and it is clear in retrospect that the conspir-
ators never had a chance. But the real power behind the
Lincoln assassination, who might have been one of his own
political associates, wanted to make sure no one was left
who knew anything about the plot, and so Mary Surratt
had to be sacrificed.
There is a small, ordinary looking building called
Building 21 at Fort McNair, not far from what is now a
pleasant tennis court. It was in this building that Mary
Surratt was imprisoned and to this day sobs are being
heard in the early hours of the morning by a number of
people being quartered in the building. The penitentiary
stands no more and the land itself is now part of the tennis
court. Next to Building 21 is an even smaller house, which
serves as quarters for a number of officers. When I visited
the post a few years ago, the Deputy Post Commander was
quartered there. Building 20 contains five apartments,
which have been remodeled a few years ago. The ceilings
have been lowered, the original wooden floors have been
replaced with asbestos tile. Unexplained fires occurred
there in the 1960s. The execution of the conspirators,
including Mrs. Mary Surratt, took place just a few yards
from where Building 21 now stands. The graves of the
hanged conspirators were in what is now the tennis court,
but the coffins were removed a few years after the trial and
there are no longer any bodies in the ground.
Captain X. — and his name must remain secret for
obvious reasons — had lived in apartment number 5 for sev-
eral years prior to my interviewing him. He has not heard
the sobbing of Mary Surratt but he has heard a strange
sound, like high wind.
However, Captain and Mrs. C. occupied quarters on
the third floor of Building 20 for several years until 1972.
This building, incidentally, is the only part of the former
penitentiary still standing. The C.s’ apartment consisted of
the entire third floor and it was on this floor that the con-
spirators, including John Wilkes Booth, who was already
dead, were tried and sentenced to die by hanging. Mary
Surratt’s cell was also located on the third floor of the
building. Mrs. C. has had ESP experiences before, but she
was not quite prepared for what occurred to her when she
moved onto the post at Fort McNair.
"My experiences in our apartment at Fort McNair
were quite unlike any other I have ever known.
“On several occasions, very late at night, someone
could be heard walking above, yet we were on the top
floor.” One night the walking became quite heavy, and a
window in the room which had been Mrs. Surratt’s cell
was continually being rattled, as if someone were trying to
get in or out, and there seemed to be a definite presence in
the house. This happened in April, as did the trial of the
conspirators.
■ m
The haunted prison at Fort McNair where Mrs.
Surrat was held
I doubt that it would be easy to visit Fort McNair for
any except official reasons, such as perhaps an historical
investigation. But for better or for worse the building in
question is located on the northeast corner of the tennis
courts and Fort McNair itself is in Washington, D.C., at
the corner of Fourth and P Streets and easy to reach from
the center of the city.
Mrs. Surratt’s Ghost at Fort McNair
231
CHAPTER SIX
This House
is Haunted
PROBABLY NO OTHER word picture has had a more profound influence on people’s imagination
than the idea of a truly haunted house. After all, a haunted house is not a home the way peo-
ple like to think of a home. Sharing it with someone who happens to be dead can be very
upsetting, both to the flesh -and -blood inhabitants of the house and the ghost who happens to be stuck
in it.
Most people think of a haunted house as something sinister, threatening, and altogether undesir-
able. In Ireland, calling someone’s house haunted can bring a very substantial lawsuit for defamation
of character — of the house’s character, that is. In America, on the other hand, such a reputation,
deserved or not, generally enhances the value of the property.
WHAT EXACTLY IS A HAUNTED HOUSE?
It can be a house, apartment, or an abode of any kind where people live, eat, and sleep. What distin-
guishes a haunted home from all others is the fact that one (or more) of the previous tenants or owners
has not quite left the premises, and considers herself or himself fully in residence.
These are neither aliens from afar nor are they monsters but simply folks like you who used to
live there, died, and somehow got trapped into not being able to leave for better places — the other side
of life, or what religion likes to call Heaven, though there really is no such place in the sense that reli-
gion describes it. Even the devil gets short shrift in parapsychology. But the next dimension, a world
as real as this one, does exist, and people live in it. These are the people who passed over without
problems. Those who experienced some sort of trouble and did not pass over are the ones we call
earthbound spirits or ghosts.
With haunted houses, the emphasis, and thus the emotional bond, is the house, not the people
living in it. The house can contain either pleasant memories or, more often, traumatic ones, which
prevented the transition from occurring at the
time of physical death in the first place. This House is Haunted
233
Ghosts may appear or make themselves heard in any
spot that had meaning for them when they were living, and
particularly during the time of their death. Thus, a ghost
does not necessarily need a house in which to manifest. But
a truly haunted house does need a ghost or ghosts to qual-
ify for the expression, unless of course we are talking about
psychic impressions from the past only. Of this, more later.
* * *
Thanks to movies and television, haunted houses are
inevitably portrayed as sinister-looking, dilapidated places,
manor houses, castles — anything but a clean, up-to-date
apartment on Park Avenue. The truth is that for a haunt-
ing to occur, the appearance, age, or nature of the house is
totally immaterial, if you will pardon the pun. Thus, there
are bona fide haunted houses all over the world, of any age,
from ancient castles to recently built skyscrapers, from
rural hideaways to modern night clubs.
What they all have in common is the presence of an
earthbound spirit, a ghost, unable to break free of the emo-
tional turmoil of his or her physical passing.
Usually there are certain phenomena associated with a
haunting, such as cold spots or the "feel” of a human
presence, though the presence remains unseen. These phe-
nomena are not manufactured by the resident ghost but are
the natural by-products of its presence and owe their
impact purely to electromagnetic reactions to the presence
of a human being in the etheric body or aura, which is,
after all, a strong electromagnetic field itself.
FINALLY, SHOULD YOU BE AFRAID OF GHOSTS?
No, not even if you’re a kid. Be afraid of television pro-
grams espousing violence and drugs instead.
Ghosts are so caught up in their own confusion and
misery, they are not about to harm you. They are not in
the business of frightening people either. But, in certain
cases on record, the resident ghost has put in appearances
or caused phenomena, with the intent of ridding the house
of the new tenants.
Just as some folks call in a "Ghost Hunter” to rid the
house of these unwanted pests, the ghosts fight back by
making the new tenants feel uncomfortable. After all, they
were there first.
Unfortunately, for both house owner or tenant and
ghost, there is a terrible lack of knowledge regarding the
qualifications a true investigator of the paranormal must
have. Charlatans abound, claiming expertise masquerading
as curiosity; they “look around” the haunted premises with
Geiger counters and electronic instruments such as oscillo-
scopes and proclaim the presence of ghosts just because
their instruments show fluctuations. Real, academically
trained parapsychologists don’t do this; they work with
trained, reputable sensitive psychics with good track
records. Television programs introduce such pseudo-inves-
tigators as "renowned parapsychologists,” which they are
not. In fact, they have day jobs as waiters and clerks. One
particularly obnoxious "investigator” goes around accompa-
nied by his psychic-reader wife, a former priest, and a for-
mer police officer — looking for demons and the devil's hoof
prints in haunted houses that would require only the visit
of a trained psychical researcher, perhaps with a good
trance medium, to resolve the problem.
One needs neither the likes of "demonologists” or
"vampyrists” to come to grips with an unwanted haunting.
Common sense will prevail when you realize you are faced
only with a past event and someone — a human being — in
trouble at the time of passing.
People have come to me for counsel and help when
they could not understand the nature of their haunting.
Frequently, I have visited them, often in the company of a
good psychic, and managed to answer many questions.
FEAR IS THE ABSENCE OF INFORMATION
Haunted houses know neither barriers in time nor space,
nor distance. Some of these can be visited, at least on the
outside, since a road is never (or hardly ever) private.
Many, however, are private houses, and it would take a
great deal of ingenuity to persuade the owner to let you in.
Some sites, like the Queen Mary, or a haunted garden,
such as Versailles and Trianon, may charge nominal
admission because of their status as tourist attractions, not
because they have ghosts “on the payroll.” In some cases,
the ghost is gone but an imprint remains, and you might
still feel something of it. In other cases, the ghost has never
left.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
234
» 34
The Bank Street Ghost
On JUNE 26, 1957, 1 picked up a copy of the New York
Times, that most unghostly of all newspapers, and soon was
reading Meyer Berger’s column, "About New York.” That
column wasn’t about houses or people this particular day.
It was about ghosts.
Specifically, Mr. Berger gave a vivid description of a
house at 11 Bank Street, in Greenwich Village, where a
"rather friendly” ghost had apparently settled to share the
appointments with the flesh -and -blood occupants. The lat-
ter were Dr. Harvey Slatin, an engineer, and his wife, Yeffe
Kimball, who is of Osage Indian descent and well known
as a painter.
The house in which they lived was then 125 years
old, made of red brick, and still in excellent condition.
Digging into the past of their home, the Slatins estab-
lished that a Mrs. Maccario had run the house as a nine-
teen-room boarding establishment for years before selling it
to them. However, Mrs. Maccario wasn’t of much help
when questioned. She knew nothing of her predecessors.
After the Slatins had acquired the house and the
other tenants had finally left, they did the house over. The
downstairs became one long living room, extending from
front to back, and adorned by a fireplace and a number of
good paintings and ceramics. In the back part of this room,
the Slatins placed a heavy wooden table. The rear door led
to a small garden, and a narrow staircase led to the second
floor.
The Slatins were essentially “uptown” people, far
removed from any Bohemian notions or connotations.
What attracted them about Greenwich Village was essen-
tially its quiet charm and artistic environment. They gath-
ered around them friends of similar inclinations, and many
an evening was spent “just sitting around,” enjoying the
tranquil mood of the house.
During these quiet moments, they often thought they
heard a woman’s footsteps on the staircase, sometimes
crossing the upper floors, sometimes a sound like a light
hammering. Strangely enough, the sounds were heard more
often in the daytime than at night, a habit most unbecom-
ing a traditional haunt. The Slatins were never frightened
by this. They simply went to investigate what might have
caused the noises, but never found any visible evidence.
There was no “rational” explanation for them, either. One
Sunday in January of 1957, they decided to clock the
noises, and found that the ghostly goings-on lasted all day;
during these hours, they would run upstairs to trap the
trespasser — only to find empty rooms and corridors. Call-
ing out to the unseen brought no reply, either. An English
carpenter by the name of Arthur Brodie was as well
adjusted to reality as are the Slatins, but he also heard the
footsteps. His explanation that “one hears all sorts of noises
in old houses” did not help matters any. Sadie, the maid,
heard the noises too, and after an initial period of panic,
got accustomed to them as if they were part of the house’s
routine — which indeed they were!
One morning in February, Arthur Brodie was work-
ing in a room on the top floor, hammering away at the ceil-
ing. He was standing on a stepladder that allowed him to
just about touch the ceiling. Suddenly, plaster and dust
showered down on his head, and something heavy fell and
hit the floor below. Mrs. Slatin in her first-floor bedroom
heard the thump. Before she could investigate the source of
the loud noise, there was Brodie at her door, saying: “It’s
me, Ma’am, Brodie. I’m leaving the job! I’ve found the
body!” But he was being facetious. What he actually found
was a black-painted metal container about twice the size of
a coffee can. On it there was a partially faded label, read-
ing: "The last remains of Elizabeth Bullock, deceased. Cre-
mated January 21, 1931." The label also bore the imprint of
the United States Crematory Company, Ltd., Middle Vil-
lage, Borough of Queens, New York, and stamped on the
top of the can was the number — 37251 . This can is in the
Slatins’ house to this very day.
Mrs. Slatin, whose Indian forebears made her accept
the supernatural without undue alarm or even amazement,
quietly took the find and called her husband at his office.
Together with Brodie, Dr. Slatin searched the hole in the
ceiling, but found only dusty rafters.
Curiously, the ceiling that had hidden the container
dated back at least to 1880, which was long before Eliza-
beth Bullock had died. One day, the frail woman crossed
Hudson Street, a few blocks from the Slatin residence. A
motorist going at full speed saw her too late, and she was
run over. Helpful hands carried her to a nearby drugstore,
while other by-standers called for an ambulance. But help
arrived too late for Mrs. Bullock. She died at the drugstore
before any medical help arrived. But strangely enough,
when Dr. Slatin looked through the records, he found that
Mrs. Bullock had never lived at 1 1 Bank Street at all!
Still, Mrs. Bullock’s ashes were found in that house.
How to explain that? In the crematory’s books, her home
address was listed at 1 13 Perry Street. Dr. Slatin called on
Charles Dominick, the undertaker in the case. His place of
business had been on West 11th Street, not far from Bank
Street. Unfortunately, Mr. Dominick had since died.
The Slatins then tried to locate the woman’s relatives,
if any. The trail led nowhere. It was as if the ghost of the
deceased wanted to protect her secret. When the search
seemed hopeless, the Slatins put the container with Mrs.
Bullock’s ashes on the piano in the large living room, feel-
ing somehow that Mrs. Bullock’s ghost might prefer that
place of honor to being cooped up in the attic. They got so
used to it that even Sadie, the maid, saw nothing extraordi-
nary in dusting it right along with the rest of the furniture
and bric-a-brac.
The Bank Street Ghost
235
The house of the “Little Old Lady” Ghost on
Bank Street
Her ashes after their discovery in the attic
Still, the Slatins hoped that someone would claim the
ashes sooner or later. Meanwhile, they considered them-
selves the custodians of Mrs. Bullock’s last remains. And
apparently they had done right by Elizabeth, for the foot-
steps and disturbing noises stopped abruptly when the can
was found and placed on the piano in the living room.
One more strange touch was told by Yeffe Kimball to
the late Meyer Berger. It seems that several weeks before
the ashes of Mrs. Bullock were discovered, someone rang
the doorbell and inquired about rooms. Mrs. Slatin recalls
that it was a well-dressed young man, and that she told
him they would not be ready for some time, but that she
would take his name in order to notify him when they
were. The young man left a card, and Mrs. Slatin still
recalls vividly the name on it. It was E. C. Bullock. Inci-
dentally, the young man never did return.
It seems odd that Mrs. Slatin was not more non-
plussed by the strange coincidence of the Bullock name on
the container and card, but, as I have already stated, Mrs.
Slatin is quite familiar with the incursions from the nether
world that are far more common than most of us would
like to think. To her, it seemed something odd, yes, but
also something that no doubt would “work itself out.” She
was neither disturbed nor elated over the continued pres-
ence in her living room of Mrs. Bullock’s ashes. Mrs. Slatin
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
236
is gifted with psychic talents, and therefore not afraid of
the invisible. She takes the unseen visitors as casually as
the flesh-and-blood ones, and that is perhaps the natural
way to look at it, after all.
Greenwich Village has so many haunted or allegedly
haunted houses that a case like the Slatins’ does not neces-
sarily attract too much attention from the local people.
Until Meyer Berger’s interview appeared in the Times, not
many people outside of the Slatins’ immediate circle of
friends knew about the situation.
Mr. Berger, who was an expert on Manhattan folk-
lore, knew the Slatins, and also knew about ghosts. He
approached the subject sympathetically, and the Slatins
were pleased. They had settled down to living comfortably
in their ghost house, and since the noises had stopped, they
gave the matter no further thought.
I came across the story in the Times in June of 1957,
and immediately decided to follow up on it. I don’t know
whether my friend and medium, Mrs. Ethel Meyers, also
read the article; it is possible that she did. At any rate, I
told her nothing more than that a haunted house existed in
the Village and she agreed to come with me to investigate
it. I then called the Slatins and, after some delay, managed
to arrange for a seance to take place on July 17, 1957, at
9:30 P.M. Present were two friends of the Slatins, Mr. and
Mrs. Anderson, Meyer Berger, the Slatins, Mrs. Meyers,
and myself.
Immediately upon entering the house and sitting
down at the table, around which we had grouped ourselves,
Mrs. Meyers went into trance. Just as she "went under”
and was still in that borderline condition where clairvoy-
ance touches true trance, she described the presence of a
little woman who walked slowly, being paralysed on one
side, and had a heart condition. "She’s Betty,” Mrs. Mey-
ers murmured, as she went under. Now the personality of
Betty started to use the vocal apparatus of the medium.
Our medium continued in her trance state: "He
didn’t want me in the family plot — my brother — I wasn’t
even married in their eyes. . . .But I was married before
God . . . Edward Bullock .... I want a Christian burial in the
shades of the Cross — any place where the cross is — but not
with them!” This was said with so much hatred and emo-
tion that I tried to persuade the departed Betty to desist, or
at least to explain her reasons for not wishing to join her
family in the cemetery.
“I didn’t marry in the faith,” she said, and mentioned
that her brother was Eddie, that they came from Pleas-
antville, New York, and that her mother’s maiden name
was Elizabeth McCuller. "I’m at rest now,” she added in a
quieter mood.
How did her ashes come to be found in the attic of a
house that she never even lived in?
“I went with Eddie,” Betty replied. "There was a family
fight. . .my husband went with Eddie. . .steal the ashes. . .
pay for no burial. . .he came back and took them from
Eddie. . .hide ashes. . .Charles knew it. . .made a roof over
the house. . .ashes came through the roof. . .so Eddie can't
find them.
I asked were there any children?
"Eddie and Grade. Gracie died as a baby, and Eddie
now lives in California. Charlie protects me!” she added,
referring to her husband.
At this point I asked the departed what was the point
of staying on in this house now? Why not go on into the
great world beyond, where she belonged? But evidently the
ghost didn’t feel that way at all! "I want a cross over my
head. . .have two lives to live now. . .and I like being with
you!” she said, bowing toward Mrs. Slatin. Mrs. Slatin
smiled. She didn’t mind in the least having a ghost as a
boarder. “What about burial in your family plot?” That
would seem the best, I suggested. The ghost became
vehement.
“Ma never forgave me. I can never go with her and
rest. I don’t care much. When she’s forgiven me, maybe
it’ll be all right. . .only where there’s a green tree cross —
and where there’s no more fighting over the bones. . .1
want only to be set free, and there should be peace. . .1
never had anything to do with them. . . . Just because I
loved a man out of the faith, and so they took my bones
and fought over them, and then they put them up in this
place, and let them smoulder up there, so nobody could
touch them. . .foolish me! When they’re mixed up with the
Papal State....”
Did her husband hide the ashes all by himself?
“There was a Peabody, too. He helped him.”
Who cremated her?
“It was Charles’ wish, and it wasn’t Eddie’s and
therefore, they quarreled. Charlie was a Presbyterian. . .and
he would have put me in his Church, but I could not
offend them all. They put it beyond my reach through the
roof; still hot. . .they stole it from the crematory.”
Where was your home before, I asked.
“Lived close by,” she answered, and as if to impress
upon us again her identity, added — “Bullock!”
Throughout the seance, the ghost had spoken with a
strong Irish brogue. The medium’s background is not
Irish, and I have a fine ear for authenticity of language,
perhaps because I speak seven of them, and can recognize
many more. This was not the kind of brogue a clever actor
puts on. This was a real one.
As the entranced medium served the cause of Mrs.
Bullock, I was reminded of the time I first heard the tape
recordings of what became later known as Bridie Murphy.
I remember the evening when the author of The Search for
Bridie Murphy, Morey Bernstein, let me and a small group
of fellow researchers in on an exciting case he had recently
been working on. The voice on the tape, too, had an
authentic Irish brogue, and a flavor no actor, no matter
how brilliant, could fully imitate!
Now the medium seemed limp — as the ghost of Eliz-
abeth Bullock withdrew. A moment later, Mrs. Meyers
awoke, none the worse for having been the link between
two worlds.
After the seance, I suggested to Mrs. Slatin that the
can containing the ashes be buried in her garden, beneath
the tree I saw through the back window. But Mrs. Slatin
wasn’t sure. She felt that her ghost was just as happy to
stay on the piano.
I then turned my attention to Mrs. Slatin herself,
since she admitted to being psychic. A gifted painter, Yeffe
Kimball knew that Mrs. Meyers had made the right contact
when she heard her describe the little lady with the limp at
the beginning of the seance; she herself had often “seen”
the ghost with her “psychic eye,” and had developed a
friendship for her. It was not an unhappy ghost, she con-
tended, and particularly now that her secret was out — why
deprive Elizabeth Bullock of “her family”? Why indeed?
The house is still there on Bank Street, and the can
of ashes still graces the piano. Whether the E. C. Bullock
who called on the Slatins in 1957 was the Eddie whom the
ghost claimed as her son, I can’t tell. My efforts to locate
him in California proved as fruitless as the earlier attempts
to locate any other kin.
So the Slatins continue to live happily in their lovely,
quiet house in the Village, with Elizabeth Bullock as their
star boarder. Though I doubt the census taker will want to
register her.
The Bank Street Ghost
237
* 35
The Whistling Ghost
One OF MY dear FRIENDS is the celebrated clairvoyant
Florence Sternfels of Edgewater, New Jersey, a lady who
has assisted many a police department in the apprehension
of criminals or lost persons. Her real ambition, however,
was to assist serious scientists to find out what makes her
"different,” where that power she has — “the forces,” as she
calls them — comes from. Many times in the past she had
volunteered her time to sit with investigators, something
few professional mediums will do.
I had not seen Florence in over a year when one day
the telephone rang, and her slightly creaky voice wished
me a cheery hello. It seemed that a highly respected psychia-
trist in nearby Croton, New York, had decided to experi-
ment with Florence’s psychic powers. Would I come
along? She wanted me there to make sure “everything was
on the up-and-up.” I agreed to come, and the following
day Dr. Kahn himself called me, and arrangements were
made for a young couple, the Hendersons, to pick me up
in their car and drive me out to Croton.
When we arrived at the sumptuous Kahn house near
the Hudson River, some thirty persons, mostly neighbors
and friends of the doctor’s, had already assembled. None of
them was known to Florence, of course, and few knew any-
thing about the purpose of her visit. But the doctor was
such a well-known community leader and teacher that they
had come in great expectation.
The house was a remodeled older house, with an
upstairs and a large garden going all the way down to the
river.
Florence did not disappoint the good doctor. Seated
at the head of an oval, next to me, she rapidly called out
facts and names about people in the room, their relatives
and friends, deceased or otherwise, and found quick
response and acknowledgment. Startling information, like
“a five-year-old child has died, and the mother, who is par-
alyzed in the legs, is present.” She certainly was. "Anyone
here lost a collie dog?” Yes, someone had, three weeks
before. Florence was a big success.
When it was all over, the crowd broke up and I had
a chance to talk to our hostess, the doctor’s young wife.
She seemed deeply interested in psychic matters, just as
was her husband; but while it was strictly a scientific
curiosity with Dr. Kahn, his wife seemed to be intuitive
and was given to “impressions” herself.
"You know, I think uie’ve got a ghost," she said, looking at
me as if she had just said the most ordinary thing in the
world.
We walked over to a quiet corner, and I asked her
what were her reasons for this extraordinary statement —
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
unusual for the wife of a prominent psychiatrist. She
assured me it was no hallucination.
“He’s a whistling ghost,” she confided, “always
whistling the same song, about four bars of it — a happy
tune. I guess he must be a happy ghost!”
“When did all this start?” I asked.
“During the past five years I’ve heard him about
twenty times,” Mrs. Kahn replied. “Always the same
tune.”
“And your husband, does he hear it, too?”
She shook her head.
"But he hears raps. Usually in our bedroom, and late
at night. They always come in threes. My husband hears
it, gets up, and asks who is it, but of course there is
nobody there, so he gets no answer.
“Last winter, around three in the morning, we were
awakened by a heavy knocking sound on the front door.
When we got to the door and opened it, there was no one
in sight. The path leading up to the road was empty, too,
and believe me, no one could have come down that path
and not be still visible by the time we got to the door!”
“And the whistling — where do you hear it usually?”
“Always in the living room — here,” Mrs. Kahn
replied, pointing at the high-ceilinged, wood-paneled room,
with its glass wall facing the garden.
“You see, this living room used to be a stage. . .the
house was once a summer theater, and we reconverted the
stage area into this room. Come to think of it, I also heard
that whistling in the bedroom that was used by the former
owner of the house, the man who built both the theater
and the house.”
"What about this man? Who was he?”
“Clifford Harmon. He was murdered by the Nazis
during World War II when he got trapped in France. The
house is quite old, has many secret passageways — as a mat-
ter of fact, only three weeks ago, I dreamed I should enter
one of the passages! ”
“You dreamed this?” I said. "Did anything ever come
of it, though?”
Mrs. Kahn nodded. “The next morning, I decided to
do just what I had done in my dream during the night. I
entered the passage I had seen myself enter in the dream,
and then I came across some musty old photographs.”
I looked at the pictures. They showed various actors
of both sexes, in the costumes of an earlier period. Who
knows what personal tragedy or joy the people in these
photographs had experienced in this very room? I returned
the stack of pictures to Mrs. Kahn.
“Are you mediumistic?” I asked Mrs. Kahn. It
seemed to me that she was the catalyst in this house.
“Well, perhaps a little. I am certainly clairvoyant.
Some time ago, I wrote to my parents in Miami, and for
some unknown reason, addressed the letter to 3251 South
23rd Lane. There was no such address as far as I knew,
and the letter was returned to me in a few days. Later, my
238
parents wrote to me telling me they had just bought a
house at 3251 South 23rd Lane.”
At this point, the doctor joined the conversation, and
we talked about Harmon.
"He’s left much unfinished business over here, I’m
sure,” the doctor said. "He had big plans for building and
improvements of his property, and, of course, there were a
number of girls he was interested in.”
1 had heard enough. The classic pattern of the
haunted house was all there. The ghost, the unfinished
business, the willing owners. I offered to hold a “rescue
circle” type of seance, to make contact with the "whistling
ghost.”
We decided to hold the seance on August 3, 1960,
and that I would bring along Mrs. Meyers, since this called
for a trance medium, while Florence, who had originally
brought me to this house, was a clairvoyant and psychome-
trist. A psychometrist gets “impressions” by holding
objects that belong to a certain person.
Again, the transportation was provided by Mrs. Hen-
derson, whose husband could not come along this time. On
this occasion there was no curious crowd in the large living
room when we arrived. Only the house guests of the
Kahns, consisting of a Mr. and Mrs. Bower and their
daughter, augmented the circle we formed as soon as the
doctor had arrived from a late call. As always, before slid-
ing into trance, Mrs. Meyers gave us her psychic impres-
sions; before going into the full trance it is necessary to
make the desired contact.
“Some names, said Mrs. Meyers, “a Robert, a Delia,
a Harold, and the name Banks. . .Oh. . .and then a Hart."
She seemed unsure of the proper spelling.
At this very moment, both Mrs. Kahn and I dis-
tinctly heard the sound of heavy breathing. It seemed to
emanate from somewhere above and behind the sitters.
"Melish and Goldfarb!” Mrs. Meyers mumbled, getting
more and more into a somnambulant state. “That’s
strange!” Dr. Kahn interjected. “There was a man named
Elish here, some fifteen years ago. . .and a Mr. Goldwag,
recently!”
“Mary. . .something — Ann,” the medium now said.
Later, after the seance, Dr. Kahn told me that Harmon’s
private secretary, who had had full charge of the big estate,
was a woman named — Mary Brasnahan. . .
Now Mrs. Meyers described a broad-shouldered man
with iron-gray hair, who, she said, became gray at a very
early age. “He wears a double-breasted, dark blue coat, and
has a tiny mustache. His initials are R. H.” Then she
added, "I see handwriting. . .papers. . .signatures. . .and
there is another, younger man, smaller, with light brown
hair — and he is concerned with some papers that belong in
files. His initials are J . B. I think the first man is the boss,
this one is the clerk.” Then she added suddenly,
“Deborah!”
At this point Mrs. Meyers herself pulled back, and
said: “I feel a twitch in my arm; apparently this isn’t for
publication!” But she continued and described other people
whom she "felt” around the house; a Gertrude, for
instance, and a bald-headed man with a reddish complex-
ion, rather stout, whom she called B. B. “He has to do
with the settlements on Deborah and the other girls.”
Mrs. Meyers knew of course nothing about Harmon’s
alleged reputation as a bit of a ladies’ man.
“That’s funny,” she suddenly commented, "I see two
women dressed in very old-fashioned clothes, much earlier
than their own period.”
I had not mentioned a word to Mrs. Meyers about
the theatrical usage which the house had once been put to.
Evidently she received the impressions of two actresses.
“Bob. . .he’s being called by a woman.”
At this point, full trance set in, and the medium’s
own personality vanished to allow the ghost to speak to us
directly, if he so chose. After a moment Albert, the
medium’s control, came and announced that the ghost
would speak to us. Then he withdrew, and within seconds
a strange face replaced the usual benign expression of Mrs.
Meyer’s face. This was a shrewd, yet dignified man. His
voice, at first faint, grew in strength as the seconds ticked
off.
"So ... so it goes . . . Sing a Song of Sixpence. . . all over
now....”
Excitedly Mrs. Kahn grabbed my arm and whispered
into my ear: “That’s the name of the song he always whis-
tled. . .1 couldn’t think of it before.” Through my mind
went the words of the old nursery rhyme —
Sing a Song of Sixpence,
A pocket full of rye,
Four and Twenty Blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing
Isn’t that a dainty dish
To set before the King?
Like a wartime password, our ghost had identified
himself through the medium.
Why did Harmon pick this song as his tune? Perhaps
the gay lilt, the carefree air that goes with it, perhaps a
sentimental reason. Mrs. Kahn was aglow with excitement.
The communicator then continued to speak: “All
right, he won’t come anymore. She isn’t here. . .when
you’re dead, you’re alive.”
I thought it was time to ask a few questions of my
own. “Why are you here?”
“Pleasant and unpleasant memories. My own
thoughts keep me. . .happy, loved her. One happiness — he
stands in the way. She didn’t get what was hers. Jimmy
may get it for her. He stands in the way!”
“Why do you come to this house?”
The Whistling Ghost
239
"To meet with her. It was our meeting place in the
flesh. We still commune in spirit though she’s still with
you, and I return. We can meet. It is my house. My
thought-child.”
What he was trying to say, I thought, is that in her
dream state, she has contact with him. Most unusual, even
for a ghost! I began to wonder who "she” was. It was
worth a try.
“Is her name Deborah?” I ventured. But the reaction
was so violent our ghost slipped away. Albert took over the
medium and requested that no more painfully personal
questions be asked of the ghost. He also explained that our
friend was indeed the owner of the house, the other man
seen by the medium, his secretary, but the raps the doctor
had heard had been caused by another person, the man
who is after the owner’s lady love.
Presently the ghost returned, and confirmed this.
“I whistle to call her. He does the rappings, to
rob. ...”
“Is there any unfinished business you want to tell us
about?” That should not be too personal, I figured.
"None worth returning for, only love.”
“Is there anything under the house?” I wondered. . . .
"There is a small tunnel, but it is depleted now.” At
this, I looked searchingly toward the doctor, who nodded,
and later told me that such a tunnel did indeed exist.
"What is your name?”
"Bob. I only whistle and sing for happiness.”
Before I could question him further, the gentleman
slipped out again, and once more Albert, the control, took
over:
“This man died violently at the hands of a firing
squad,” he commented, “near a place he thinks is
Austerlitz. . .but is not sure. As for the estate, the other
woman had the larger share.”
There was nothing more after that, so I requested
that the seance be concluded.
After the medium had returned to her own body, we
discussed the experience, and Dr. Kahn remarked that he
was not sure about the name Harmon had used among his
friends. It seemed absurd to think that Clifford, his official
first name, would not be followed by something more
familiar — like, for instance, Bob. But there was no
certainty.
“Did the Nazis really kill him?” I asked. There was
total silence in the big room now. You could have heard a
pin drop, and the Bowers, who had never been to any
seances before, just sat there with their hands at their
chins, wide-eyed and full of excitement. Albert, through
his “instrument,” as he called his medium, took his time to
answer me.
“I’m afraid so. But I don’t think it was a firing squad
that killed him. He was beaten to death!” I looked with
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
horror at Dr. Kahn, trying to get confirmation, but he only
shrugged his shoulders.
Actually, nobody knows exactly how Harmon died,
he revealed later. The fact is that the Nazis murdered him
during the war. Could he have meant Auschwitz instead of
Austerlitz?
I didn’t feel like pursuing the subject any further.
With Albert’s assistance, we ended the seance, bringing the
medium out of her trance state as quickly as possible.
The lights, which had been subdued during the sit-
ting, were now allowed to be turned back on again. Mrs.
Meyers recalled very little of what had transpired, mostly
events and phrases at the onset and very end of her trance
condition, but nothing that happened in the middle por-
tion, when her trance state was at its deepest.
It was now midnight, and time to return to New
York. As I said good night to my mediumistic friend, I
expressed my hope that all would now be quiet at Croton.
This was wishful thinking.
The following morning, Mrs. Kahn telephoned me
long distance. Far from being quiet — the manifestations
had increased around the house.
"What exactly happened?” I inquired. Mrs. Kahn
bubbled over with excitement.
“We went to bed shortly after you left,” she replied,
“and all seemed so peaceful. Then, at 3 A.M., suddenly the
bedroom lights went on by themselves. There is only one
switch. Neither my husband nor I had gotten out of bed to
turn on that switch. Nevertheless, when I took a look at
the switch, it was turned down, as if by human hands!”
"Amazing,” I conceded.
“Oh, but that isn’t all,” she continued. “Exactly one
hour later, at 4 o’clock, the same thing happened again. By
the way, do you remember the drapery covering the bed-
room wall? There isn’t a door or window nearby. Besides,
they were all shut. No possible air current could have
moved those draperies. All the same, I saw the draperies
move by their own accord, plainly and visibly.”
"I suppose he wants to let you know he’s still there!”
I said, rather meekly. Ghosts can be persistent at times.
But Mrs. Kahn had more to tell me.
“Our house guest, Mrs. Bower, has the room that
used to be Harmon’s bedroom. Well, this morning she was
dressing in front of the big closet. Suddenly she saw the
door to the room open slowly, and then, with enormous
force, pin her into the closet! There was nobody outside
the room, of course.”
“Anything else?” I asked quietly.
“Not really. Only, I had a dream last night. It was
about a man in a blue suit. You remember Mrs. Meyers
saw a man in a blue suit, too. Only with me, he said,
’Miller.’ Said it several times, to make sure I got it. I also
dreamed of a woman in a blue dress, with two small chil-
dren, who was in danger somehow. But Miller stood out
the strongest.”
240
I thanked Mrs. Kahn for her report, and made her
promise me to call me the instant there were any further
disturbances.
I woke up the following morning, sure the phone
would ring and Mrs. Kahn would have more to tell me.
But I was wrong. All remained quiet. All remained peace-
ful the next morning, too. It was not until four days later
that Mrs. Kahn called again.
I prepared myself for some more of the ghost’s
shenanigans. But, to my relief, Mrs. Kahn called to tell me
no further manifestations had occurred. However, she had
done a bit of investigating. Since the name “Miller” was
totally unknown to her and the doctor, she inquired around
the neighborhood. Finally, one of the neighbors did recall a
Miller. He was Harmon’s personal physician.
"One thing I forgot to mention while you were here,”
she added. "Harmon's bed was stored away for many
years. I decided one day to use it again. One night my
husband discovered nails similar to carpet tacks under the
pillow. We were greatly puzzled — but for lack of an expla-
nation, we just forgot the incident. Another time I found
something similar to crushed glass in the bed, and again,
although greatly puzzled — forgot the incident. I don’t
know whether or not these seemingly unexplainable inci-
dents mean anything.”
Could it be that Harmon objected to anyone else
using his bed? Ghosts are known to be quite possessive of
their earthly goods, and resentful of “intruders.”
All seemed quiet at the Kahns, until I received
another call from Mrs. Kahn the last days of October.
The whistling ghost was back.
This was quite a blow to my prestige as a ghost
hunter, but on the other hand, Harmon’s wraith apparently
was a happy spirit and liked being earthbound. To para-
phrase a well-known expression, you can lead a ghost to
the spirit world, but you can’t make him stay — if he
doesn’t want to. Next morning a note came from Mrs.
Kahn.
“As I told you via phone earlier this evening, we again
heard our whistler last night about 1 A.M., and it was
the loudest I have ever heard. I didn’t have to strain for it.
My husband heard it too, but he thought it was the wind
in the chimney. Then, as it continued, he agreed that it
was some sort of phenomena. I got out of bed and went
toward the sound of the whistle. I reached the den, from
where I could see into the living room. Light was coming
through a window behind me and was reflected upon the
ceiling of the living room. . .1 saw a small white mist, float-
ing, but motionless, in front of the table in the living room.
I called to my husband. He looked, but saw nothing. He
said he would put the light on and I watched him walk
right through the mist — he turned the lamp on and every-
thing returned to normal.”
I haven’t spoken with the Kahns in several months
now.
Is the whistling ghost still around? If he is, nobody
seems to mind. That’s how it is sometimes with happy
ghosts. They get to be one of the family.
* 36
The Metuchen Ghost
One DAY last SPRING, while the snow was still on the
ground and the chill in the air, my good friend Bernard
Axelrod, with whom I have shared many a ghostly experi-
ence, called to say that he knew of a haunted house in New
Jersey, and was I still interested.
I was, and Bernard disclosed that in the little town of
Metuchen, there were a number of structures dating back
to colonial days. A few streets down from where he and his
family live in a modem, up-to-date brick building, there
stands one wooden house in particular which has the repu-
tation of being haunted, Bernard explained. No particulars
were known to him beyond that. Ever since the Rockland
County Ghost in the late Danton Walker’s colonial house
had acquainted me with the specters from George Wash-
ington's days, I had been eager to enlarge this knowledge.
So it was with great anticipation that I gathered a group of
helpers to pay a visit to whoever might be haunting the
house in Metuchen. Bernard, who is a very persuasive fel-
low, managed to get permission from the owner of the
house, Mr. Kane, an advertising executive. My group
included Mrs. Meyers, as medium, and two associates of
hers who would operate the tape recorder and take notes,
Rosemarie de Simone and Pearl Winder. Miss de Simone is
a teacher and Mrs. Winder is the wife of a dentist.
It was midafternoon of March 6, 1960, when we
rolled into the sleepy town of Metuchen. Bernard Axelrod
was expecting us, and took us across town to the colonial
house we were to inspect.
Any mention of the history or background of the
house was studiously avoided en route. The owners, Mr.
and Mrs. Kane, had a guest, a Mr. David, and the eight of
us sat down in a circle in the downstairs living room of the
beautifully preserved old house. It is a jewel of a colonial
country house, with an upper story, a staircase and very
few structural changes. No doubt about it, the Kanes had
good taste, and their house reflected it. The furniture was
all in the style of the period, which I took to be about the
turn of the eighteenth century, perhaps earlier. There were
The Metuchen Ghost
241
several cats smoothly moving about, which helped me
greatly to relax, for I have always felt that no house is
wholly bad where there are cats, and conversely, where
there are several cats, a house is bound to be wonderfully
charming. For the occasion, however, the entire feline
menagerie was put out of reach into the kitchen, and the
tape recorder turned on as we took our seats in a semicircle
around the fireplace. The light was the subdued light of a
late winter afternoon, and the quiet was that of a country
house far away from the bustling city. It was a perfect set-
ting for a ghost to have his say.
As Mrs. Meyers eased herself into her comfortable
chair, she remarked that certain clairvoyant impressions
had come to her almost the instant she set foot into the
house.
"I met a woman upstairs — in spirit, that is — with a
long face, thick cheeks, perhaps forty years old or more,
with ash-brown hair that may once have been blonde.
Somehow I get the name Mathilda. She wears a dress of
striped material down to her knees, then wide plain mater-
ial to her ankles. She puts out a hand, and I see a heavy
wedding band on her finger, but it has a cut in it, and she
insists on calling my attention to the cut. Then there is a
man, with a prominent nose, tan coat, and black trousers,
standing in the back of the room looking as if he were
sorry about something. . .he has very piercing eyes. . .1
think she’d like to find something she has lost, and he
blames her for it.”
We were listening attentively. No one spoke, for that
would perhaps give Mrs. Meyers an unconscious lead,
something a good researcher will avoid.
“That sounds very interesting,” I heard Bernard say,
in his usual noncommittal way. “Do you see anything
else?"
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Meyers nodded, “quite a bit — for
one thing, there are other people here who don’t belong to
them at all. . .they come with the place, but in a different
period. . .funny, halfway between upstairs and downstairs,
I see one or two people hanging."
At this remark, the Kanes exchanged quick glances.
Evidently my medium had hit pay dirt. Later, Mr. Kane
told us a man committed suicide in the house around 1850
or 1 860. He confirmed also that there was once a floor in
between the two floors, but that this later addition had
since been removed, when the house was restored to its
original colonial condition.
Built in 1740, the house had replaced an earlier struc-
ture, for objects inscribed “1738” have been unearthed
here.
"Legend has always had it that a revolutionary sol-
dier haunts the house,” Mr. Kane explained after the
seance. “The previous owners told us they did hear pecu-
liar noises from time to time, and that they had been told
of such goings-on also by the owner who preceded them.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
Perhaps this story has been handed down from owner to
owner, but we have never spoken to anyone in our genera-
tion who has heard or seen anything unusual about the
place."
“What about you and your wife?” I inquired.
"Oh, we were a bit luckier — or unluckier — depending
on how you look at it. One day back in 1956, the front
door knocker banged away very loudly. My wife, who was
all alone in the house at the time, went to see who it was.
There was nobody there. It was winter, and deep snow
surrounded the house. There were no tracks in the snow."
“How interesting,” Bernard said. All this was new to
him, too, despite his friendship with the family.
Mr. Kane slowly lit a pipe, blew the smoke toward
the low ceiling of the room, and continued.
“The previous owners had a dog. Big, strapping fel-
low. Just the same, now and again he would hear some
strange noises and absolutely panic. In the middle of the
night he would jump into bed with them, crazed with fear.
But it wasn’t just the dog who heard things. They, too,
heard the walking — steps of someone walking around the
second floor, and in their bedroom, on the south side of the
house — at times of the day when they knew for sure there
was nobody there.”
“And after you moved in, did you actually see any-
thing?” I asked. Did they have any idea what the ghost
looked like?
“Well, yes,” Mr. Kane said. “About a year ago, Mrs.
Kane was sleeping in the Green Room upstairs. Three
nights in a row, she was awakened in the middle of the night,
at the same time, by the feeling of a presence. Looking up,
she noticed a white form standing beside her bed. Think-
ing it was me, at first, she was not frightened. But when
she spoke to it, it just disappeared into air. She is sure it
was a man.”
Although nothing unusual had occurred since, the
uncanny feeling persisted, and when Bernard Axelrod men-
tioned his interest in ghosts, and offered to have me come
to the house with a qualified medium, the offer was gladly
accepted. So there we were, with Mrs. Meyers slowly glid-
ing into trance. Gradually, her description of what she saw
or heard blended into the personalities themselves, as her
own personality vanished temporarily. It was a very grad-
ual transition, and well controlled.
“She is being blamed by him,” Mrs. Meyers mum-
bled. “Now I see a table, she took four mugs, four large
mugs, and one small one. Does she mean to say, four older
people and a small one? I get a name, Jake, John, no,
Jonathan! Then there are four Indians, and they want to
make peace. They've done something they should not have,
and they want to make peace.” Her visions continued.
“Now instead of the four mugs on the table, there’s a
whole line of them, fifteen altogether, but I don’t see the
small mug now. There are many individuals standing
around the table, with their backs toward me — then some-
242
one is calling and screaming, and someone says ‘Off above
the knees.”
I later established through research that during the
Revolutionary War the house was right in the middle of
many small skirmishes; the injured may well have been
brought here for treatment.
Mrs. Meyers continued her narrative with increasing
excitement in her voice.
“Now there are other men, all standing there with
long-tailed coats, white stockings, and talking. Someone
says ‘Dan Dayridge’ or ‘Bainbridge,’ I can’t make it out
clearly; he’s someone with one of these three-cornered hats,
a white wig, tied black hair, a very thin man with a high,
small nose, not particularly young, with a fluffy collar and
large eyes. Something took place here in which he was a
participant. He is one of the men standing there with those
fifteen mugs. It is night, and there are two candles on
either side of the table, food on the table — smells like
chicken — and then there is a paper with red seals and gold
ribbon. But something goes wrong with this, and now there
are only four mugs on the table. . .1 think it means, only
four men return. Not the small one. This man is one of the
four, and somehow the little mug is pushed aside, I see it
put away on the shelf. I see now a small boy, he has disap-
peared, he is gone. . .but always trying to come back. The
name Allen. . .he followed the man, but the Indians got him
and he never came back. They’re looking for him, trying to
find him. ...”
Mrs. Meyers now seemed totally entranced. Her fea-
tures assumed the face of a woman in great mental
anguish, and her voice quivered; the words came haltingly
and with much prodding from me. For all practical pur-
poses, the medium had now been taken over by a troubled
spirit. We listened quietly, as the story unfolded.
"Allen’s coming back one day. . .call him back. . .my
son, do you hear him? They put those Indians in the tree,
do you hear them as they moan?”
“Who took your boy?” I asked gently.
“They did. . .he went with them, with the men. With
his father, Jon."
“What Indians took him?”
“Look there in the tree. They didn’t do it. I know
they didn't do it.”
"Where did they go?”
“To the river. My boy, did you hear him?”
Mrs. Meyers could not have possibly known that
there was a river not far from the house. I wanted to fix
the period of our story, as I always do in such cases, so I
interrupted the narrative and asked what day this was.
There was a brief pause, as if she were collecting her
thoughts. Then the faltering voice was heard again.
“December one. ...”
December one! The old-fashioned way of saying
December first.
“What year is this?” I continued.
This time the voice seemed puzzled as to why I
would ask such an obvious thing, but she obliged.
“Seventeen .. . seventy ... six . ”
“What does your husband do?”
“Jonathan...?”
“Does he own property?”
“The field. . ..”
But then the memory of her son returned. “Allen, my
son Allen. He is calling me....”
“Where was he born?”
“Here.”
“What is the name of this town?”
“Bayridge.”
Subsequently, I found that the section of Metuchen
we were in had been known in colonial times as Wood-
bridge, although it is not inconceivable that there also was a
Bayridge.
The woman wanted to pour her heart out now. “Oh,
look,” she continued, "they didn’t do it, they’re in the
tree. . .those Indians, dead ones. They didn’t do it, I can
see their souls and they were innocent of this. . .in the
cherry tree.”
Suddenly she interrupted herself and said — "Where
am I? Why am I so sad?”
It isn’t uncommon for a newly liberated or newly
contacted ghost to be confused about his or her own status.
Only an emotionally disturbed personality becomes an
earthbound ghost.
I continued the questioning.
Between sobs and cries for her son, Allen, she let the
name “Mary Dugan” slip from her lips, or rather the lips
of the entranced medium, who now was fully under the
unhappy one’s control.
“Who is Mary Dugan?” I immediately interrupted.
“He married her, Jonathan."
“Second wife?”
“Yes. . .1 am under the tree.”
“Where were you born? What was your maiden
name?”
“Bayridge. . .Swift. . .my heart is so hurt, so cold, so
cold.”
“Do you have any other children?”
“Allen. . .Mary Anne. . .Gorgia. They’re calling me,
do you hear them? Allen, he knows I am alone waiting
here. He thought he was a man!”
"How old was your boy at the time?” I said. The dis-
appearance of her son was the one thing foremost in her
mind.
“My boy. . .elevan.. .December one, 1776, is his
birthday. That was his birthday all right.”
I asked her if Allen had another name, and she said,
Peter. Her own maiden name? She could not remember.
“Why don't I know? They threw me out. . .it was
Mary took the house.”
The Metuchen Ghost
243
"What did your husband do?’’
"He was a potter. He also was paid for harness. His
shop. . .the road to the south. Bayridge, In the tree orchard
we took from two neighbors.’’
The neighborhood is known for its clay deposits and
potters, but this was as unknown to the medium as it was
to me until after the seance, when Bernard told us about it.
In Boyhood Days in Old Metuchen, a rare work, Dr.
David Marshall says: “Just south of Metuchen there are
extensive clay banks."
But our visitor had enough of the questioning. Her
sorrow returned and suddenly she burst into tears, the
medium’s tears, to be sure, crying — "I want Allen! Why is
it I look for him? I hear him calling me, I hear his step. . .1
know he is here. . .why am I searching for him?”
I then explained that Allen was on “her side of the
veil” too, that she would be reunited with her boy by
merely “standing still” and letting him find her; it was her
frantic activity that made it impossible for them to be
reunited, but if she were to calm herself, all would be well.
After a quiet moment of reflection, her sobs became
weaker and her voice firmer.
“Can you see your son now?”
“Yes, 1 see him.” And with that, she slipped away
quietly.
A moment later, the medium returned to her own
body, as it were, and rubbed her sleepy eyes. Fully awak-
ened a moment later, she remembered nothing of the
trance. Now for the first time did we talk about the house
and its ghostly visitors.
"How much of this can be proved?” I asked
impatiently.
Mr. Kane lit another pipe, and then answered me
slowly.
“Well, there is quite a lot,” he finally said. “For one
thing, this house used to be a tavern during revolutionary
days, known as the Allen House!”
Bernard Axelrod, a few weeks later, discovered an
1870 history of the town of Metuchen. In it, there was a
remark anent the house, which an early map showed at its
present site in 1799:
“In the house. . .lived a Mrs. Allen, and on it was a
sign ‘Allentown Cake and Beer Sold Here.’ Between the
long Prayer Meetings which according to New England
custom were held mornings and afternoons, with half hour
or an hour intermission, it was not unusual for the young
men to get ginger cake and a glass of beer at this famous
restaurant....”
“What about all those Indians she mentioned?” I
asked Mr. Kane.
"There were Indians in this region all right,” he
confirmed.
"Indian arrowheads have been found right here, near
the pond in back of the house. Many Indian battles were
fought around here, and incidentally, during the War for
Independence, both sides came to this house and had their
ale in the evening. This was a kind of no-man’s land
between the Americans and the British. During the day,
they would kill each other, but at night, they ignored each
other over a beer at Mrs. Allen’s tavern!"
“How did you get this information?” I asked Mr.
Kane.
“There was a local historian, a Mr. Welsh, who
owned this house for some thirty years. He also talked of a
revolutionary soldier whose ghost was seen plainly ‘walk-
ing’ through the house about a foot off the ground.”
Many times have I heard a ghostly apparition
described in just such terms. The motion of walking is
really unnecessary, it seems, for the spirit form glides about
a place.
There are interesting accounts in the rare old books
about the town of Metuchen in the local library. These sto-
ries spoke of battles between the British and Americans,
and of “carts loaded with dead bodies, after a battle
between British soldiers and Continentals, up around Oak
Tree on June 26th, 1777.”
No doubt, the Allen House saw many of them
brought in along with the wounded and dying.
I was particularly interested in finding proof of
Jonathan Allen’s existence, and details of his life.
So far I had only ascertained that Mrs. Allen existed.
Her husband was my next goal.
After much work, going through old wills and land
documents, I discovered a number of Allens in the area. I
found the will of his father, Henry, leaving his “son,
Jonathan, the land where he lives,” on April 4, 1783.
A 1799 map shows a substantial amount of land
marked “Land of Allen,” and Jonathan Allen’s name
occurs in many a document of the period as a witness or
seller of land.
The Jonathan Allen I wanted had to be from Middle-
sex County, in which Metuchen was located. I recalled that
he was an able-bodied man, and consequently must have
seen some service. Sure enough, in the Official Register of
the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary
War, I found my man — “Allen, Jonathan — Middlesex.”
It is good to know that the troubled spirit of Mrs.
Allen can now rest close to her son’s; and perhaps the
other restless one, her husband, will be accused of negli-
gence in the boy's death no more.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
k
244
» 37
A Greenwich Village Ghost
BACK IN 1953, when I spent much of my time writing and
editing material of a most mundane nature, always, of
course, with a weather eye cocked for a good case of hunt-
ing, I picked up a copy of Park East and found to my
amazement some very palatable grist for my psychic mills.
“The Ghost of Tenth Street,” by Elizabeth Archer, was a
well -documented report of the hauntings on that celebrated
Greenwich Village street where artists make their head-
quarters, and many buildings date back to the eighteenth
century. Miss Archer’s story was later reprinted by Tomor-
row magazine, upon my suggestion. In Park East, some
very good illustrations accompany the text, for which there
was no room in Tomorrow.
Up to 1956, the ancient studio building at 51 West
Tenth Street was a landmark known to many connoisseurs
of old New York, but it was demolished to make way for
one of those nondescript, modern apartment buildings.
Until the very last, reports of an apparition, allegedly
the ghost of artist John La Farge, who died in 1910, con-
tinued to come in. A few houses down the street is the
Church of the Ascension; the altar painting, "The Ascen-
sion,” is the work of John La Farge. Actually, the artist did
the work on the huge painting at his studio, No. 22, in 51
West Tenth Street. He finished it, however, in the church
itself, “in place.” Having just returned from the Far East,
La Farge used a new technique involving the use of several
coats of paint, thus making the painting heavier than
expected. The painting was hung, but the chassis collapsed;
La Farge built a stronger chassis and the painting stayed in
place this time. Years went by. Oliver La Farge, the great
novelist and grandson of the painter, had spent much of
his youth with his celebrated grandfather. One day, while
working across the street, he was told the painting had
fallen again. Dashing across the street, he found that the
painting had indeed fallen, and that his grandfather had
died that very instant!
The fall of the heavy painting was no trifling matter
to La Farge, who was equally as well known as an architect
as he was a painter. Many buildings in New York for
which he drew the plans seventy-five years ago are still
standing. But the construction of the chassis of the altar
painting may have been faulty. And therein lies the cause
for La Farge’s ghostly visitations, it would seem. The
artists at No. 51 insisted always that La Farge could not
find rest until he had corrected his calculations, searching
for the original plans of the chassis to find out what was
wrong. An obsession to redeem himself as an artist and
craftsman, then, would be the underlying cause for the per-
sistence with which La Farge’s ghost returned to his old
haunts.
The first such return was reported in 1944, when a
painter by the name of Feodor Rimsky and his wife lived
in No. 22. Late one evening, they returned from the opera.
On approaching their studio, they noticed that a light was
on and the door open, although they distinctly remembered
having left it shut. Rimsky walked into the studio, pushed
aside the heavy draperies at the entrance to the studio
itself, and stopped in amazement. In the middle of the
room, a single lamp plainly revealed a stranger behind the
large chair in what Rimsky called his library corner; the
man wore a tall black hat and a dark, billowing velvet coat.
Rimsky quickly told his wife to wait, and rushed across the
room to get a closer look at the intruder. But the man just
vanished as the painter reached the chair.
Later, Rimsky told of his experience to a former
owner of the building, who happened to be an amateur his-
torian. He showed Rimsky some pictures of former tenants
of his building. In two of them, Rimsky easily recognized
his visitor, wearing exactly the same clothes Rimsky had
seen him in. Having come from Europe but recently, Rim-
sky knew nothing of La Farge and had never seen a picture
of him. The ball dress worn by the ghost had not been
common at the turn of the century, but La Farge was
known to affect such strange attire.
Three years later, the Rimskys were entertaining
some guests at their studio, including an advertising man
named William Weber, who was known to have had psy-
chic experiences in the past. But Weber never wanted to
discuss this “special talent” of his, for fear of being
ridiculed. As the conversation flowed among Weber, Mrs.
Weber, and two other guests, the advertising man’s wife
noticed her husband’s sudden stare at a cabinet on the
other side of the room, where paintings were stored. She
saw nothing, but Weber asked her in an excited tone of
voice — “Do you see that man in the cloak and top hat over
there?”
Weber knew nothing of the ghostly tradition of the
studio or of John La Farge; no stranger could have gotten
by the door without being noticed, and none had been
expected it this hour. The studio was locked from the
inside.
After that, the ghost of John La Farge was heard
many times by a variety of tenants at No. 51, opening win-
dows or pushing draperies aside, but not until 1948 was he
seen again.
Up a flight of stairs from Studio 22, but connected to
it — artists like to visit each other — was the studio of illus-
trator John Alan Maxwell. Connecting stairs and a “secret
rest room” used by La Farge had long been walled up in
the many structural changes in the old building. Only the
window of the walled-up room was still visible from the
outside. It was in this area that Rimsky felt that the restless
spirit of John La Farge was trapped. As Miss Archer puts
it in her narrative, “walled in like the Golem, sleeping
A Greenwich Village Ghost
245
through the day and close to the premises for roaming
through the night.”
After many an unsuccessful search of Rimsky’s stu-
dio, apparently the ghost started to look in Maxwell’s stu-
dio. In the spring of 1948, the ghost of La Farge made his
initial appearance in the illustrator’s studio.
It was a warm night, and Maxwell had gone to bed
naked, pulling the covers over himself. Suddenly he awak-
ened. From the amount of light coming in through the
skylight, he judged the time to be about one or two in the
morning. He had the uncanny feeling of not being alone in the
room. As his eyes got used to the darkness, he clearly dis-
tinguished the figure of a tall woman, bending over his
bed, lifting and straightening his sheets several times over.
Behind her, there was a man staring at a wooden filing cab-
inet at the foot of the couch. Then he opened a drawer,
looked in it, and closed it again. Getting hold of himself,
Maxwell noticed that the woman wore a light red dress of
the kind worn in the last century, and the man a white
shirt and dark cravat of the same period. It never occurred
to the illustrator that they were anything but people; prob-
ably, he thought, models in costume working for one of the
artists in the building.
The woman then turned to her companion as if to
say something, but did not, and walked off toward the dark
room at the other end of the studio. The man then went
back to the cabinet and leaned on it, head in hand. By now
Maxwell had regained his wits and thought the intruders
must be burglars, although he could not figure out how
they had entered his place, since he had locked it from the
inside before going to bed! Making a fist, he struck at the
stranger, yelling, “Put your hands up!”
Flis voice could be heard clearly along the empty cor-
ridors. But his fist went through the man and into the filing
cabinet. Nursing his injured wrist, he realized that his visi-
tors had dissolved into thin air. There was no one in the
dark room. The door was still securely locked. The sky-
light, 1 50 feet above ground, could not very well have
served as an escape route to anyone human. By now
Maxwell knew that La Farge and his wife had paid him a
social call.
Other visitors to No. 51 complained about strange
winds and sudden chills when passing La Farge 's walled-
up room. One night, one of Maxwell’s lady visitors
returned, shortly after leaving his studio, in great agitation,
yelling, "That man! That man!” The inner court of the
building was glass -enclosed, so that one could see clearly
across to the corridors on the other side of the building.
Maxwell and his remaining guests saw nothing there.
But the woman insisted that she saw a strange man
under one of the old gaslights in the building; he seemed to
lean against the wall of the corridor, dressed in old-
fashioned clothes and possessed of a face so cadaverous and
death-mask-like, that it set her ascreaming!
This was the first time the face of the ghost had been
observed clearly by anyone. The sight was enough to make
her run back to Maxwell's studio. Nobody could have left
without being seen through the glass -enclosed corridors
and no one had seen a stranger in the building that
evening. As usual, he had vanished into thin air.
So much for Miss Archer’s account of the La Farge
ghost. My own investigation was sparked by her narrative,
and I telephoned her at her Long Island home, inviting her
to come along if and when we held a seance at No. 51 .
I was then working with a group of parapsychology
students meeting at the rooms of the Association for
Research and Enlightenment (Cayce Foundation) on West
Sixteenth Street. The director of this group was a pho-
totechnician of the Daily News, Bernard Axelrod, who was
the only one of the group who knew the purpose of the
meeting; the others, notably the medium, Mrs. Meyers,
knew nothing whatever of our plans.
We met in front of Bigelow’s drugstore that cold
evening, February 23, 1954, and proceeded to 51 West
Tenth Street, where the current occupant of the La Farge
studio, an artist named Leon Smith, welcomed us. In addi-
tion, there were also present the late News columnist, Dan-
ton Walker, Henry Belk, the noted playwright Bernays,
Marguerite Haymes, and two or three others considered
students of psychic phenomena. Unfortunately, Mrs. Belk
also brought along her pet chihuahua, which proved to be
somewhat of a problem.
All in all, there were fifteen people present in the
high-ceilinged, chilly studio. Dim light crept through the
tall windows that looked onto the courtyard, and one
wished that the fireplace occupying the center of the back
wall had been working.
We formed a circle around it, with the medium occu-
pying a comfortable chair directly opposite it, and the sit-
ters filling out the circle on both sides; my own chair was
next to the medium’s.
The artificial light was dimmed. Mrs. Meyers started
to enter the trance state almost immediately and only the
loud ticking of the clock in the rear of the room was heard
for a while, as her breathing became heavier. At the thresh-
old of passing into trance, the medium suddenly said —
"Someone says very distinctly, Take another step and
I go out this window! The body of a woman. . .close-fitting hat
and a plume. . .close-fitting bodice and a thick skirt. . .
lands right on face. . .1 see a man, dark curly hair, hooked
nose, an odd, mean face. . .cleft in chin. ..light tan coat,
lighter britches, boots, whip in hand, cruel, mean. . ..”
There was silence as she described what I recognized
as the face of La Farge.
A moment later she continued: “I know the face is
not to be looked at anymore. It is horrible. It should have
hurt but I didn’t remember. Not long. I just want to
scream and scream.”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
246
The power of the woman who went through the win-
dow was strong. “I have a strange feeling,” Mrs. Meyers
said, "I have to go out that window if I go into trance.”
With a worried look, she turned to me and asked, “If I
stand up and start to move, hold me.” I nodded assurance
and the seance continued. A humming sound came from
her lips, gradually assuming human-voice characteristics.
The next personality to manifest itself was apparently
a woman in great fear. “They’re in the courtyard. . . .He is
coming. . .they'll find me and whip me again. I’ll die first.
Let me go. I shouldn’t talk so loud. Margaret! Please don’t
let him come. See the child. My child. Barbara. Oh, the
steps, I can’t take it. Take Bobby, raise her, I can’t take it.
He is coming. . .let me go! I am free!”
With this, the medium broke out of trance and com-
plained of facial stiffness, as well as pain in the shoulder.
Was the frantic woman someone who had been mis-
treated by an early inhabitant of No. 22? Was she a run-
away slave, many of whom had found refuge in the old
houses and alleys of the Village?
I requested of the medium’s “control” that the most
prominent person connected with the studio be allowed to
speak to us. But Albert, the control, assured me that the
woman, whom he called Elizabeth, was connected with that
man. “He will come only if he is of a mind to. He entered
the room a while ago.”
I asked Albert to describe this man.
"Sharp features, from what I can see. You are closest
to him. Clothes. . .nineties, early 1900s.”
After a while, the medium's lips started to move, and
a gruff man’s voice was heard: “Get out. . .get out of my
house.”
Somewhat taken aback by this greeting, I started to
explain to our visitor that we were his friends and here to
help him. But he didn’t mellow.
“I don’t know who you are. . . who is everybody here.
Don’t have friends.”
“I am here to help you,” I said, and tried to calm the
ghost’s suspicions. But our visitor was not impressed.
“I want help, but not from you. ..I’ll find it!”
He wouldn’t tell us what he was looking for. There
were additional requests for us to get out of his house.
Finally, the ghost pointed the medium’s arm toward the
stove and intoned — “I put it there!” A sudden thought
inspired me, and I said, lightly — "We found it already.”
Rage took hold of the ghost in an instant. “You took
it. . .you betrayed me. . .it is mine. . .1 was a good man.”
I tried in vain to pry his full name from him.
He moaned. “I am sick all over now. Worry, worry,
worry. Give it to me.”
I promised to return "it,” if he would cooperate with
us.
In a milder tone he said, "I wanted to make it so
pretty. It won’t move."
I remembered how concerned La Farge had been
with his beautiful altar painting, and that it should not fall
again. I wondered if he knew how much time had passed.
"Who is President of the United States now?” I
asked.
Our friend was petulant. “I don’t know. I am sick.
William McKinley.” But then he volunteered — "I knew
him. Met him. In Boston. Last year. Many years ago. Who
are you? I don’t know any friends. I am in my house."
"What is your full name?”
"Why is that so hard? I know William and I don’t
know my own name.”
I have seen this happen before. A disturbed spirit
sometimes cannot recall his own name or address.
“Do you know you have passed over?”
“I live here,” he said, quietly now. “Times changed.
I know I am not what I used to be. It is there!”
When I asked what he was looking for, he changed
the subject to Bertha, without explaining who Bertha was.
But as he insisted on finding “it,” I finally said, "You
are welcome to get up and look for it.”
"I am bound in this chair and can’t move.”
"Then tell us where to look for it.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he spoke. “On the
chimney, in back. . .it was over there. I will find it, but I
can’t move now. ..I made a mistake. . .1 can’t talk like this.”
And suddenly he was gone.
As it was getting on to half past ten, the medium was
awakened. The conversation among the guests then turned
to any feelings they might have had during the seance.
Miss Archer was asked about the building.
“It was put up in 1856,” she replied, “and is a copy
of a similar studio building in Paris.”
“Has there ever been any record of a murder com-
mitted in this studio?” I asked.
"Yes. . .between 1870 and 1900, a young girl went
through one of these windows. But I did not mention this in
my article, as it apparently was unconnected with the La
Farge story.”
“What about Elizabeth? And Margaret?”
"That was remarkable of the medium,” Miss Archer
nodded. “You see, Elizabeth was La Farge’s wife. . .and
Margaret, well, she also fits in with his story.”
For the first time, the name La Farge had been men-
tioned in the presence of the medium. But it meant noth-
ing to her in her conscious state.
Unfortunately, the ghost could not be convinced that
his search for the plans was unnecessary, for La Farge’s
genius as an architect and painter has long since belonged
to time.
A few weeks after this seance, I talked to an advertis-
ing man named Douglas Baker. To my amazement, he,
too, had at one time occupied Studio 22. Although aware
of the stories surrounding the building, he had scoffed at
A Greenwich Village Ghost
247
the idea of a ghost. But one night he was roused from deep
sleep by the noise of someone opening and closing drawers.
Sitting up in bed, he saw a man in Victorian opera clothes
in his room, which was dimly lit by the skylight and win-
dows. Getting out of bed to fence off the intruder, he
found himself alone, just as others had before him.
No longer a scoffer, he talked to others in the build-
ing, and was able to add one more episode to the La Farge
case. It seems a lady was passing No. 51 one bleak after-
noon when she noticed an odd-looking gentleman in opera
clothes standing in front of the building. For no reason at
all, the woman exclaimed, "My, you're a funny-looking
man!”
The gentleman in the opera cloak looked at her in
rage. “Madam — how dare you!”
And with that, he went directly thought the building —
the wall of the building, that is!
Passers-by revived the lady.
* * *
Now there is a modern apartment building at 51
West Tenth Street. Is John La Farge still roaming its ugly
modern corridors? Last night, I went into the Church of
the Ascension, gazed at the marvelous altar painting, and
prayed a little that he shouldn't have to.
* 38
The Hauntings at Seven Oaks
ELEANOR Small IS A charming woman in her late forties
who dabbles in real estate and business. She comes from a
very good family which once had considerable wealth, and
is what is loosely termed "social” today. She wasn’t the
kind of person one would suspect of having any interest in
the supernatural.
One evening, as we were discussing other matters,
the conversation got around to ghosts. To my amazement,
Eleanor was fascinated by the topic; so much so, that I
could not help asking her if by chance she knew of a
haunted house somewhere for me to investigate!
"Indeed I do,” was the reply, and this is how I first
heard about Seven Oaks. In Mamaroneck, New York, up
in posh Westchester County, there stood until very
recently a magnificent colonial mansion known as Seven
Oaks. Situated near the edge of Long Island Sound, it was
one of the show places of the East. Just as did so many fine
old mansions, this one gave way to a “development,” and
now there are a number of small, insignificant, ugly mod-
ern houses dotting the grounds of the large estate.
During the Battle of Orient Point, one of the bloodier
engagements of the Revolutionary War, the mansion was
British-held, and American soldiers, especially the
wounded, were often smuggled out to Long Island Sound
via an “underground railway,” passing through the man-
sion.
“When I was a young girl,” Eleanor said, “I spent
many years with my mother and my stepfather at Seven
Oaks, which we then owned. I was always fascinated by
the many secret passageways which honeycombed the
house.”
The entrance was from the library; some books
would slide back, and a slender wooden staircase appeared.
Gaslight jets had been installed in the nineteenth century
to light these old passages. A butler working for Eleanor’s
parents stumbled onto them by chance.
“When did you first hear about ghosts?” I asked.
“We moved into the house about June 1932. Right
away, a neighbor by the name of Mabel Merker told us
that the place was haunted. Of course, we paid no attention
to her.”
“Of course.” I nodded wryly.
“But it wasn’t too long before Mother changed her
mind about that.”
“You mean she saw the ghost?”
Eleanor nodded. “Regularly, practically every night."
Eleanor’s mother had described her as a woman of about
forty-five, with long blond hair and sweet expression on
her face. One of these apparitions had its comic aspects,
too.
“Mother had her private bathroom, which connected
directly with her bedroom. One night, after all doors had
been locked and Mother knew there was no one about any
more, she retired for the night. Entering the bathroom
from her bedroom, she left the connecting door open in the
knowledge that her privacy could not possibly be dis-
turbed! Suddenly, looking up, she saw, back in her room,
the ghost standing and beckoning to her in the bathroom, as if
she wanted to tell her something of utmost urgency. There
was such an expression of sadness and frustration on the
wraith’s face, Mother could never forget it.”
“But what did she do?" I asked.
“She approached the apparition, but when she got
halfway across the room, the ghost just evaporated into
thin air.”
“And this was in good light, and the apparition was
not shadowy or vaporous?”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
248
"Oh no, it looked just like someone of flesh and
blood — until that last moment when she dissolved before
Mother’s eyes."
"Was your mother very upset?”
"Only at first. Later she got used to the idea of hav-
ing a ghost around. Once she saw her up on the second
floor, in the master bedroom. There she was standing in
front of the two beds. Mother wondered what she could do
to help her, but the ghost again vanished.”
"Did she ever hear her talk or make any kind of
noise?” I asked.
“Not talk, but noise — well, at the time Mother
moved into the house, the previous owner, Mrs. Warren,
still maintained a few things of her own in a closet in the
house, and she was in the habit of returning there occa-
sionally to pick some of them up, a few at a time. One
evening Mother heard some footsteps, but thought them to
be Mrs. Warren’s.
“The next day, however, she found out that no one
had been to the house. Our family dog frequently barked
loudly and strongly before the fireplace, at something or
someone we could not see, but evidently he could.”
"Did anyone else see the ghost?”
“The servants constantly complained of being pulled
from their beds, in the servants’ quarters, by unseen hands.
It was as if someone wanted their attention, but there never
was anyone there when the lights were turned on. ”
"She probably wanted to talk to someone, as ghosts
often do!” I said. Communication and inability to be heard
or seen by the people of flesh and blood is the main agony
of a wraith.
"That must be so,” Eleanor nodded, “because there
was another incident some years later that seems to confirm
it. My stepfather’s son and his seventeen-year-old bride
came to live at Seven Oaks. The girl was part Indian, and
extremely sensitive. They were given a room on the top
floor of the old mansion, with a double bed in the center.
“One night they retired early, and the son was
already in bed, while his wife stood nearby in the room.
Suddenly, as she looked on with horror, she saw her hus-
band bodily pulled out of bed by unseen hands. His struggle
was in vain.
"The next morning, the young couple left Seven
Oaks, never to return."
m 39
The Central Park West Ghost
Mrs. M. Daly Hopkins was a lady of impeccable taste,
and gracious surroundings meant a great deal to her and
her husband. Consequently, when they decided to look for
a new apartment, they directed their steps toward Central
Park West, which in the thirties had become one of New
York’s more desirable residential areas.
As they were walking up the tree-lined street, they
noticed a man in working overalls hanging up a sign on a
building, reading “Apartment for Rent.” The man turned
out to be the superintendent of one of three identical gray
five-story buildings on the corner of 107th Street and Cen-
tral Park West.
Mrs. Hopkins, who reported her uncanny experiences
in a story entitled “Ten Years with a Ghost,” was over-
joyed. The location was perfect; now if only the apartment
suited them! With hearts beating a trifle faster, the Hop-
kinses approached the building.
The apartment for rent was on the top floor, that is,
it occupied the southeast corner of the fifth floor of the
building, and it contained a total of eight rooms. This
seemed ideal to the Hopkinses, who needed plenty of space
for themselves, their small son, and his nurse.
It seemed the former tenants had just moved out,
after living in the apartment for many years. Most of the
*Fate, July, 1954.
people in the building, the superintendent added, had been
there a long time. By November of the same year, the
Hopkins family was settled in the new apartment.
Nothing unusual happened during the first few weeks
of their stay, except that on a number of occasions Mrs.
Hopkins heard her housekeeper cry out, as if surprised by
someone or something!
Finally, the middle-aged woman came to Mrs. Hop-
kins, and said: "Something’s strange about this place. I
often feel someone standing behind me, and yet, when I
turn around, there is nobody there!”
Mrs. Hopkins, naturally, tried to talk her out of her
apprehensions, but to no avail. For two years Annie, the
housekeeper, tolerated the “unseen visitor.” Then she quit.
She just could not go on like this, she explained. “Somebody
keeps turning my doorknob. I am not a superstitious person,
but I do believe you have a ghost here.”
Mrs. Hopkins wondered why no one else in the
apartment noticed anything unusual. After Annie left,
Josephine was hired, and slept in the apartment. Before
long, Josephine, too, kept exclaiming in surprise, just as
Annie had done for so long.
Finally, Josephine came to see Mrs. Hopkins and
asked if she could talk to her. Mrs. Hopkins sat back to
listen.
“This apartment is haunted,” Josephine said.
Mrs. Hopkins was not surprised. She admitted openly
now that there was an "unseen guest” at the apartment,
The Central Park West Ghost
249
but she loved the apartment too much to give it up. "We’ll
just have to live with that ghost!” she replied. Josephine
laughed, and said it was all right with her, too.
She felt the ghost was female, and from that day on,
for seven-and-a-half years, Josephine would speak aloud to
the ghost on many occasions, addressing her always as
"Miss Flossie” and asking the unquiet spirit to tell her
what was troubling her so much. Finally, one morning,
Josephine came into Mrs. Hopkins’ room and told her that
she knew why “Miss Flossie” could not find rest.
“Miss Flossie killed herself, Ma’am,” she said
quietly.
Josephine never actually saw the ghost, for “no mat-
ter how quick I turn, the ghost is even quicker" to disap-
pear. But as is the case so often with children, the
Hopkinses’ small son did see her. The boy was then just
four years old.
He had been asleep for several hours that particular
night, when Mrs. Hopkins heard him call out for her. Since
the “nanna” was out for the evening, Mrs. Hopkins rushed
to his side. The boy said a “lady visitor waked me up
when she kissed me.” Mrs. Hopkins insisted that she and
her husband were the only ones at home. The boy insisted
that he had seen this woman, and that she looked like “one
of those dolls little girls play with.”
Mrs. Hopkins calmed her boy, and after he had
returned to sleep, she went to her husband and brought
him up to date on this entire ghost business. He didn’t like
it at all. But somehow the household settled down to rou-
tine again, and it was several years before another manifes-
tation occurred, or was noticed, at least.
One night, while her son was in boarding school and
her husband out of town on business, Mrs. Hopkins found
herself all alone in the apartment. The “nanna” had
returned to England. It was a quiet, rainy night, and Mrs.
Hopkins did not feel unduly nervous, especially as “Miss
Flossie” had not been active for so long.
Sometime after going to bed, Mrs. Hopkins was
awakened by someone calling her name. “Mrs. Hop-kins!
Mrs. Hop-kins!” There was a sense of urgency about the
voice, which seemed to be no different from that of some-
one close by. Mrs. Hopkins responded immediately. “Yes,
what is it?” Fully awake now, she noticed by her clock that
the time was 1 A.M. Suddenly she became aware of an
entirely different sound. Overhead, on the roof, there were
footsteps, and somehow she knew it was a burglar. Jump-
ing from bed, Mrs. Hopkins examined the hall door. The
three locks were all off. She tried to telephone the superin-
tendent, but found the line had been cut! Without a
moment’s hesitation, she retraced her steps to the bedroom,
and locked herself in the room.
The next morning, the superintendent informed Mrs.
Hopkins that the two other houses in the block had their
top floor apartments burglarized during the night, but her
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
apartment had somehow been spared! Mrs. Hopkins smiled
wanly. How could she explain that a ghost had saved her
that night?
One evening Mrs. Hopkins and her husband returned
from the theater and found a small black kitten crying on
the front doorstep of the house. She felt pity for the kitten,
and took it into the apartment, locking it into the maid’s
room for the night. At first they thought it was a neigh-
bor’s cat, but nobody came to claim it, and in the end they
kept it.
The cat behaved strangely right from the start. Dash-
ing through the apartment with fur disarranged, she
seemed terrified of something. Josephine assured Mrs.
Hopkins that the ghost hated the kitten, and would kill it
before long.
A week later, Mrs. Hopkins sat alone in a comfort-
able chair, reading. It was evening, and the kitten was
curled up, sleeping peacefully nearby. Suddenly the cat
looked toward the doorway leading into the hall. Getting
up, she seemed to see someone enter the room, pass in
front of Mrs. Hopkins, and finally stand directly behind
her. The cat seemed terrified. Finally, Mrs. Hopkins said,
“Kitty, don’t be afraid of Miss Flossie.” The cat relaxed,
but not Mrs. Hopkins, who felt a terrible chill.
When her husband returned, she insisted they give
up the apartment. The ghost had become too much for
her. No sooner said than done, and two weeks later, they
were living at the other end of town.
One night at dinner Mr. Hopkins mentioned that he
had just learned more about their former apartment from
one of the old tenants he had accidentally met. At the time
when they rented the place, the superintendent told them
the previous tenants had moved out "ten minutes before.”
What he had neglected to tell them, however, was how.
The Hopkinses had come there ten minutes after the funeral.
The wife of the former tenant had committed suicide in
the living room. Mrs. Hopkins’ curiosity was aroused. She
went to see a Mrs. Foran, who lived at the old place
directly below where their apartment had been.
“What sort of woman was this lady who died here?”
she asked her.
Well, it seemed that the couple had been living else-
where before their marriage without benefit of clergy. After
they got married, they moved to this place, to make a fresh
start.
But the wife was still unhappy. During the three
years of their tenancy, she imagined the neighbors were
gossiping about her. Actually, the neighbors knew nothing
of their past, and cared less. “But,” Mrs. Foran added as
an afterthought, “she didn't belong here.”
“Why not?” wondered Mrs. Hopkins.
“Because she had bleached hair, that’s why!” replied
Mrs. Foran.
Mrs. Hopkins couldn’t help smiling, because she
realized how right Josephine had been in calling the spook
“Miss Flossie.”
250
In July 1960, 1 decided to pay “Miss Flossie” a visit.
I first located Mrs. Hopkins in Newmarket, Canada. My
request for information was answered by Mrs. Hopkins’
sister, Helena Daly.
"Since my sister is very handicapped following a
stroke,” she wrote, “I shall be pleased to give you the
information you wish, as I lived there with them for a
short time, but did not meet the ghost.
“The location is at 471 Central Park West, northwest
corner of 106th Street, a top-floor apartment with win-
dows facing south and also east, overlooking Central
Park.
"Wishing you every success, yours truly, Helena M.
Daly.”
I located the house all right, even though it was at
107th Street. The apartment on the top floor was locked. I
located a ground-floor tenant who knew the name of the
family now living in it. The name was Hernandez, but that
didn’t get me into the apartment by a long shot. Three let-
ters remained unanswered. The rent collector gave me the
name of the superintendent. He didn’t have a key either.
The entire neighborhood had changed greatly in character
since the Hopkinses lived there. The whole area, and of
course the building at 471 Central Park West, was now
populated by Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans.
Weeks went by. All my efforts to contact the Her-
nandez family proved fruitless. There was no telephone,
and they never seemed to be home when I called. Finally, I
decided to send a letter announcing my forthcoming visit
three days hence at 1 :30 in the afternoon, and would they
please be in, as I had the permission of their landlord to
see them.
I was determined to hold a seance outside their very
doorstep, if necessary, hoping that my sensitive, Mrs. Mey-
ers, would somehow catch at least part of the vibratory ele-
ment and atmosphere of the place. I also invited a Mr.
Lawrence, a newspaper writer, to come along as a witness.
To my surprise, the seance on the doorstep was
unnecessary. When the three of us arrived at the apart-
ment, somewhat out of breath after climbing four flights of
stairs on a hot summer day, the door was immediately
opened by a nicely-dressed young man who introduced
himself as Mr. Hernandez, owner of the flat. He led us
through the large apartment into the living room at the
corner of the building, the very room I was most interested
in.
Mr. Hernandez spoke excellent English. He explained
that he was a furniture repairman employed by one of the
large hotels, and that he and his family — we saw a young
wife and child — lived in the apartment. They had never
seen nor heard anything unusual. He did not believe in
“vibrations” or the supernatural, but had no objection to
our sitting down and gathering what impressions we could.
I had maintained in my letters all along that "a famous lit-
erary figure” had once occupied his apartment and we
wanted to visit the rooms for that reason, as I was doing an
article on this person. It doesn’t pay to tell the person
whose apartment you want to visit that it’s his ghost you’re
after.
Mrs. Meyers sat down on the comfortable couch near
the window, and the rest of us took seats around her. Her
first impressions of the room came through immediately.
“I hear a woman’s voice calling Jamie or Janie. . . .
There is an older woman, kind of emaciated looking, with
gray hair, long nose, wide eyes, bushy eyebrows. Then
there is a black cat. Something is upsetting Jamie. There’s
a squeaking rocking chair, a man with a booming voice,
reciting lines, heavy-set, he wears a cutaway coat. . .man
is heavy in the middle, has a mustache, standup collar
with wings, dark tie. . .there’s something wrong with his
finger. . .a wedding band? A remark about a wedding
band?"
Mrs. Meyers looked around the carefully furnished,
spotlessly clean room, and continued. “A small boy, about
twelve. Someone here used to live with the dead for a very
long time, treated as if they were alive. Just stay here,
never go out, if I go out, he is not going to come back
again, so I’ll remain here! I look from the window and see
him coming out of the carriage. We have dinner every
night.” Suddenly, Mrs. Meyers started to inhale rapidly,
and an expression of fear crept upon her face.
“Gas — always have one burner — gas! Somebody is
still disturbed about Jamie. I get the letters M. B. or B. M.
I feel lots of people around. There is a to-do in court.
Now someone walks around the outside that can’t be seen.
Wants to come in by the window.
“It’s like a nightmare, very dark, can’t look out the
window. I am a mess, and I’m going to fall if I let go.
There’s a body laid in a casket in this room, but very few
flowers; the name on the silver plaque reads Stevens or
Stevenson; the curtains are drawn, it’s very dark, there are
candles and a body in the casket.”
I asked Mrs. Meyers if she felt any restless spirits
about the place still. “The restlessness is dimming,” she
replied. “It was there in the past, but is much dimmer
now, because a religious person lives here.”
Did she get any other impressions? “The police had
something to do here, they wear long coats, the coffin con-
tains a person in black.”
After we had left the apartment, I compared Mrs.
Meyers’ impressions to the material in the 1954 story,
which I had never shown or mentioned to her. There was a
small son, and the description of the “older woman” fitted
Mrs. Hopkins, as did the black cat. Mrs. Meyers’ state-
ment, that “something was wrong with his finger. . .a wed-
ding band!” recalled the fact that the couple had been
living together as man and wife for years without being
The Central Park West Ghost
251
married, and had this fact not disturbed the ghost so
much?
The gas explosion and the funeral following “Miss
Flossie’s” suicide were factual. M. is Mrs. Hopkins’ initial
and "M. B.” may have been “M. D.,” which is M. Daly,
Mrs. Hopkins’ maiden name. “Someone walking on the
outside” refers to the burglar episode. Police and the coffin
make sense where suicide is involved.
Shortly after our seance, I received word that Mrs.
Hopkins had passed on. Now perhaps she and "Miss
Flossie” can become better acquainted.
m 40
The Ghosts at St. Mark’s
DESPITE the FACT that most religious faiths, and their
clergy, take a dim view of ghosts and hauntings, there are
many recorded cases of supernormal goings-on in churches
and cemeteries. One such place of worship is New York’s
famed old St. Mark’s-In-the-Bowerie church, located at the
corner of Second Avenue and Tenth Street.
Originally the site of a chapel erected in 1 660 by
Peter Stuyvesant for the Dutch settlers of New Amster-
dam, it became the governor’s burial ground in 1672. The
Stuyvesant vault was permanently sealed in 1953, when the
last member of the family died. A century after the death
of the governor, the family had adopted the Episcopalian
faith, and a grandson, also named Peter Stuyvesant, gave
the land and some cash to build on the same spot the pre-
sent church of St. Mark’s. It was completed in 1 799 and
has been in service continuously since. No major repairs,
additions, or changes were made in the building.
The surrounding neighborhood became one of the
worst in New York, although it was once a highly
respected one. But even in the confines of the Bowery,
there is a legend that St. Mark's is a haunted church.
I talked to the Reverend Richard E. McEvoy,
Archdeacon of St. John’s, but for many years rector of St.
Mark’s, about any apparitions he or others might have seen
in the church. Legend, of course, has old Peter Stuyvesant
rambling about now and then. The Reverend proved to be
a keen observer, and quite neutral in the matter of ghosts.
He himself had not seen anything unusual. But there was a
man, a churchgoer, whom he had known for many years.
This man always sat in a certain pew on the right side of
the church.
Queried by the rector about his peculiar insistence on
that seat, the man freely admitted it was because from
there he could see “her” — the “her” being a female wraith
who appeared in the church to listen to the sermon, and
then disappeared again. At the spot he had chosen, he
could always be next to her! I pressed the rector about any
personal experiences. Finally he thought that he had seen
something like a figure in white out of the corner of one
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowerie, New York
eye, a figure that passed, and quickly disappeared. That
was ten years ago.
On the rector’s recommendation, I talked to Foreman
Cole, the man who comes to wind the clock at regular
intervals, and who has been in and around St. Mark’s for
the past twenty -six years.
Mr. Cole proved to be a ready talker. Some years
ago, Cole asked his friend Ray Bore, organist at a Roman
Catholic church nearby, to have a look at the church organ.
The church was quite empty at the time, which was 1 A.M.
Nevertheless, Cole saw “someone” in the balcony.
About fifteen years ago, Cole had another unusual
experience. It was winter, and the church was closed to the
public, for it was after 5 P.M. That evening it got dark
early, but there was still some light left when Cole let him-
self into the building. Nobody was supposed to be in the
church at that time, as Cole well knew, being familiar with
the rector’s hours.
Nevertheless, to his amazement, he clearly saw a
woman standing in the back of the church, near the entrance
door, in the center aisle. Thinking that she was a late
churchgoer who had been locked in by mistake, and wor-
ried that she might stumble in the semidarkness, he called
252
The haunted nave
out to her, “Wait, lady, don’t move till I turn the lights
on.’’
He took his eyes off her for a moment and quickly
switched the lights on. But he found himself alone; she had
vanished into thin air from her spot well within the nave of
the church.
Unnerved, Cole ran to the entrance door and found it
firmly locked. He then examined all the windows and
found them equally well secured.
I asked Cole if there was anything peculiar about the
woman’s appearance. He thought for a moment, then said,
"Yes, there was. She seemed to ignore me, looked right
through me, and did not respond to my words.”
Six weeks later, he had another supernormal experi-
ence. Again alone in the church, with all doors locked, he
saw a man who looked to him like one of the Bowery dere-
licts outside. He wore shabby clothes, and did not seem to
“belong” here. Quickly, Cole switched on the lights to
examine his visitor. But he had vanished, exactly as the
woman had before.
Cole has not seen any apparitions since, but some
pretty strange noises have reached his ears. For one thing,
there is frequent “banging” about the church, and
“uncanny” feelings and chills in certain areas of the old
church. On one occasion, Cole clearly heard someone com-
ing up the stairs leading to the choir loft. Thinking it was
the sexton, he decided to give him a scare, and hid to await
the man at the end of the staircase. Only, nobody came.
The steps were those of an unseen man!
Cole has no idea who the ghosts could be. He still
takes care of the clock, and is reluctant to discuss his expe-
riences with ordinary people, lest they think him mad. A
Governor Peter Stuyvesant is buried in the vault.
A psychic photograph of the haunted nave
The Ghosts at St. Mark’s
253
man of forty-one, and quite healthy and realistic, Cole is
sure of his memories.
Several days later, I asked Mary R. M., a singer and
gifted psychic, to accompany me to the church and see if
she could get any “impressions.” It turned out that my
friend had been to the church once before, last November,
when she was rehearsing nearby. At that time, she was sure
the place was haunted. We sat in one of the right-hand
pews, and waited. We were quite alone in the church; the
time was three in the afternoon, and it was quite still.
Within a minute or so, Mary told me she felt "a man with
a cane walking down the middle aisle behind us.” Peter
Stuyvesant, buried here, walked with a cane.
Then my friend pointed to the rear, and advised me
that she "saw” a woman in wide skirts standing near the
rear door of the church. She added: “I see a white shape
floating away from that marble slab in the rear!”
So if you ever see someone dissolve into thin air at St.
Mark’s — don’t be alarmed. It’s only a ghost!
* 41
The Clinton Court Ghosts
WHILE CASUALLY LEAFING through the pages of Tomor-
row magazine, a periodical devoted to psychical research in
which my byline appears on occasion, I noticed a short
piece by Wainwright Evans, called “Ghost in Crinoline.”
The article, written in the spring of 1959, told of a spectral
inhabitant at number 42214 West Forty-Sixth Street, in
New York City. It seemed that Ruth Shaw, an artist who
had for years lived in the rear section of the old building,
which she had turned into a studio for herself, had spoken
to Mr. Evans about her experiences. He had come to see
her at Clinton Court, as the building was called. There was
a charming iron gate through which you pass by the main
house into a court. Beyond the court rose an arcaded rear
section, three stories high and possessed of an outdoor
staircase leading to the top. This portion dates back to
1809, or perhaps even before, and was at one time used as
the coach house of Governor DeWitt Clinton.
Miss Shaw informed Evans about the legends around
the place, and in her painstaking manner told him of her
conversations with ninety-year-old Mr. Oates, a neighbor-
hood druggist. An English coachman with a Danish wife
once lived in the rooms above the stables. The first ghost
ever to be seen at Clinton Court was that of “Old Moor,”
a sailor hanged for mutiny at the Battery, and buried in
Potter’s Field, which was only a short block away from the
house. Today, this cemetery has disappeared beneath the
teeming tenement houses of the middle Westside, Hell's
Kitchen’s outer approaches. But “Old Moor,” as it were,
did not have far to go to haunt anyone. Clinton Court was
the first big house in his path. The coachman’s wife saw
the apparition, and while running away from “Old Moor,”
fell down the stairs. This was the more unfortunate as she
was expecting a child at the time. She died of the fall, but
the child survived.
The irony of it was that soon the mother’s ghost was
seen around the Court, too, usually hanging around the
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
baby. Thus, Ghost Number 2 joined the cast at the Gover-
nor’s old house.
One of the grandchildren of the Clinton family, who
had been told these stories, used to play “ghost” the way
children nowadays play cops and robbers. This girl, named
Margaret, used to put on old-fashioned clothes and run up
and down the big stairs. One fine day, she tripped and fell
down the stairs making the game grim reality. Many have
seen the pale little girl; Miss Shaw was among them. She
described her as wearing a white blouse, full sleeves, and a
crinoline. On one occasion, she saw the girl ghost skipping
down the stairs in plain daylight — skipping is the right
word, for a ghost need not actually “walk,” but often floats
just a little bit above ground, not quite touching it.
I thought it would be a good idea to give Miss Shaw
a ring, but discovered there was no telephone at the
address. Miss Shaw had moved away and even the local
police sergeant could not tell me where the house was. The
police assured me there was no such number as 42214 West
Forty-Sixth Street. Fortunately, I have a low opinion of
police intelligence, so my search continued. Perhaps a
dozen times I walked by numbers 424 and 420 West
Forty-Sixth Street before I discovered the strange archway
at Number 420. I walked through it, somehow driven on
by an inner feeling that I was on the right track. I was, for
before me opened Clinton Court. It simply was tucked
away in back of 420 and the new owners had neglected to
put the 42214 number anywhere within sight. Now an
expensive, remodeled apartment house, the original walls
and arrangements were still intact.
On the wall facing the court, Number 420 proudly
displayed a bronze plaque inscribed "Clinton Court — ca.
1 840 — Restored by the American Society for Preservation
of Future Antiquities”! The rear building, where Miss
Shaw’s studio used to be, was now empty. Apparently the
carpenters had just finished fixing the floors and the apart-
ment was up for rent. I thought that fortunate, for it meant
we could get into the place without worrying about a ten-
ant. But there was still the matter of finding out who the
landlord was, and getting permission. It took me several
weeks and much conversation, until I finally got permission
to enter the place one warm evening in August 1960.
254
Clinton Court — the haunted courtyard
studio apartment of the former coach house. In subdued
light, we sat quietly on the shabby, used-up furniture.
“Let me look around and see what I get,” Mrs. Mey-
ers said, and rose. Slowly I followed her around the apart-
ment, which lay in ghostly silence. Across the yard, the
windows of the front section were ablaze with light and the
yard itself was lit up by floodlights. But it was a quiet
night. The sounds of Hell’s Kitchen did not intrude into
our atmosphere, as if someone bent on granting us privacy
for a little while were muffling them.
"I feel funny in the head, bloated. . .you understand I
am her now. . .there are wooden steps from the right on the
outside of the place — ”
Mrs. Meyers pointed at the wall. “There, where the
wall now is; they took them down, I’m sure.” On close
inspection, I noticed traces of something that may have
been a staircase.
“A woman in white, young, teenager, she’s a bride,
she’s fallen down those steps on her wedding night, her
head is battered in — ”
Horror came over Mrs. Meyers’ face. Then she con-
tinued. "It is cold, the dress is so flimsy, flowing; she is
disappointed, for someone has disappointed her.”
Deep in thought, Mrs. Meyers sat down in one of the
chairs in a little room off the big, sunken living room that
formed the main section of the studio apartment now, as
the new owners had linked two apartments to make one
bigger one.
The Clinton Court Ghosts
Clinton Court — the outside gate to the old
carriage house
Meanwhile I had been told by the superintendent
that an old crony by the name of Mrs. Butram lived next
door, at Number 424, and that she might know something
of interest. I found Mrs. Butram without difficulty. Having
been warned that she kept a large number of pets, my nose
led me to her door. For twenty-five years, she assured me,
she had lived here, and had heard many a story about the
ghost next door. She had never seen anything herself, but
when I pressed her for details, she finally said —
“Well, they say it’s a young girl of about sixteen
One of the horses they used to keep back there broke loose
and frightened her. Ran down the stairs, and fell to her
death. That’s what they say!”
I thanked Mrs. Butram, and went home. I called my
good friend Mrs. Meyers, and asked her to accompany me
to a haunted house, without telling her any more than that.
To my surprise, Mrs. Meyers told me on the phone
that she thought she could see the place clairvoyantly that
very instant.
“There is a pair of stairs outside of a house, and a
woman in white, in a kind of backyard.”
This conversation took place on August 9, a week
before Mrs. Meyers knew anything about the location or
nature of our “case.”
About a week later, we arrived together at Clinton
Court, and proceeded immediately into the ground -floor
255
“She has dark hair, blue eyes, light complexion, I’d
say she’s in her middle teens and wears a pretty dress,
almost like a nightgown, the kind they used to have
seventy-five or a hundred years ago. But now I see her in a
gingham or checkered dress with high neck, long sleeves, a
white hat, she’s ready for a trip, only someone doesn’t
come. There is crying, disappointment. Then there is a
seafaring man also, with a blue hat with shiny visor, a blue
coat. He’s a heavy-set man.”
I thought of “Old Moor.” Mrs. Meyers was getting
her impressions all at the same time. Of course, she knew
nothing of either the young girl ghost nor the sailor.
Now the medium told a lively tale of a young girl
ready to marry a young man, but pursued by another,
older man. “I can hear her scream!” She grabbed her own
throat, and violently suppressed a scream, the kind of
sound that might have invited an unwelcome audience to
our seance!
“Avoiding the man, she rushes up the stairs, it is a
slippery and cold day around Christmas. She’s carrying
something heavy, maybe wood and coal, and it’s the eve of
her marriage, but she’s pushed off the roof. There are two
women, the oldest one had been berating the girl, and
pushed her out against the fence, and over she went. It was
cold and slippery and nobody’s fault. But instead of a wed-
ding, there is a funeral.”
The medium was now in full trance. Again, a scream
is suppressed, then the voice changes and another personal-
ity speaks through Mrs. Meyers. “Who are you?” I said, as
I always do on such occasions. Identification is a must
when you communicate with ghosts.
Instead, the stranger said anxiously — “Mathew!”
“Who is Mathew?” I said.
“Why won’t he come, where is he? Why?”
"Who are you?”
"Bernice.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“What year is this?”
"Eighty.”
But then the anguish came to the fore again.
“Where is he, he has the ring. . .my head. . . Mathew,
Mathew. . .she pushed me, she is in hell. I’m ready to go,
I’m dressed, we’re going to father. I’m dressed....”
As she repeated her pleas, the voice gradually faded
out. Then, just as suddenly as she had given way to the
stranger, Mrs. Meyers’ own personality returned.
As we walked out of the gloomy studio apartment, I
mused about the story that had come from Mrs. Meyers’
lips. Probably servant girls, I thought, and impossible to
trace. Still, she got the young girl, her falling off the stairs,
the stairs themselves, and the ghostly sailor. Clinton Court
is still haunted all right!
I looked up at the reassuringly lighted modern apart-
ments around the yard, and wondered if the ghosts knew
the difference. If you ever happen to be in Hell’s Kitchen,
step through the archway at 420 West Forty -Sixth Street
into the yard, and if you’re real, real quiet, and a bit lucky,
of course, perhaps you will meet the teen-age ghost in her
white dress or crinoline — but beware of “Old Moor” and
his language — you know what sailors are like!
* 42
Hungry Lucy
“June Havoc’s got a ghost in her townhouse,” Gail Bene-
dict said gaily on the telephone. Gail was in public rela-
tions, and a devoted ghost-finder ever since I had been able
to rid her sister’s apartment of a poltergeist the year before.
The house in question was 104 years old, stashed
away in what New Yorkers call “Hell’s Kitchen,” the old
area in the 40s between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, close to
the theater district. Built on the corner of Forty -fourth
Street and Ninth Avenue, it had been in the possession of
the Rodenberg family until a Mr. Payne bought it. He
remodeled it carefully, with a great deal of respect for the
old plans. He did nothing to change its quaint Victorian
appearance, inside or out.
About three years later, glamorous stage and televi-
sion star June Havoc bought the house, and rented the
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
256
upper floors to various tenants. She herself moved into the
downstairs apartment, simply because no one else wanted
it. It didn’t strike her as strange at the time that no tenant
had ever renewed the lease on that floor-through down-
stairs apartment, but now she knows why. It was all
because of Hungry Lucy.
The morning after Gail's call, June Havoc telephoned
me, and a seance was arranged for Friday of that week. I
immediately reached British medium Sybil Leek, but I gave
no details. I merely invited her to help me get rid of a
noisy ghost. Noise was what June Havoc complained
about.
“It seems to be a series of insistent sounds,” she said.
“First, they were rather soft. I didn’t really notice them
three years ago. Then I had the architect who built that
balcony in the back come in and asked him to investigate
these sounds. He said there was nothing whatever the mat-
ter with the house. Then I had the plumber up, because I
thought it was the steam pipes. He said it was not that
either. Then I had the carpenter in, for it is a very old
house, but he couldn’t find any structural defects
whatever.”
"When do you hear these tapping noises?”
“At all times. Lately, they seem to be more insistent.
More demanding. We refer to it as 'tap dancing,’ for that
is exactly what it sounds like.”
The wooden floors were in such excellent state that
Miss Havoc didn’t cover them with carpets. The yellow
pine used for the floorboards cannot be replaced today.
June Havoc’s maid had heard loud tapping in Miss
Havoc’s absence, and many of her actor friends had
remarked on it.
"It is always in this area,” June Havoc pointed out,
"and seems to come from underneath the kitchen floor. It
has become impossible to sleep a full night’s sleep in this
room.”
The kitchen leads directly into the rear section of the
floor-through apartment, to a room used as a bedroom.
Consequently, any noise disturbed her sleep.
Underneath Miss Havoc’s apartment, there was
another floor-through, but the tenants had never reported
anything unusual there, nor had the ones on the upper
floors. Only Miss Havoc’s place was noisy.
We now walked from the front of the apartment into
the back half. Suddenly there was a loud tapping sound
from underneath the floor as if someone had shot off a
machine gun. Catherine and I had arrived earlier than the
rest, and there were just the three of us.
"There, you see,” June Havoc said. The ghost had
greeted us in style.
I stepped forward at once.
“What do you want?” I demanded.
Immediately, the noise stopped.
While we waited for the other participants in the
investigation to arrive, June Havoc pointed to the rear wall.
“It has been furred out,” she explained. "That is to
say, there was another wall against the wall, which made
the room smaller. Why, no one knows.”
Soon New York Post columnist Earl Wilson and Mrs.
Wilson, Gail Benedict, and Robert Winter-Berger, also a
publicist, arrived, along with a woman from Life magazine,
notebook in hand. A little later Sybil Leek swept into the
room. There was a bit of casual conversation, in which
nothing whatever was said about the ghost, and then we
seated ourselves in the rear portion of the apartment. Sybil
took the chair next to the spot where the noises always
originated. June Havoc sat on her right, and I on her left.
The lights were very bright since we were filming the
entire scene for Miss Havoc’s television show.
Soon enough, Sybil began to “go under.”
“Hungry,” Sybil mumbled faintly.
"Why are you hungry?” I asked.
“No food,” the voice said.
The usually calm voice of Sybil Leek was panting in
desperation now.
“I want some food, some food!” she cried.
June Havoc’s former townhouse — haunted by a
colonial soldier’s lady friend
I promised to help her and asked for her name.
“Don’t cry. I will help you,” I promised.
“Food. . .1 want some food. the voice continued
to sob.
“Who are you?”
“Lucy Ryan.”
"Do you live in this house?”
“No house here.”
“How long have you been here?”
“A long time.”
“What year is this?”
“Seventeen ninety-two.”
“What do you do in this house?”
“No house ... people . . .fields ”
“Why then are you here? What is there here for
you?”
The ghost snorted.
“Hm. . .men.”
“Who brought you here?”
“Came. . .people sent us away. . .soldiers. . .follow
them. . .sent me away. . ..”
“What army? Which regiment?”
“Napier."
Hungry Lucy
257
■
The haunted area of Miss Havoc’s living
room
"How old are you?”
"Twenty.”
“Where were you born?”
"Hawthorne. . .not very far away from here.”
I was not sure whether she said "Hawthorne” or
"Hawgton,” or some similar name.
"What is you father’s name?”
Silence.
“Your mother's name?”
Silence.
“Were you baptized?”
“Baptized?”
She didn’t remember that either.
I explained that she had passed on. It did not matter.
"Stay here. . .until I get some food. . .meat. . .meat
and corn. .
“Have you tried to communicate with anyone in this
house?”
"Nobody listens.”
“How are you trying to make them listen?”
“I make noise because I want food.”
“Why do you stay in one area? Why don’t you move
around freely?”
“Can't. Can’t go away. Too many people. Soldiers.”
“Where are your parents?”
“Dead."
“What is your mother's name?”
“Mae.”
“Her maiden name?”
“Don’t know.”
"Your father’s first name?”
“Terry.”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“Were any of your family in the army?”
Ironical laughter punctuated her next words.
“Only... me.”
“Tell me the names of some of the officers in the
army you knew.”
“Alfred. . .Wait.”
“Any rank?”
“No rank.”
“What regiment did you follow?”
“Just this... Alfred.”
“And he left you?”
“Yes. I went with some other man, then I was hun-
gry and I came here.”
“Why here?”
“I was sent here.”
“By whom?”
“They made me come. Picked me up. Man brought
me here. Put me down on the ground.”
“Did you die in this spot?”
“Die, die? I’m not dead. I’m hungry."
I then asked her to join her parents, those who loved
her, and to leave this spot. She refused. She wanted to walk
by the river, she said. I suggested that she was not receiv-
ing food and could leave freely. After a while, the ghost
seemed to slip away peacefully and Sybil Leek returned to
her own body, temporarily vacated so that Lucy could
speak through it. As usual, Sybil remembered absolutely
nothing of what went on when she was in deep trance. She
was crying, but thought her mascara was the cause of it.
Suddenly, the ghost was back. The floorboards were
reverberating with the staccato sound of an angry tap, loud,
strong, and demanding.
“What do you want?” I asked again, although I knew
now what she wanted.
Sybil also extended a helping hand. But the sound
stopped as abruptly as it had begun.
A while later, we sat down again. Sybil reported feel-
ing two presences.
“One is a girl, the other is a man. A man with a
stick. Or a gun. The girl is stronger. She wants
something.”
Suddenly, Sybil pointed to the kitchen area.
“What happened in the comer?”
Nobody had told Sybil of the area in which the dis-
turbances had always taken place.
“I feel her behind me now. A youngish girl, not very
well dressed, Georgian period. I don’t get the man too
well.”
At this point, we brought into the room a small Vic-
torian wooden table, a gift from Gail Benedict.
Within seconds after Sybil, June Havoc, and I had
lightly placed our hands upon it, it started to move, seem-
ingly of its own volition!
Rapidly, it began to tap out a word, using a kind of
Morse code. While Earl Wilson was taking notes, we
258
The late medium Sybil Leek making contact.
Notice the psychic energy covering the floor and
making it mirror-like.
We were standing at a spot adjacent to the basement
wall and close to the center of the tapping disturbance we
had heard.
“Someone may be buried here,” Sybil remarked,
pointing to a mound of earth underneath our feet. “It’s a
girl.”
"Do you see the wire covering the area behind you?”
June Havoc said. “I tried to plant seeds there, and the wire
was to protect them — but somehow nothing, nothing will
grow there.”
“Plant something on this mound,” Sybil suggested.
"It may well pacify her."
We returned to the upstairs apartment, and soon
after broke up the “ghost hunting party,” as columnist
Sheila Graham called it later.
The next morning, I called June Havoc to see how
things were. I knew from experience that the ghost would
either be totally gone, or totally mad, but not the same as
before.
Lucy, I was told, was rather mad. Twice as noisy,
she still demanded her pound of flesh. I promised June
Havoc that we’d return until the ghost was completely
gone.
A few days passed. Things became a little quieter, as
if Lucy were hesitating. Then something odd happened the
Hungry Lucy
259
Heavy knocking in the floorboards were heard
here every night at 3 a.m.
allowed the table to jump hither and yon, tapping out a
message.
None of us touched the table top except lightly.
There was no question of manipulating the table. The light
was very bright, and our hands almost touched, so that any
pressure by one of us would have been instantly noticed by
the other two. This type of communication is slow, since
the table runs through the entire alphabet until it reaches
the desired letter, then the next letter, until an entire word
has been spelled out.
"L-e-a-v-e,” the communicator said, not exactly in a
friendly mood.
Evidently she wanted the place to herself and thought
we were the intruders.
I tried to get some more information about her. But
instead oPtapping out another word in an orderly fashion,
the table became very excited — if that is the word for emo-
tional tables^— and practically leapt from beneath our
hands. We were required to follow it to keep up the con-
tact, as it careened wildly through the room. When I was
speaking, it moved toward me and practically crept onto
my lap. When I wasn’t speaking, it ran to someone else in
the room. Eventually, it became so wild, at times entirely
off the floor, that it slipped from our light touch and, as
the power was broken, instantly rolled into a corner — just
another table with no life of its own.
We repaired to the garden, a few steps down an iron
staircase, in the rear of the house.
"Sybil, what do you feel down here?” I asked.
“I had a tremendous urge to come out here. I didn't
know there was a garden. Underneath my feet almost is the
cause of the disturbance.”
next night. Instead of tapping from her accustomed corner
area, Lucy moved away from it and tapped away from
above June’s bed. She had never been heard from that spot
before.
I decided it was time to have a chat with Lucy again.
Meanwhile, corroboration of the information we had
obtained ahd come to us quickly. The morning after our
first seance, Bob Winter-Berger called. He had been to the
New York Public Library and checked on Napier, the offi-
cer named by the medium as the man in charge of the sol-
dier’s regiment.
The Dictionary of National Biography contained the
answer. Colonel George Napier, a British officer, had
served on the staff of Governor Sir Henry Clinton. How
exciting, I thought. The Clinton mansion once occupied
the very ground we were having the seance on. In fact, I
had reported on a ghost in Clinton Court, two short blocks
to the north, in Ghost Hunter and again in Ghosts I’ve Met.
As far as I knew, the place was still not entirely free of the
uncanny, for reports continued to reach me of strange steps
and doors opening by themselves.
Although the mansion itself no longer stands, the
carriage house in the rear was now part of Clinton Court, a
reconstructed apartment hourse on West Forty-sixth Street.
How could Sybil Leek, only recently arrived from England,
have known of these things?
Napier was indeed the man who had charge of a regi-
ment on this very spot, and the years 1781-82 are given as
the time when Napier’s family contracted the dreaded yel-
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
260
low fever and died. Sir Henry Clinton forbade his aide to
be in touch with them, and the Colonel was shipped off to
England, half-dead himself, while his wife and family
passed away on the spot that later became Potter’s Field.
Many Irish immigrants came to the New World in
those years. Perhaps the Ryan girl was one of them, or her
parents were. Unfortunately, history does not keen much of
a record of camp followers.
On January 1 5, 1965, precisely at midnight, I placed
Sybil Leek into deep trance in my apartment on Riverside
Drive. In the past we had succeeded in contacting former
ghosts once they had been pried loose in an initial seance
in the haunted house itself. I had high hopes that Lucy
would communicate I wasn’t disappointed.
Tick, tock, tickety-tock, June’s clock stops, June’s
clock stops,” the entranced medium murmured, barely
audibly.
"Tickety-tock, June's clock stops, tickety-tock...”
“Who are you?” I asked.
"Lucy.”
"Lucy, what does this mean?”
“June’s clock stops, June’s clock stops, frightened
June, frightened June,” she repeated like a child reciting a
poem.
"Why do you want to frighten June?”
"Go away.”
"Why do you want her to go away?”
"People there. . . too much house. . . too much June. . .
too many clocks... she sings, dances, she makes a lot of
noise... I’m hungry, I’m always hungry. You don’t do a
thing about it....”
Sybil Leek in a trance as June
Havoc and Hans Holzer watch
"Will you go away if I get you some food? Can we
come to an agreement?”
“Why?”
"Because I want to help you, help June.”
“Ah, same old story.”
“You’re not happy. Would you like to see Alfred
again?”
“Yes. . .he’s gone.”
“Not very far. I’ll get you together with Alfred if you
will leave the house.”
“Where would I go?”
“Alfred has a house of his own for you.”
“Where?”
“Not very far.”
"Frightened to go. . .don’t know where to go. . .
nobody likes me. She makes noises, I make noises. I don’t
like that clock.”
“Where were you born, Lucy?”
“Larches by the Sea. . .Larchmont. . .by the Sea. . .
people disturb me.”
Again I asked her to go to join her Alfred, to find
happiness again. I suggested she call for him by name,
which she did, hesitatingly at first, more desperately later.
“No. . .1 can’t go from here. He said he would come.
He said wait. Wait. . .here. Wait. Alfred, why don’t you
come? Too many clocks. Time, time, time. . .noisy crea-
ture. Time, time. . .3 o’clock.”
"What happened at 3 o’clock?” I demanded.
“He said he’d come,” the ghost replied. “I waited for
him.”
“Why at 3 o’clock in the middle of the night?”
“Why do you think? Couldn't get out. Locked in.
Not allowed out at night. I’ll wait. He’ll come.”
“Did you meet any of his friends?”
"Not many . . .what would I say?”
"What was Alfred’s name?”
“Bailey. . .Alfred said, ‘Wait, wait. . .I’ll go away,’ he
said. ‘They'll never find me.’”
“Go to him with my love,” i said, calmly repeating
over and over the formula used in rescue circle operations
to send the earthbound ghost across the threshold.
As I spoke, Lucy slipped away from us, not violently
as she had come, but more or less resignedly.
I telephoned June Havoc to see what had happened
that night between midnight and 12:30. She had heard
Lucy’s tapping precisely then, but nothing more as the
night passed — a quiet night for a change.
Was Lucy on her way to her Alfred?
We would know soon enough.
In the weeks that followed, I made periodic inquiries
of June Havoc. Was the ghost still in evidence? Miss
Havoc did not stay at her townhouse all the time, prefer-
ring the quiet charm of her Connecticut estate. But on the
nights when she did sleep in the house on Forty-fourth
Street, she was able to observe that Lucy Ryan had
changed considerably in personality — the ghost had been
freed, yes, but had not yet been driven from the house. In
fate, the terrible noise was now all over the house, although
less frequent and less vehement — as if she were thinking
things over.
1 decided we had to finish the job as well as we could
and another seance was arranged for late March, 1965. Pre-
sent were — in addition to our hostess and chief sufferer —
my wife Catherine and myself; Emory Lewis, editor of Cue
magazine; Barry Farber, WOR commentator; and two
friends of June Havoc. We grouped ourselves around a
Hungry Lucy
261
table in the front room this time. This soon proved to be a
mistake. No Lucy Ryan. No ghost. We repaired to the
other room where the original manifestations had taken
place, with more luck this time.
Sybil, in trance, told us that the girl had gone, but
that Alfred had no intention of leaving. He was waiting for
her now. I asked for the name of his commanding officer
and was told it was Napier. This we knew already. But
who was the next in rank?
“Lieutenant William Watkins. ”
“What about the commanding general?”
He did not know.
He had been born in Hawthorne, just like Lucy, he
told Sybil. I had been able to trace this Hawthorne to a
place not far away in Westchester County.
There were people all over, Sybil said in trance, and
they were falling down. They were ill.
“Send Alfred to join his Lucy,” I commanded, and
Sybil in a low voice told the stubborn ghost to go.
After an interlude of table tipping, in which several
characters from the nether world made their auditory
appearance, she returned to trance. Sybil in trance was near
the river again, among the sick.
But no Lucy Ryan. Lucy’s gone, she said.
“The smell makes me sick,” Sybil said, and you
could see stark horror in her sensitive face.
“Dirty people, rags, people in uniform too, with dirty
trousers. There is a big house across the river.”
“Whose house is it?”
“Mr. Dawson’s. Doctor Dawson. Dr. James Daw-
son. . .Lee Point. Must go there. Feel sick. Rocks and
trees, just the house across the river.”
"What year is this?”
“Ninety -two.”
She then described Dr. Dawson’s house as having
three windows on the left, two on the right, and five above,
and said that it was called Lee Point — Hawthorne. It
sounded a little like Hawgton to me, but I can’t be sure.
Over the river, she said. She described a “round
thing on post” in front of the house, like a shell. For mes-
sages, she thought.
“What is the name of the country we’re in?” I asked.
“Vinelands. Vinelands.”
I decided to change the subject back to Hungry
Lucy. How did she get sick?
“She didn’t get any food, and then she got cold, by
the river.
“.. .Nobody helped them there. Let them die. Buried
them in a pit.”
“What is the name of the river?”
“Mo . . . Mo-something. ”
“Do you see anyone else still around?”
“Lots of people with black faces, black shapes.”
The plague, I thought, and how little the doctors
could do in those days to stem it.
I asked about the man in charge and she said
Napier and I wondered who would be left in command
after Napier left, and the answer this time was, "Clinton
. . .old fool. Georgie.”
There were a Henry Clinton and a George Clinton,
fairly contemporary with each other.
“What happened after that?”
“Napier died.”
“Any other officers around?”
“Little Boy Richardson. . .Lieutenant.”
“What regiment?”
"Burgoyne.”
Sybil, entranced, started to hiss and whistle. “Sig-
nals,” she murmured. “As the men go away, they whistle.”
I decided the time had come to bring Sybil out of
trance. She felt none the worse for it, and asked for some-
thing to drink. Hungry, like Lucy, she wasn’t.
We began to evaluate the information just obtained.
Dr. James Dawson may very well have lived. The A.M.A.
membership directories aren’t that old. I found the mention
of Lee Point and Hawthorne interesting, inasmuch as the
two locations are quite close. Lee, of course, would be Fort
Lee, and there is a "point” or promontory in the river at
that spot.
The town of Vinelands does exist in New Jersey, but
the river beginning with “Mo-” may be the Mohawk. That
Burgoyne was a general in the British army during the
Revolution is well known.
So there you have it. Sybil Leek knows very little, if
anything, about the New Jersey and Westchester country-
side, having only recently come to America. Even I, then a
New York resident for 27 years, had never heard of
Hawthorne before. Yet there it is on the way to Pleas -
antville, New York.
The proof of the ghostly pudding, however, was not
the regimental roster, but the state of affairs at June
Havoc’s house.
A later report had it that Lucy, Alfred, or whoever
was responsible had quieted down considerably.
They were down, but not out.
I tactfully explained to June Havoc that feeling sorry
for a hungry ghost makes things tough for a parapsycholo-
gist. The emotional pull of a genuine attachment, no mat-
ter how unconscious it may be, can provide the energies
necessary to prolong the stay of the ghost.
Gradually, as June Havoc — wanting a peaceful house
especially at 3 A.M. — allowed practical sense to outweigh
sentimentality, the shades of Hungry Lucy and her soldier-
boy faded into the distant past, whence they came.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
262
* 43
The House Ghost of Bergenville
ABOUT A year ago, Mrs, Ethel Meyers, who has fre-
quently accompanied me on ghost-hunting expeditions,
heard from friends living in Bergen County, New Jersey,
about some unusual happenings at their very old house.
They are busy people of considerable prominence in the
theater, but eventually the "safari for ghost” was organized,
and Mr. B., the master of the house, picked us up in his
car and drove us to Bergen County. The house turned out
to be a beautifully preserved pre-Revolutionary house set
within an enclosure of tall trees and lawns.
The building had been started in 1704, 1 later
learned, and the oldest portion was the right wing; the cen-
tral portion was added in the latter part of the eighteenth
century, and the final, frontal portion was built from old
materials about fifty years ago, carefully preserving the
original style of the house. The present owners had
acquired it about a year ago from a family who had been in
possession for several generations. The house was then
empty, and the B.s refurbished it completely in excellent
taste with antiques of the period.
After they moved into the house, they slept for a few
days on a mattress on the enclosed porch, which skirted the
west wing of the house. Their furniture had not yet
arrived, and they didn’t mind roughing it for a short while.
It was summer, and not too cool.
In the middle of the night, Mrs. B. suddenly awoke
with the uncanny feeling that there was someone else in the
house, besides her husband and herself. She got up and
walked toward the corridor-like extension of the enclosed
porch running along the back of the house. There she
clearly distinguished the figure of a man, seemingly white,
with a beard, wearing what she described as “something
ruffly white.” She had the odd sensation that this man
belonged to a much earlier period than the present. The
light was good enough to see the man clearly for about five
minutes, in which she was torn between fear of the
intruder and curiosity. Finally, she approached him, and
saw him literally dissolve before her very eyes! At the same
time, she had the odd sensation that the stranger came to
look them over, wondering what they were doing in his
house! Mrs. B., a celebrated actress and choreographer, is
not a scoffer, nor is she easily susceptible. Ghosts to her
are something one can discuss intelligently. Since her hus-
band shared this view, they inquired of the former owner
about any possible hauntings.
“I’ve never heard of any or seen any,” Mr. S. told
them, "but my daughter-in-law has never been able to
sleep in the oldest part of the house. Said there was too
much going on there. Also, one of the neighbors claims he
saw something.”
Mr. S. wasn’t going to endanger his recent real-estate
transaction with too many ghostly tales. The B.s thanked
him and settled down to life in their colonial house.
But they soon learned that theirs was a busy place
indeed. Both are artistic and very intuitive, and they soon
became aware of the presence of unseen forces.
One night Mrs. B. was alone at home, spending the
evening in the upper story of the house. There was nobody
downstairs. Suddenly she heard the downstairs front door
open and shut. There was no mistaking the very character-
istic and complex sound of the opening of this ancient lock!
Next, she heard footsteps, and sighed with relief. Appar-
ently her husband had returned much earlier than
expected. Quickly, she rushed down the stairs to welcome
him. There was nobody there. There was no one in front
of the door. All she found was the cat in a strangely
excited state!
Sometime after, Mr. B. came home. For his wife
these were anxious hours of waiting. He calmed her as best
he could, having reservations about the whole incident.
Soon these doubts were to be dispelled completely.
This time Mrs. B. was away and Mr. B. was alone in
the downstairs part of the house. The maid was asleep in
her room, the B.s’ child fast asleep upstairs. It was a peace-
ful evening, and Mr. B. decided to have a snack. He found
himself in the kitchen, which is located at the western end
of the downstairs part of the house, when he suddenly heard
a car drive up. Next, there were the distinct sounds of the
front door opening and closing again. As he rushed to the
front door, he heard the dog bark furiously. But again,
there was no one either inside or outside the house!
Mr. B., a star and director, and as rational a man as
could be, wondered if he had imagined these things. But he
knew he had not. What he had heard were clearly the
noises of an arrival. While he was still trying to sort out
the meaning of all this, another strange thing happened.
A few evenings later, he found himself alone in the
downstairs living room, when he heard carriage wheels out-
side grind to a halt. He turned his head toward the door,
wondering who it might be at this hour. The light was
subdued, but good enough to read by. He didn’t have to
wait long. A short, husky man walked into the room
through the closed door; then, without paying attention to
Mr. B., turned and walked out into the oldest part of the
house, again through a closed door!
“What did he look like to you?” I asked.
"He seemed dotted, as if he were made of thick, solid
dots, and he wore a long coat, the kind they used to wear
around 1800. He probably was the same man my wife
encountered.”
"You think he is connected with the oldest part of
the house?”
“Yes, I think so. About a year ago I played some
very old lute music, the kind popular in the eighteenth
The House Ghost of Bergenville
263
century, in there — and something happened to the atmos-
phere in the room. As if someone were listening quietly
and peacefully.”
But it wasn’t always as peaceful in there. A day
before our arrival, Mrs. B. had lain down, trying to relax.
But she could not stay in the old room. “There was some-
one there,” she said simply.
The B.s weren't the only ones to hear and see ghosts.
Last summer, two friends of the B.s were visiting them,
and everybody was seated in the living room, when in plain
view of all, the screen door to the porch opened and closed
again by its own volition! Needless to add, the friends did-
n't stay long.
Only a day before our visit, another friend had tried
to use the small washroom in the oldest part of the house.
Suddenly, he felt chills coming on and rushed out of the
room, telling Mrs. B. that "someone was looking at him.”
At this point, dinner was ready and a most delicious
repast it was. Afterwards we accompanied the B.s into the
oldest part of their house, a low-ceilinged room dating back
to the year 1704. Two candles provided the only light.
Mrs. Meyers got into a comfortable chair, and gradually
drifted into trance.
“Marie. . .Catherine. . .who calls?” she mumbled.
“Who is it?” I inquired.
“Pop. . .live peacefully. . .love. ...”
“What is your name?” I wanted to know.
“Achabrunn....”
I didn’t realize it at the time, but a German family
named Achenbach had built the house and owned it for
several generations. Much later still, I found out that one
of the children of the builder had been called Marian.
I continued my interrogation.
“Who rules this country?”
“The Anglish. George.”
“What year is this?”
“Fifty-six. Seventeen fifty-six.”
“When did you stay here?”
“Always. Pop. My house. You stay with me.”
Then the ghost spoke haltingly of his family, his chil-
dren, of which he had nine, three of whom had gone away.
“What can we do for you?” I said, hoping to find the
reason for the many disturbances.
“Yonder over side hill, hillock, three buried. . .flowers
there.”
“Do you mean,” I said, "that we should put flowers
on these graves?”
The medium seemed excited.
“Ach Gott, ja, machs gut." With this the medium
crossed herself.
"What is your name?” I asked again.
“Oterich. . .Oblich. ...” The medium seemed hesi-
tant as if the ghost were searching his memory for his own
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
name. Later, I found that the name given was pretty close
to that of another family having a homestead next door.
The ghost continued.
“She lady. . .1 not good. I very stout heart, I look up
to good-blood lady, I make her good. . .Kathrish, holy
lady, I worship lady. . .they rest on hill too, with
three. . ..”
After the seance, I found a book entitled Pre-
Revolutionary Dutch Houses in Northern New Jersey and
New York. It was here that I discovered the tradition that a
poor shepherd from Saxony married a woman above his
station, and built this very house. The year 1756 was
correct.
But back to my interrogation. "Why don’t you rest
on the hillock?”
“I take care of. . .four. . .hillock. . .Petrish, Ladian,
Annia, Kathrish....”
Then, as if taking cognizance of us, he added — "To
care for you, that’s all I want.”
Mrs. B. nodded and said softly, “You’re always wel-
come here.”
Afterward, I found that there were indeed some
graves on the hill beyond the house. The medium now
pointed toward the rear of the house, and said, "Gate. . .we
put intruders there, he won’t get up any more. Gray Fox
made trouble, Indian man, I keep him right there.”
“Are there any passages?”
“Yeah. Go dig through. When Indian come, they no
find.”
“Where?”
“North hillock, still stone floor there, ends here.”
From Mr. B. I learned that underground passages are
known to exist between this house and the so-called “Slave
House,” across the road.
The ghost then revealed that his wife’s father, an
Englishman, had built the passage, and that stores were
kept in it along with Indian bones.
“Where were you born?” I inquired.
“Here. Bergenville.”
Bergenville proved to be the old name of the
township.
I then delicately told him that this was 1960. He
seemed puzzled, to say the least.
“In 1756 I was sixty-five years old. I am not 204
years older?”
At this point, the ghost recognized the women’s
clothing the medium was wearing, and tore at them. I
explained how we were able to "talk” to him. He seemed
pacified.
“You’ll accept my maize, my wine, my whiskey. ...”
I discovered that maize and wine staples were the
mainstays of the area at that period. I also found that
Indian wars on a small scale were still common in this area
in the middle 1700s. Moreover, the ghost referred to the
“gate” as being in the rear of the house. This proved to be
264
correct, for what is now the back of the house was then its
front, facing the road.
Suddenly the ghost withdrew and after a moment
another person, a woman, took over the medium. She com-
plained bitterly that the Indians had taken one of her chil-
dren, whose names she kept rattling off. Then she too
withdrew, and Mrs. Meyers returned to her own body,
none the worse for her experiences, none of which, inciden-
tally, she remembered.
Shortly afterward, we returned to New York. It was
as if we had just come from another world. Leaving the
poplar-lined road behind us, we gradually re-entered the
world of gasoline and dirt that is the modern city.
Nothing further has been reported from the house in
Bergen County, but I am sure the ghost, whom Mrs. B.
had asked to stay as long as he wished, is still there. There
is of course now no further need to bang doors, to call
attention to his lonely self. They know he is there with them.
* 44
The Riverside Ghost
PLEASE HELP ME find out what this is all about,” pleaded
the stranger on the telephone. “I’m being attacked by a
ghost!” The caller turned out to be a young jeweler,
Edward Karalanian of Paris, now living in an old apart-
ment building on Riverside Drive.
For the past two years, he had lived there with his
mother; occasionally he had heard footsteps where no one
could have walked. Five or six times he would wake up in
the middle of the night to find several strangers in his
room. They seemed to him people in conversation, and
disappeared as he challenged them on fully awakening.
In one case, he saw a man coming toward him, and
threw a pillow at the invader. To his horror, the pillow did
not go through the ghostly form, but slid off it and fell to
the floor, as the spook vanished!
The man obviously wanted to attack him; there was
murder in his eyes — and Mr. Karalanian was frightened by
it all. Although his mother could see nothing, he was able
to describe the intruder as a man wearing a white “uni-
form” like a cook, with a hat like a cook, and that his face
was mean and cruel.
On March 9, 1 organized a seance at the apartment,
at which a teacher at Adelphi College, Mr. Dersarkissian,
» 45
“Ocean-Born” Mary
Among THE GHOSTLY legends of the United States, that
of “Ocean -Born” Mary and her fascinating house at Hen-
niker, New Hampshire, is probably one of the best known.
To the average literate person who has heard about the col-
orful tale of Mary Wallace, or the New Englander who
knows of it because he lives "Down East,” it is, of course,
a legend — not to be taken too seriously.
I had a vague idea of its substance when I received a
note from a lady named Corinne Russell, who together
and three young ladies were also present; Mrs. Ethel Mey-
ers was the medium.
Although she knew nothing of the case, Mrs. Meyers
immediately described a man and woman arguing in the
apartment and said there were structural changes, which
Mr. Karalanian confirmed.
“Someone is being strangled. . .the man goes away. . .
now a woman falls and her head is crushed. . .they want to
hide something from the family.” Mrs. Meyers then stated
that someone had gone out through the twelfth floor win-
dow, after being strangled, and that the year was about
1910.
In trance, the discarnate victim, Lizzy, took over her
voice and cried pitifully for help. Albert, Mrs. Meyers’
control, added that this was a maid who had been killed by
a hired man on the wife’s orders. Apparently, the girl had
an affair with the husband, named Henry. The murderer
was a laborer working in a butcher’s shop, by the name of
Maggio. The family’s name was Brady, or O’ Brady; the
wife was Anne.
After the seance, I investigated these data, and found
to my amazement that the 1912 City Directory listed an
"A. Maggio, poultry,” and both an Anne Brady and Anne
O'Grady. The first name was listed as living only one
block away from the house! Oh, yes — Mr. Karalanian
found out that a young girl, accused of stealing, had killed
herself by jumping from that very room!
with her husband, David, had bought the Henniker house
and wanted me to know that it was still haunted.
That was in October of 1963. It so happens that Hal-
loween is the traditional date on which the ghost of six-foot
Mary Wallace is supposed to “return” to her house in a
coach drawn by six horses. On many a Halloween, young-
sters from all around Henniker have come and sat around
the grounds waiting for Mary to ride in. The local press
had done its share of Halloween ghost hunting, so much so
“Ocean-Born” Mary
265
“Ocean-Born” Mary’s house —
Henniker, New Hampshire
that the Russells had come to fear that date as one of the
major nuisance days of their year.
After all, Halloween visitors do not pay the usual fee
to be shown about the house, but they do leave behind
destruction and litter at times. Needless to say, nobody has
ever seen Mary ride in her coach on Halloween. Why
should she when she lives there all year round?
To explain this last statement, I shall have to take
you back to the year 1720, when a group of Scottish and
Irish immigrants was approaching the New World aboard
a ship called the Wolf, from Londonderry, Ireland. The
ship’s captain, Wilson, had just become the father of a
daughter, who was actually born at sea. Within sight of
land, the ship was boarded by pirates under the command
of a buccaneer named Don Pedro. As the pirates removed
all valuables from their prize, Don Pedro went below to the
captain’s cabin. Instead of gold, he found Mrs. Wilson and
her newborn baby girl.
“What’s her name?” he demanded.
Unafraid, the mother replied that the child had not
yet been baptized, having been recently born.
“If you will name her after my mother, Mary,” the
pirate said, overcome with an emotion few pirates ever
allow into their lives, “I will spare everybody aboard this
ship.”
Joyously, the mother made the bargain, and “Ocean-
Born” Mary received her name. Don Pedro ordered his
men to hand back what they had already taken from their
prisoners, to set them free, and to leave the captured ship.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
266
The vicious-looking crew grumbled and withdrew to their
own ship.
Minutes later, however, Don Pedro returned alone.
He handed Mrs. Wilson a bundle of silk.
"For Mary’s wedding gown,” he said simply, and
left, again.
As soon as the pirate ship was out of sight, the Wolf
continued her voyage for Boston. Thence Captain and Mrs.
Wilson went on to their new home in Londonderry, New
Hampshire, where they settled down, and where Mary
grew up.
When she was eighteen she married a man named
Wallace, and over the years they had four sons. However,
shortly after the birth of the fourth son, her husband died
and Mary found herself a widow.
Meanwhile, Don Pedro — allegedly an Englishman
using the Spanish nom de pirate to disguise his noble ances-
try— had kept in touch with the Wilsons. Despite the haz-
ards of pirate life, he survived to an old age when thoughts
of retirement filled his mind. Somehow he managed to
acquire a land grant of 6,000 acres in what is now Hen-
niker, New Hampshire, far away from the sea. On this
land, Pedro built himself a stately house. He employed his
ship’s carpenters, as can be seen in the way the beams are
joined. Ship’s carpenters have a special way of building,
and “Ocean-Born” Mary’s house, as it later became
known, is an example of this.
The house was barely finished when the aging pirate
heard of Mary Wallace’s loss of her husband, and he asked
Mary and her children to come live with him. She accepted
his invitation, and soon became his housekeeper.
The house was then in a rather isolated part of New
England, and few callers, if any, came to interrupt the long
stillness of the many cold winter nights. Mary took up
painting and with her own hands created the eagle that can
still be seen gracing the house.
The years went by peacefully, until one night some-
one attacked Don Pedro and killed him. Whether one of
his men had come to challenge the pirate captain for part
of the booty, or whether the reputation of a retired pirate
had put ideas of treasure in the mind of some local thief,
we may never know. All we know is that by the time Mary
Wallace got out into the grove at the rear of the house,
Don Pedro was dying with a pirate cutlass in his chest. He
asked her to bury him under the hearthstone in the
kitchen, which is in the rear of the house.
Mary herself inherited the house and what went with
it, treasure, buried pirate, and all. She herself passed on in
1814, and ever since then the house had been changing
hands.
Unfortunately, we cannot interview the earlier owners
of the house, but during the 1930s, it belonged to one
Louis Roy, retired and disabled and a permanent guest in
what used to be his home. He sold the house to the Rus-
sells in the early sixties.
During the great hurricane of 1938, Roy claims that
Mary Wallace’s ghost saved his life 19 times. Trapped out-
side the house by falling trees, he somehow was able to get
back into the house. His very psychic mother, Mrs. Roy,
informed him that she had actually seen the tall, stately fig-
ure of "Ocean-Born” Mary moving behind him, as if to
help him get through. In the 1950s, Life told this story in
an illustrated article on famous ghost-haunted houses in
America. Mrs. Roy claimed she had seen the ghost of
Mary time and time again, but since she herself passed on
in 1948, I could not get any details from her.
Then there were two state troopers who saw the
ghost, but again I could not interview them, as they, too,
were on the other side of the veil.
A number of visitors claimed to have felt “special
vibrations” when touching the hearthstone, where Don
Pedro allegedly was buried. There was, for instance, Mrs.
James Nisula of Londonderry, who visited the house sev-
eral times. She said that she and her “group” of ghost buffs
had "felt the vibrations” around the kitchen. Mrs. David
Russell, the owner who contacted me, felt nothing.
I promised to look into the “Ocean-Born” Mary
haunting the first chance I got. Halloween or about that
time would be all right with me, and I wouldn’t wait
around for any coach!
“There is a lady medium I think you should know,”
Mrs. Russell said when I spoke of bringing a psychic with
me. “She saw Mary the very first time she came here.”
My curiosity aroused, I communicated with the lady.
She asked that I not use her married name, although she
was not so shy several months after our visit to the house,
when she gave a two-part interview to a Boston newspaper
columnist. (Needless to say, the interview was not autho-
rized by me, since I never allow mediums I work with to
talk about their cases for publication. Thus Lorrie shall
remain without a family name and anyone wishing to reach
this medium will have to do so without my help.)
Lorrie wrote me she would be happy to serve the
cause of truth, and I could count on her. There was noth-
ing she wanted in return.
We did not get up to New Hampshire that Hal-
loween. Mr. Russell had to have an operation, the house
was unheated in the winter except for Mr. Roy’s room, and
New England winters are cold enough to freeze any ghost.
Although there was a caretaker at the time to look
after the house and Mr. Roy upstairs, the Russells did not
stay at the house in the winter, but made their home in
nearby Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
I wrote Mrs. Russell postponing the investigation
until spring. Mrs. Russell accepted my decision with sonic
disappointment, but she was willing to wait. After all, the
ghost at “Ocean-Born” Mary’s house is not a malicious
type. Mary Wallace just lived there, ever since she died in
1814, and you can’t call a lady who likes to hold on to
what is hers an intruder.
“We don’t want to drive her out,” Mrs. Russell
repeatedly said to me. “After all, it is her house!”
Not many haunted-house owners make statements
like that.
But something had happened at the house since our
last conversation.
“Our caretaker dropped a space heater all the way
down the stairs at the ‘Ocean-Born’ Mary house, and when
it reached the bottom, the kerosene and the flames started
to burn the stairs and climb the wall. There was no water
in the house, so my husband went out after snow. While I
stood there looking at the fire and powerless to do anything
about it, the fire went right out all by itself right in front of
my eyes; when my husband got back with the snow it was
out. It was just as if someone had smothered it with a blan-
ket."
This was in December of 1963. I tried to set a new
date, as soon as possible, and February 22 seemed possible.
This time I would bring Bob Kennedy of WBZ, Boston and
the “Contact” producer Squire Rushnell with me to record
my investigation.
Lorrie was willing, asking only that her name not be
mentioned.
“I don’t want anyone to know about my being differ-
ent from them,” she explained. "When I was young my
family used to accuse me of spying because I knew things
from the pictures I saw when I touched objects.”
Psychometry, I explained, is very common among
psychics, and nothing to be ashamed of.
I thought it was time to find out more about Lorrie ’s
experiences at the haunted house.
“Ocean-Born” Mary
267
"I first saw the house in September of 1961,” she
began. “It was on a misty, humid day, and there was a
haze over the fields.”
Strange, I thought, I always get my best psychic
results when the atmosphere is moist.
Lorrie, who was in her early forties, was Vermont
born and raised; she was married and had one daughter,
Pauline. She was a tall redhead with sparkling eyes, and,
come to think of it, not unlike the accepted picture of the
ghostly Mary Wallace. Coincidence?
A friend of Lorrie ’s had seen the eerie house and
suggested she go and see it also. That was all Lorrie knew
about it, and she did not really expect anything uncanny to
occur. Mr. Roy showed Lorrie and her daughter through
the house and nothing startling happened. They left and
started to walk down the entrance steps, crossing the gar-
den in front of the house, and had reached the gate when
Pauline clutched at her mother’s arm and said:
“Mamma, what is that?”
Lorrie turned to look back at the house. In the
upstairs window, a woman stood and looked out at them.
Lome’s husband was busy with the family car. Eventually,
she called out to him, but as he turned to look, the appari-
tion was gone.
She did not think of it again, and the weeks went by.
But the house kept intruding itself into her thoughts more
and more. Finally she could not restrain herself any longer,
and returned to the house — even though it was 120 miles
from her home in Weymouth, Massachusetts.
She confessed her extraordinary experience to the
owner, and together they examined the house from top to
bottom. She finally returned home.
She promised Roy she would return on All Hallow’s
Eve to see if the legend of Mary Wallace had any basis of
fact. Unfortunately, word of her intentions got out, and
when she finally arrived at the house, she had to sneak in
the back to avoid the sensation-hungry press outside. Dur-
ing the days between her second visit and Halloween, the
urge to go to Henniker kept getting stronger, as if someone
were possessing her.
By that time the Russells were negotiating to buy the
house, and Lorrie came up with them. Nothing happened
to her that Halloween night. Perhaps she was torn between
fear and a desire to fight the influence that had brought her
out to Henniker to begin with.
Mediums, to be successful, must learn to relax and
not allow their own notions to rule them. All through the
following winter and summer, Lorrie fought the desire to
return to "Ocean-Born” Mary’s house. To no avail. She
returned time and time again, sometimes alone and some-
times with a friend.
Things got out of hand one summer night when she
was home alone.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
268
Exhausted from her last visit — the visits always left
her an emotional wreck — she went to bed around 9:30 P.M.
"What happened that night?” I interjected. She
seemed shaken even now.
“At 11 P.M., Mr. Holzer,” Lorrie replied, “I found
myself driving on the expressway, wearing my pajamas and
robe, with no shoes or slippers, or money, or even a hand-
kerchief. I was ten miles from my home and heading for
Henniker. Terrified, I turned around and returned home,
only to find my house ablaze with light, the doors open as
I had left them, and the garage lights on. I must have left
in an awful hurry.”
"Have you found out why you are being pulled back
to that house?”
She shook her head.
"No idea. But I’ve been back twice, even after that. I
just can’t seem to stay away from that house.”
I persuaded her that perhaps there was a job to be
done in that house, and the ghost wanted her to do it.
We did not go to Henniker in February, because of
bad weather. We tried to set a date in May 1964. The peo-
ple from WBZ decided Henniker was too far away from
Boston and dropped out of the planning.
Summer came around, and I went to Europe instead
of Henniker. However, the prospect of a visit in the fall
was very much in my mind.
It seemed as if someone were keeping me away from
the house very much in the same way someone was pulling
Lorrie toward it!
Come October, and we were really on our way, at
last.
Owen Lake, a public relations man who dabbles in
psychic matters, introduced himself as “a friend” of mine
and told Lorrie he’d come along, too. I had never met the
gentleman, but in the end he could not make it anyway. So
just four of us — my wife Catherine and I, Lorrie, and her
nice, even-tempered husband, who had volunteered to
drive us up to New Hampshire — started out from Boston.
It was close to Halloween, all right, only two days before.
If Mary Wallace were out haunting the countryside in her
coach, we might very well run into her. The coach is out of
old Irish folktales; it appears in numerous ghost stories of
the Ould Sod. I’m sure that in the telling and retelling of
the tale of Mary and her pirate, the coach got added.
The countryside is beautiful in a New England fall.
As we rolled toward the New Hampshire state line, I asked
Lorrie some more questions.
“When you first saw the ghost of “Ocean-Born"
Mary at the window of the house, Lorrie,” I said, “what
did she look like?”
“A lovely lady in her thirties, with auburn -colored
hair, smiling rather intensely and thoughtfully. She stayed
there for maybe three minutes, and then suddenly, she just
wasn’t there.”
“What about her dress?”
“It was a white dress.”
Lorrie never saw an apparition of Mary again, but
whenever she touched anything in the Henniker house, she
received an impression of what the house was like when
Mary had it, and she had felt her near the big fireplace
several times.
Did she ever get an impression of what it was Mary
wanted?
“She was a quick-tempered woman; I sensed that
very strongly,’’ Lorrie replied. “I have been to the house
maybe twenty times altogether, and still don’t know why.
She just keeps pulling me there.’’
Lorrie had always felt the ghost’s presence on these
visits.
"One day I was walking among the bushes in the
back of the house. I was wearing shorts, but I never got a
scratch on my legs, because I kept feeling heavy skirts cov-
ering my legs. I could feel the brambles pulling at this
invisible skirt I had on. I felt enveloped by something, or
someone.”
Mrs. Roy, the former owner’s mother, had told of
seeing the apparition many times, Lorrie stated.
“As a matter of fact, I have sensed her ghost in the
house, too, but it is not a friendly wraith like Mary is.”
Had she ever encountered this other ghost?
"Yes, my arm was grabbed one time by a malevolent
entity,” Lorrie said emphatically. "It was two years ago,
and I was standing in what is now the living room, and my
arm was taken by the elbow and pulled.
“I snatched my arm back, because I felt she was not
friendly.”
“What were you doing at the time that she might
have objected to?”
“I really don’t know.”
Did she know of anyone else who had had an
uncanny experience at the house?
"A strange thing happened to Mrs. Roy," Lorrie
said. "A woman came to the house and said to her, ‘What
do you mean, the rest of the house?’ The woman replied,
‘Well, I was here yesterday, and a tall woman let me in
and showed me half of the house.’ But, of course, there
was nobody at the house that day.”
What about the two state troopers? Could she elabo-
rate on their experience?
"They met her walking down the road that leads to
the house. She was wearing a colonial-type costume, and
they found that odd. Later they realized they had seen a
ghost, especially as no one of her description lived in the
house at the time.”
Rudi D., Lorries husband, was a hospital technician.
He was with her on two or three occasions when she vis-
ited the house. Did he ever feel anything special?
"The only thing unusual I ever felt at the house was
that I wanted to get out of there fast,” he said.
“The very first time we went up,” Lorrie added,
"something kept pulling me toward it, but my husband
insisted we go back. There was an argument about our
The house the pirate Don Pedro built:
“Ocean-Born” Mary’s
continuing the trip, when suddenly the door of the car flew
open of its own volition. Somehow we decided to continue
on to the house.”
An hour later, we drove up a thickly overgrown hill
and along a winding road at the end of which the “Ocean-
Born” Mary house stood in solitary stateliness, a rectangu-
lar building of gray stone and brown trim, very well
preserved.
We parked the car and walked across the garden that
sets the house well back from the road. There was peace
and autumn in the air. We were made welcome by Corinne
Russell, her husband David, and two relatives who hap-
pened to be with them that day. Entering the main door
beneath a magnificent early American eagle, we admired
the fine wooden staircase leading to the upstairs — the stair-
case on which the mysterious fire had taken place — and
then entered the room to the left of it, where the family
had assembled around an old New England stove.
During the three years the Russells had lived at the
house, nothing uncanny had happened to Mrs. Russell,
except for the incident with the fire. David Russell, a man
almost typical of the shrewd New England Yankee who
weighs his every word, was willing to tell me about his
experiences, however.
‘‘The first night I ever slept in what we call the
Lafayette room, upstairs, there was quite a thundershower
on, and my dog and I were upstairs. I always keep my dog
with me, on account of the boys coming around to do
damage to the property.
Ocean-Born” Mary
269
"Just as I lay down in bed, I heard very heavy foot-
steps. They sounded to me to be in the two rooms which
we had just restored, on the same floor. I was quite
annoyed, almost frightened, and I went into the rooms, but
there nobody there or anywhere else in the house.”
“Interesting,” I said. "Was there more?”
"Now this happened only last summer. A few weeks
later, when I was in that same room, I was getting
undressed when I suddenly heard somebody pound on my
door. I said to myself, "Oh, it’s only the house settling,"
and I got into bed. A few minutes later, the door knob
turned back and forth. I jumped out of bed, opened the
door, and there was absolutely nobody there. The only
other people in the house at the time were the invalid Mr.
Roy, locked in his room, and my wife downstairs.”
What about visual experiences?
“No, but I went to the cellar not long ago with my
dog, about four in the afternoon, or rather tried to — this
dog never leaves me, but on this particular occasion, some-
thing kept her from going with me into the cellar. Her hair
stood up and she would not budge.”
The Lafayette room, by the way, is the very room in
which the pirate, Don Pedro, is supposed to have lived.
The Russells did nothing to change the house structurally,
only restored it as it had been and generally cleaned it up.
I now turned to Florence Harmon, an elderly neigh-
bor of the Russells, who had some recollections about the
house. Mrs. Harmon recalls the house when she herself
was very young, long before the Russells came to live in it.
“Years later, I returned to the house and Mrs. Roy
asked me whether I could help her locate 'the treasure’
since I was reputed to be psychic.”
Was there really a treasure?
“If there was, I think it was found,” Mrs. Harmon
said. “At the time Mrs. Roy talked to me, she also pointed
out that there were two elm trees on the grounds — the only
two elm trees around. They looked like some sort of mark-
ers to her. But before the Roys had the house, a Mrs. Mor-
row lived here. I know this from my uncle, who was a
stone mason, and who built a vault for her.”
I didn’t think Mrs. Harmon had added anything
material to my knowledge of the treasure, so I thanked her
and turned my attention to the other large room, on the
right hand side of the staircase. Nicely furnished with
period pieces, it boasted a fireplace flanked by sofas, and
had a rectangular piano in the corner. The high windows
were curtained on the sides, and one could see the New
England landscape through them.
We seated ourselves around the fireplace and hoped
that Mary would honor us with a visit. Earlier I had
inspected the entire house, the hearthstone under which
Don Pedro allegedly lay buried, and the small bedrooms
upstairs where David Russell had heard the footsteps. Each
of us had stood at the window in the corridor upstairs and
stared out of it, very much the way the ghost must have
done when she was observed by Lorrie and her daughter.
And now it was Mary’s turn.
“This was her room,” Lorrie explained, “and I do
feel her presence.” But she refused to go into trance, afraid
to “let go.” Communication would have to be via clairvoy-
ance, with Lorrie as the interpreter. This was not what I
had hoped for. Nevertheless we would try to evaluate
whatever material we could obtain.
"Sheet and quill,” Lorrie said now, and a piece of
paper was handed her along with a pencil. Holding it on
her lap, Lorrie was poised to write, if Mary wanted to use
her hand, so to speak. The pencil suddenly jumped from
Lorrie ’s hand with considerable force.
“Proper quill,” the ghost demanded.
! explained about the shape of quills these days, and
handed Lorrie my own pencil.
“Look lady,” Lorrie explained to the ghost. “I’ll show
you it writes. I’ll write my name.”
And she wrote in her own, smallish, rounded hand,
“Lorrie.”
There was a moment of silence. Evidently, the ghost
was thinking it over. Then Lome’s hand, seemingly not
under her own control, wrote with a great deal of flourish
“Mary Wallace.” The “M” and “W” had curves and orna-
mentation typical of eighteenth-century calligraphy. It was
not at all like Lorrie’s own handwriting.
“Tell her to write some more. The quill is working,”
I commanded.
Lorrie seemed to be upset by something the ghost
told her.
“No,” she said. "I can’t do that. No.”
“What does she want?” I asked.
“She wants me to sleep, but I won’t do it.”
Trance, I thought — even the ghost demands it. It
would have been so interesting to have Mary speak directly
to us through Lorrie’s entranced lips. You can lead a
medium to the ghost, but you can’t make her go under if
she’s scared.
Lorrie instead told the ghost to tell her, or to write
through her. But no trance, thank you. Evidently, the ghost
did not like to be told how to communicate. We waited.
Then I suggested that Lorrie be very relaxed and it would
be "like sleep" so the ghost could talk to us directly.
“She’s very much like me, but not so well trimmed,”
the ghost said of Lorrie. Had she picked her to carry her
message because of the physical resemblance, I wondered.
“She’s waiting for Young John,” Lorrie now said.
Not young John. The stress was on young. Perhaps it was
one name — Young -john.
“It happened in the north pasture," Mary said
through Lorrie now. “He killed Warren Langerford. The
Frazier boys found the last bone.”
I asked why it concerned her. Was she involved? But
there was no reply.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
270
Then the ghost of Mary introduced someone else
standing next to her.
“Mrs. Roy is with her, because she killed her daugh-
ter,” Lorrie said, hesitatingly, and added, on her own, “but
I don’t believe she did." Later we found out that the ghost
was perhaps not lying, but of course nobody had any proof
of such a crime — if it were indeed a crime.
“Why do you stay on in this house?” I asked.
“This house is my house, h-o-u-s-e!” “Ocean-Born”
Mary reminded me.
“Do you realize you are what is commonly called
dead?” I demanded. As so often with ghosts, the question
brought on resistance to face reality. Mary seemed insulted
and withdrew.
I addressed the ghost openly, offering to help her,
and at the same time explaining her present position to her.
This was her chance to speak up.
"She’s very capricious,” Lorrie said. “When you said
you’d bring her peace, she started to laugh.”
But Mary was gone, for the present anyway.
We waited, and tried again a little later. This time
Lorrie said she heard a voice telling her to come back
tonight.
“We can't,” I decided. “If she wants to be helped, it
will have to be now.”
Philip Babb, the pirate’s real name (as I discovered
later), allegedly had built a secret passage under the house.
The Russells were still looking for it. There were indeed
discrepancies in the thickness of some of the walls, and
there were a number of secret holes that didn’t lead any-
where. But no passage. Had the pirate taken his secrets to
his grave?
I found our experience at Henniker singularly unsat-
isfactory since no real evidence had been forthcoming from
the ghost herself. No doubt another visit would have to be
made, but I didn’t mind that at all. "Ocean-Born" Mary's
place was a place one can easily visit time and again. The
rural charm of the place and the timeless atmosphere of the
old house made it a first-rate tourist attraction. Thousands
of people came to the house every year.
We returned to New York and I thought no more
about it until I received a letter from James Caron, who
had heard me discuss the house on the "Contact” program
in Boston. He had been to the house in quest of pirate lore
and found it very much haunted.
James Caron was in the garage business at Bridgewa-
ter, Massachusetts. He had a high school and trade school
education, and was married, with two children. Searching
for stories of buried treasure and pirates was a hobby of
his, and he sometimes lectured on it. He had met Gus Roy
about six years before. Roy complained that his deceased
mother was trying to contact him for some reason. Her pic-
ture kept falling off the wall where it was hung, and he
constantly felt “a presence.” Would Mr. Caron know of a
good medium?
In August of 1959, James Caron brought a spiritual-
ist named Paul Amsdent to the “Ocean-Born” Mary house.
Present at the ensuing seance were Harold Peters, a furni-
ture salesman; Hugh Blanchard, a lawyer; Ernest Wal-
bourne, a fireman and brother-in-law of Caron; Gus Roy;
and Mr. Caron himself. Tape recording the seance, Caron
had trouble with his equipment. Strange sounds kept
intruding. Unfortunately, there was among those present
someone with hostility toward psychic work, and Gus
Roy’s mother did not manifest. However, something else
did happen.
"There appear to be people buried somewhere around
or in the house,” the medium Amsdent said, "enclosed by
a stone wall of some sort.”
I thought of the hearthstone and of Mrs. Harmon’s
vault. Coincidence?
Mr. Caron used metal detectors all over the place to
satisfy Gus Roy that there was no “pirate treasure” buried
in or near the house.
A little later, James Caron visited the house again.
This time he was accompanied by Mrs. Caron and Mr.
and Mrs. Walbourne. Both ladies were frightened by the
sound of a heavy door opening and closing with no one
around and no air current in the house.
Mrs. Caron had a strong urge to go to the attic, but
Mr. Caron stopped her. Ernest Walbourne, a skeptic, was
alone in the so-called “death” room upstairs, looking at
some pictures stacked in a corner. Suddenly, he clearly
heard a female voice telling him to get out of the house.
He looked around, but there was nobody upstairs. Fright-
ened, he left the house at once and later required medica-
tion for a nervous condition!
Again, things quieted down as far as “Ocean-Born”
Mary was concerned, until I saw a lengthy story — two
parts, in fact — in the Boston Record-American, in which my
erstwhile medium Lorrie had let her hair down to colum-
nist Harold Banks.
It seemed that Lorrie could not forget Henniker, after
all. With publicist Owen Lake, she returned to the house
in November, 1964, bringing with her some oil of winter-
green, which she claimed Mary Wallace asked her to bring
along.
Two weeks later, the report went on, Lorrie felt
Mary Wallace in her home in Weymouth near Boston.
Lorrie was afraid that Mary Wallace might “get into my
body and use it for whatever purpose she wants to. I might
wake up some day and be Mary Wallace.”
That’s the danger of being a medium without proper
safeguards. They tend to identify with a personality that
has come through them. Especially when they read all
there is in print about them.
I decided to take someone to the house who knew
nothing about it, someone who was not likely to succumb
to the wiles of amateur “ESP experts,” inquisitive colum-
Ocean-Born” Mary
271
nists and such, someone who would do exactly what I
required of her: Sybil Leek, famed British psychic.
It was a glorious day late in spring when we arrived
at “Ocean-Born” Mary’s house in a Volkswagen station
wagon driven by two alert young students from Goddard
College in Vermont: Jerry Weener and Jay Lawrence.
They had come to Boston to fetch us and take us all the
way up to their campus, where I was to address the stu-
dents and faculty. I proposed that they drive us by way of
Henniker, and the two young students of parapsychology
agreed enthusiastically. It was their first experience with an
actual seance and they brought with them a lively dose of
curiosity.
Sybil Leek brought with her something else: “Mr.
Sasha,” a healthy four-foot boa constrictor someone had
given her for a pet. At first I thought she was kidding
when she spoke with tender care of her snake, coiled peace-
fully in his little basket. But practical Sybil, author of some
nine books, saw still another possibility in “Life with
Sasha” and for that reason kept the snake on with her. On
the way to Henniker, the car had a flat tire and we took
this opportunity to get acquainted with Sasha, as Sybil gave
him a run around the New Hampshire countryside.
Although I have always had a deep-seated dislike for
anything reptilian, snakes, serpents, and other slitherers,
terrestrial or maritime, I must confess that I found this
critter less repulsive than I had thought he would be. At
any rate, "Mr. Sasha” was collected once more and care-
fully replaced in his basket and the journey continued to
Henniker, where the Russells were expecting us with great
anticipation.
After a delightful buffet luncheon — “Mr. Sasha” had
his the week before, as snakes are slow digesters — we pro-
ceeded to the large room upstairs to the right of the
entrance door, commonly called the Lafayette room, and
Sybil took the chair near the fireplace. The rest of us — the
Russells, a minister friend of theirs, two neighbors, my
wife Catherine and I, and our two student friends — gath-
ered around her in a circle.
It was early afternoon. The sun was bright and clear.
It didn’t seem like it would be a good day for ghosts. Still,
we had come to have a talk with the elusive Mary Wallace
in her own domain, and if I knew Sybil, she would not dis-
appoint us. Sybil is a very powerful medium, and some-
thing always happens.
Sybil knew nothing about the house since I had told
our hosts not to discuss it with her before the trance ses-
sion. I asked her if she had any clairvoyant impressions
about the house.
"My main impressions were outside,” Sybil replied,
“near where the irises are. I was drawn to that spot and felt
very strange. There is something outside this house which
means more than things inside!”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“What about inside the house? What do you feel
here?”
“The most impressive room I think is the loom
room,” Sybil said, and I thought, that’s where Ernest Wal-
bourne heard the voice telling him to get out, in the area
that’s also called the “death” room.
"They don’t want us here. . .there is a conflict
between two people. . .somebody wants something he can’t
have.
Presently, Sybil was in trance. There was a moment
of silence as I waited anxiously for the ghost of Mary Wal-
lace to manifest itself through Sybil. The first words com-
ing from the lips of the entranced medium were almost
unintelligible.
Gradually, the voice became clearer and I had her
repeat the words until I could be sure of them.
“Say-mon go to the lion’s head,” she said now. "To
the lion’s head. Be careful”
“Why should I be careful?”
“In case he catches you.”
“Who are you?”
“Mary Degan.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Waiting. Someone fetch me.”
She said “ Witing" with a strong cockney accent, and
suddenly I realized that the "say-mon" was probably a
seaman.
“Whose house is this?” I inquired.
“Daniel Burn’s.” (Perhaps it was “Birch.”)
"What year is this?”
"1798.”
"Who built this house?”
“Burn.
“How did you get here?”
“All the time, come and go. . .to hide. . .1 have to
wait. He wants the money. Burn. Daniel Burn.”
I began to wonder what had happened to Mary Wal-
lace. Who was this new member of the ghostly cast? Sybil
knew nothing whatever of a pirate or a pirate treasure con-
nected by legend to this house. Yet her very first trance
words concerned a seaman and money.
Did Mary Degan have someone else with her, I
hinted. Maybe this was only the first act and the lady of
the house was being coy in time for a second act
appearance.
But the ghost insisted that she was Mary Degan and
that she lived here, “with the old idiot.”
“Who was the old idiot?” I demanded.
"Mary,” the Degan girl replied.
“What is Mary’s family name?”
“Birch,” she replied without hesitation.
I looked at Mrs. Russell, who shook her head.
Nobody knew of Mary Wallace by any other name. Had
she had another husband we did not know about?
Was there anyone else with her, I asked.
“Mary Birch, Daniel, and Jonathan,” she replied.
272
“Who is Jonathan?”
“Jonathan Harrison Flood,” the ghostly woman said.
A week or so later, I checked with my good friend
Robert Nesmith, expert in pirate lore. Was there a pirate
by that name? There had been, but his date is given as
1610, far too early for our man. But then Flood was a very
common name. Also, this Flood might have used another
name as his nom de pirate and Flood might have been his
real, civilian name.
“What are they doing in this house?” I demanded.
“They come to look for their money,” Sybil in trance
replied. "The old idiot took it.”
“What sort of money was it?”
“Dutch money,” came the reply. “Very long ago.”
“Who brought the money to this house?”
"Mary. Not me.”
“Whose money was it?”
“Johnny’s.”
“How did he get it?”
“Very funny. . .he helped himself. ..so we did.”
“What profession did he have?”
"Went down to the sea. Had a lot of funny business.
Then he got caught, you know. So they did him in.”
"Who did him in?”
"The runners. In the bay.”
“What year was that?”
“Ninety-nine.”
"What happened to the money after that?”
“She hid it. Outside. Near the lion’s head.”
"Where is the lion’s head?”
"You go down past the little rocks, in the middle of
the rocks, a little bit like a lion’s head.”
"If I left the house by the front entrance, which way
would I turn?”
“The right, down past the little rock on the right.
Through the trees, down the little. . .’’
"How far from the house?”
“Three minutes.”
“Is it under the rock?”
"Lion’s head.”
“How far below?”
"As big as a boy.”
"What will I find there?”
"The gold. Dutch gold.”
“Anything else?”
“No, unless she put it there.”
“Why did she put it there?”
“Because he came back for it.”
“What did she do?”
"She said it was hers. Then he went away. Then they
caught him, and good thing, too. He never came back and
she went off, too.”
“When did she leave here?”
“Eighteen three.”
“What was she like? Describe her.”
“Round, not as big as me, dumpy thing, she thought
she owned everything.”
“How was Jonathan related to Daniel?”
“Daniel stayed here when Johnny went away and
then they would divide the money, but they didn’t because
of Mary. She took it.”
“Did you see the money?”
“I got some money. Gold. It says 1747.”
“Is anyone buried in this ground?”
“Sometimes they brought them back here when they
got killed down by the river.”
“Who is buried in the house?”
“I think Johnny.”
I now told Mary Degan to fetch me the other Mary,
the lady of the house. But the girl demurred. The other
Mary did not like to talk to strangers.
“What do you look like?” I asked. I still was not sure
if Mary Wallace was not masquerading as her own servant
girl to fool us.
“Skinny and tall.”
“What do you wear?”
"A gray dress.”
“What is your favorite spot in this house?”
“The little loom room. Peaceful.”
“Do you always stay there?”
“No.” The voice was proud now. “I go where I
want.”
“Whose house is this?” Perhaps I could trap her if
she was indeed Mary Wallace.
“Mary Birch.”
"Has she got a husband?”
“They come and go. There’s always company here —
that’s why I go to the loom room.”
1 tried to send her away, but she wouldn’t go.
“Nobody speaks to me,” she complained. “Johnny. . ,
she won’t let him speak to me. Nobody is going to send
me away.”
“Is there a sea captain in this house?” I asked.
She almost shouted the reply. “Johnny!"
“Where is he from?”
"Johnny is from the island.”
She then explained that the trouble with Johnny and
Mary was about the sea. Especially about the money the
captain had.
“Will the money be found?” I asked.
“Not until I let it.”
I asked Mary Degan to find me Mary Wallace. No
dice. The lady wanted to be coaxed. Did she want some
presents, I asked. That hit a happier note.
“Brandy . . .some clothes,” she said. “She needs some
hair. . .hasn’t got much hair.”
“Ask her if she could do with some oil of winter-
green,” I said, sending up a trial balloon.
Ocean-Born” Mary
273
“She’s got a bad back,” the ghost said, and I could
tell from the surprised expression on Mrs. Russell’s face
that Mary Wallace had indeed had a bad back.
"She makes it. . .people bring her things, . .rub her
back. . .back’s bad she won’t let you get the money. . .not
yet. . .may want to build another house, in the garden. . .in
case she needs it. . .sell it. . .she knows she is not what she
used to be because her back’s bad. . .she’ll never go. Not
now.”
I assured her that the Russells wanted her to stay as
long as she liked. After all, it was her house, too.
“Where is Johnny’s body buried?” I now asked.
“Johnny's body,” she murmured, “is under the
fireplace.”
Nobody had told Sybil about the persistent rumors
that the old pirate lay under the hearthstone.
“Don’t tell anyone,” she whispered.
“How deep?”
“Had to be deep.”
“Who put him there?”
"I shan’t tell you.”
“Did you bury anything with him?”
“I shan't tell. He is no trouble now. Poor Johnny.”
“How did Johnny meet Mary?”
“I think they met on a ship.”
“Ocean-Born” Mary, I thought. Sybil did not even
know the name of the house, much less the story of how it
got that name.
“All right,” I said. “Did Mary have any children?”
“Four. . .in the garden. You can never tell with her.”
“Did anyone kill anyone in this house at any time?”
“Johnny was killed, you know. Near the money. The
runners chased him and he was very sick, we thought he
was dead, and then he came here. I think she pushed him
when he hurt his leg. We both brought him back and put
him under the fireplace. I didn’t think he was dead.”
“But you buried him anyway?” I said.
“She did,” the ghost servant replied. “Better gone,
she said. He’s only come back for the money.”
“Then Mary and Johnny weren’t exactly friendly?”
“They were once.”
“What changed things?"
“The money. She took his money. The money he
fought for. Fighting money.”
Suddenly, the tone of voice of the servant girl
changed.
“I want to go outside," she begged. “She watches
me. I can go out because her back is bad today. Can’t get
up, you see. So I can go out.”
I promised to help her.
Suspiciously, she asked, “What do you want?”
“Go outside. You are free to go," I intoned.
“Sit on the rocks,” the voice said. “If she calls out?
She can get very angry.”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
"I will protect you,” I promised.
“She says there are other places under the floor.
the girl ghost added, suddenly.
“Any secret passages?” I asked.
“Yes. Near the old nursery. First floor. Up the stairs,
the loom room, the right hand wall. You can get out in the
smoke room!”
Mr. Russell had told me of his suspicions that on
structural evidence alone there was a hidden passage
behind the smoke room. How would Sybil know this?
Nobody had discussed it with her or showed her the spot.
I waited for more. But she did not know of any other
passages, except one leading to the rear of the house.
“What about the well?”
“She did not like that either, because she thought he
put his money there.”
“Did he?”
"Perhaps he did. She used to put money in one place,
he into another, and I think he put some money into the
smoke room. He was always around there. Always watch-
ing each other. Watch me, too. Back of the house used to
be where he could hide. People always looking for Johnny.
Runners.”
“Who was Mr. Birch?”
“Johnny had a lot to do with his house, but he was
away a lot and so there was always some man here while
he was away.”
"Who paid for the house originally?”
“I think Johnny.”
"Why did he want this house?”
"When he got enough money, he would come here
and stay forever. He could not stay long ever, went back to
the sea, and she came.”
I tried another tack.
“Who was Don Pedro?” That was the name given the
pirate in the popular tale.
She had heard the name, but could not place it.
“What about Mary Wallace?”
“Mary Wallace was Mary Birch," the ghost said, as
if correcting me. “She had several names.”
“Why?”
“Because she had several husbands.”
Logical enough, if true.
"Wallace lived here a little while, I think,” she
added.
“Who was first, Wallace or Birch?”
"Birch. Mary Wallace, Mary Birch, is good enough.”
Did the name Philip Babb mean anything to her?
That allegedly was the pirate’s real name.
“She had a little boy named Philip,” the ghost said,
and I thought, why not? After all, they had named Mary
for the pirate’s mother, why not reciprocate and name her
son for the old man? Especially with all that loot around.
“If I don’t go now, she’ll wake up,” the girl said.
“Philip Babb, Philip Babb, he was somewhere in the back
room. That was his room. I remember him.”
274
How did Philip get on with Johnny? I wanted to
know if they were one and the same person or not.
“Not so good,” the ghost said. "Johnny did not like
men here, you know.”
I promised to watch out for Mary, and sent the girl
on her way.
I then brought Sybil out of her trance.
A few moments later, we decided to start our treasure
hunt in the garden, following the instructions given us by
Mary Degan.
Sybil was told nothing more than to go outside and
let her intuition lead her toward any spot she thought
important. The rest of us followed her like spectators at the
National Open Golf Tournament.
We did not have to walk far. About twenty yards
from the house, near some beautiful iris in bloom, we
located the three stones. The one in the middle looked
indeed somewhat like a lion’s head, when viewed at a dis-
tance. I asked the others in the group to look at it. There
was no doubt about it. If there was a lion’s head on the
grounds, this was it. What lay underneath? What indeed
was underneath the hearthstone in the house itself?
The Russells promised to get a mine detector to
examine the areas involved. If there was metal in the
ground, the instrument would show it. Meanwhile, the lore
about "Ocean-Born” Mary had been enriched by the pres-
ence in the nether world of Mary Degan, servant girl, and
the intriguing picture of two pirates — Johnny and Philip
Babb. Much of this is very difficult to trace. But the fact is
that Sybil Leek, who came to Henniker a total stranger,
was able, in trance, to tell about a man at sea, a Mary, a
pirate treasure, hidden passages, a child named Philip, four
children of Mary, and the presence of a ghost in the loom
room upstairs. All of this had been checked.
Why should not the rest be true also? Including, per-
haps, the elusive treasure?
Only time will tell.
# 46
The Ghosts of Stamford Hill
"Mr. Holzer,” the voice on the phone said pleasantly, “I’ve
read your book and that’s why I’m calling. We’ve got a
ghost in our house.”
Far from astonished, I took paper and pencil and, not
unlike a grocery-store clerk taking down a telephone order,
started to put down the details of the report.
Robert Cowan is a gentleman with a very balanced
approach to life. He is an artist who works for one of the
leading advertising agencies in New York City and his
interests range widely from art to music, theater, history
and what have you. But not to ghosts, at least not until he
and his actress-wife, Dorothy, moved into the 1780 House
in Stamford Hill. The house is thus named for the simplest
of all reasons: it was built in that year.
Mr. Cowan explained that he thought I’d be glad to
have a look at his house, although the Cowans were not
unduly worried about the presence of a non-rent-paying
guest at their house. It was a bit disconcerting at times, but
more than that, curiosity as to what the ghost wanted, and
who the specter was, had prompted Bob Cowan to seek the
help of The Ghost Hunter.
I said, “Mr. Cowan, would you mind putting your
experiences in writing, so I can have them for my files?”
I like to have written reports (in the first person, if
possible) so that later I can refer back to them if similar
cases should pop up, as they often do.
"Not at all,” Bob Cowan said, "I’ll be glad to write it
down for you.”
The next morning I received his report, along with a
brief history of the 1780 House.
Here is a brief account of the experiences my wife
and I have had while living in this house during the
past nine-and-a-half years. I’ll start with myself because
my experiences are quite simple.
From time to time (once a week or so) during most
of the time we’ve lived here I have noticed unidentifi-
able movements out of the corner of my eye. . .day or
night. Most often, I’ve noticed this while sitting in our
parlor and what I see moving seems to be in the living
room. At other times, and only late at night when I am
the only one awake, I hear beautiful but unidentified
music seemingly played by a full orchestra, as though a
radio were on in another part of the house.
The only place I recall hearing this is in an upstairs
bedroom and just after I’d gone to bed. Once I actually
got up, opened the bedroom door to ascertain if it was
perhaps music from a radio accidently left on, but it
wasn’t.
Finally, quite often I’ve heard a variety of knocks and
crashes that do not have any logical source within the
structural setup of the house. A very loud smash
occurred two weeks ago. You’d have thought a door had
fallen off its hinges upstairs but, as usual, there was
nothing out of order.
My wife, Dorothy, had two very vivid experiences
about five years ago. One was in the kitchen, or rather
outside of a kitchen window. She was standing at the
sink in the evening and happened to glance out the win-
dow when she saw a face glaring in at her. It was a dark
face but not a Negro, perhaps Indian; it was very hate-
ful and fierce.
The Ghosts of Stamford Hill
275
The Stamford Hill house — the restless stairs
At first she thought it was a distorted reflection in
the glass but in looking closer, it was a face glaring
directly at her. All she could make out was a face only
and as she recalls it, it seemed translucent. It didn’t dis-
appear, she did !
On a summer afternoon my wife was taking a nap in
a back bedroom and was between being awake and
being asleep when she heard the sounds of men’s voices
and the sound of working on the grounds — rakes, and
garden tools — right outside the window. She tried to
arouse herself to see who they could be, but she couldn’t
get up.
At that time, and up to that time we had only hired
a single man to come in and work on the lawn and
flower beds. It wasn’t until at least a year later that we
hired a crew that came in and worked once a week and
we’ve often wondered if this was an experience of pre-
cognition. My wife has always had an uneasy feeling
about the outside of the back of the house and still
sometimes hears men's voices outside and will look out
all the windows without seeing anyone.
She also has shared my experiences of seeing "things”
out of the corner of her eye and also hearing quite lovely
music at night. She hasn’t paid attention to household
noises because a long time ago I told her "all old houses
have odd structural noises" . . .which is true enough.
Prior to our living here the house was lived in for
about 25 years by the Clayton Rich family, a family of
five. Mr. Rich died towards the end of their stay here.
By the time we bought it, the three children were all
married and had moved away.
For perhaps one year prior to that a Mrs. David
Cowles lived here. She’s responsible for most of the
restoration along with a Mr. Frederick Kinble.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
Up until 1927 or 1928, the house was in the Weed
family ever since 1780. The last of the line were two sis-
ters who hated each other and only communicated with
each other through the husband of one of the sisters.
They had divided the house and used two different
doors, one used the regular front door into the stair hall
and the other used the “coffin door” into the parlor.
Mr. Cowan added that they were selling the house —
not because of ghosts, but because they wanted to move to
the city again. I assured him that we’d be coming up as
soon as possible.
Before we could make arrangements to do so, I had
another note from the Cowans. On February 9, 1964, Bob
Cowan wrote that they heard a singing voice quite clearly
downstairs, and music again.
It wasn't until the following week, however, that my
wife and I went to Stamford Hill. The Cowans offered to
have supper ready for us that Sunday evening, and to pick
us up at the station, since nobody could find the house at
night who did not know the way.
It was around six in the evening when our New
Haven train pulled in. Bob Cowan wore the Scottish beret
he had said he would wear in order to be recognized by us
at once. The house stood at the end of a winding road
which ran for about ten minutes through woodland and
past shady lanes. An American eagle over the door, and
the date 1780 stood out quite clearly despite the dusk
which had started to settle on the land. The house has
three levels, and the Cowans used for their dining room the
large room next to the kitchen in what might be called the
cellar or ground level.
They had adorned it with eighteenth-century Ameri-
can antiques in a most winning manner, and the fireplace
added a warmth to the room that seemed miles removed
from bustling New York.
On the next level were the living room and next to
that a kind of sitting room. The fireplace in each of these
rooms was connected one to the other. Beyond the corridor
there was the master bedroom and Bob’s rather colorful
den. Upstairs were two guest rooms, and there was a small
attic accessible only through a hole in the ceiling and by
ladder. Built during the American Revolution, the house
stands on a wooded slope, which is responsible for its orig-
inal name of Woodpecker Ridge Farm.
Many years ago, after the restoration of the house
was completed, Harold Donaldson Eberlin, an English fur-
niture and garden expert, wrote about it:
With its rock-ribbed ridges, its boulder-strewn pas-
tures and its sharply broken contours like the choppy
surface of a wind-blown sea, the topographical condi-
tions have inevitably affected the domestic architecture.
To mention only two particulars, the dwellings of the
region have had to accommodate themselves to many an
abrupt hillside site and the employment of some of the
omnipresent granite boulders. Part of the individuality
276
of the house at Woodpecker Ridge Farm lies in the way
it satisfies these conditions without being a type house.
Before communal existence, the country all there-
abouts bore the pleasantly descriptive name of Wood-
pecker Ridge, and Woodpecker Ridge Farm was so
called in order to keep alive the memory of this early
name. Tradition says that the acres now comprised
within the boundaries of Woodpecker Ridge Farm
once formed part of the private hunting ground of the old
Indian chief Ponus.
Old Ponus may, perhaps, appear a trifle mythical and
shadowy, as such long-gone chieftains are wont to be.
Very substantial and real, however, was Augustus
Weed, who built the house in 1780. And the said
Augustus was something of a personage.
War clouds were still hanging thick over the face of
the land when he had the foundation laid and the struc-
ture framed. Nevertheless, confident and forward-
looking, he not only reared a staunch and tidy abode,
indicative of the spirit of the countryside, but he seems
to have put into it some of his own robust and indepen-
dent personality as well.
It is said that Augustus was such a notable farmer
and took such justifiable pride in the condition of his
fields that he was not afraid to make a standing offer of
one dollar reward for every daisy that anyone could find
in his hay.
About 1825 the house experienced a measure of
remodeling in accordance with the notions prevalent at
the time. Nothing very extensive or ostentatious was
attempted, but visible traces of the work then under-
taken remain in the neo-Greek details that occur both
outside and indoors.
It is not unlikely that the "lie-on-your-stomach” win-
dows of the attic story date from this time and point to
either a raising of the original roof or else some alter-
ation of its pitch. These "lie-on-your-stomach” windows
— so called because they were low down in the wall and
had their sills very near the level of the floor so that you
had almost to lie on your stomach to look out of them —
were a favorite device of the neo-Grec era for lighting
attic rooms. And it is remarkable how much light they
actually do give, and what a pleasant light it is.
The recent remodeling that brought Woodpecker
Farmhouse to its present state of comeliness and com-
fort impaired none of the individual character the place
had acquired through the generations that had passed
since hardy Augustus Weed first took up his abode
there. It needs no searching scrutiny to discern the
eighteenth-century features impressed on the structure at
the beginning — the stout timbers of the framing, the
sturdy beams and joists, the wide floor boards, and the
generous fireplaces. Neither is close examination
required to discover the marks of the 1825 rejuvenation.
The fashions of columns, pilasters, mantelpieces and
other features speak plainly and proclaim their origin.
The aspect of the garden, too, discloses the same
sympathetic understanding of the environment pecu-
liarly suitable to the sort of house for which it affords
the natural setting. The ancient well cover, the lilac
bushes, the sweetbriers, the August lilies and the other
denizens of an old farmhouse dooryard have been
allowed to keep their long-accustomed places.
In return for this recognition of their prescriptive
rights, they lend no small part to the air of self-pos-
sessed assurance and mellow contentment that pervades
the whole place.
After a most pleasant dinner downstairs, Catherine
and I joined the Cowans in the large living room upstairs.
We sat down quietly and hoped we would hear something
along musical lines.
As the quietness of the countryside slowly settled
over us, I could indeed distinguish faraway, indistinct
musical sounds, as if someone were playing a radio under-
water or at great distance. A check revealed no nearby
house or parked car whose radio could be responsible for
this.
After a while we got up and looked about the room
itself. We were standing about quietly admiring the furni-
ture, when both my wife and I, and of course the Cowans,
clearly heard footsteps overhead.
They were firm and strong and could not be mis-
taken for anything else, such as a squirrel in the attic or
other innocuous noise. Nor was it an old house settling.
“Did you hear that?” I said, almost superfluously.
"We all heard it,” my wife said and looked at me.
“What am I waiting for?” I replied, and faster than
you can say Ghost Hunter, I was up the stairs and into the
room above our heads, where the steps had been heard.
The room lay in total darkness. I turned the switch. There
was no one about. Nobody else was in the house at the
time, and all windows were closed. We decided to assem-
ble upstairs in the smaller room next to the one in which I
had heard the steps. The reason was that Mrs. Cowan had
experienced a most unusual phenomenon in that particular
room.
“It was like lightning,” she said, “a bright light sud-
denly come and gone.”
I looked the room over carefully. The windows were
arranged in such a manner that a reflection from passing
cars was out of the question. Both windows, far apart and
on different walls, opened into the dark countryside away
from the only road.
Catherine and I sat down on the couch, and the
Cowans took chairs. We sat quietly for perhaps twenty
minutes, without lights except a small amount of light fil-
tering in from the stairwell. It was very dark, certainly dark
enough for sleep and there was not light enough to write
by.
As I was gazing towards the back wall of the little
room and wondered about the footsteps I had just heard so
clearly, I saw a blinding flash of light, white light, in the
corner facing me. It came on and disappeared very quickly,
so quickly in fact that my wife, whose head had been
turned in another direction at the moment, missed it. But
The Ghosts of Stamford Hill
277
Dorothy Cowan saw it and exclaimed, “There it is again.
Exactly as I saw it.”
Despite the brevity I was able to observe that the
light cast a shadow on the opposite wall, so it could not
very well have been a hallucination.
I decided it would be best to bring Mrs. Meyers to
the house, and we went back to New York soon after.
While we were preparing our return visit with Mrs. Mey-
ers as our medium, I received an urgent call from Bob
Cowan.
"Since seeing you and Cathy at our house, we’ve had
some additional activity that you’ll be interested in. Dottie
and I have both heard knocking about the house but none
of it in direct answer to questions that we’ve tried to ask.
On Saturday, the 29th of February, I was taking a nap
back in my studio when I was awakened by the sound of
footsteps in the room above me. . .the same room we all sat
in on the previous Sunday.
“The most interesting event was on the evening of
Thursday, February 27. 1 was driving home from the rail-
road station alone. Dottie was still in New York. As I
approached the house, I noticed that there was a light on in
the main floor bedroom and also a light on up in the
sewing room on the top floor, a room Dottie also uses for
rehearsal. I thought Dottie had left the lights on. I drove
past the house and down to the garage, put the car away
and then walked back to the house and noticed that the
light in the top floor was now off.
“I entered the house and noticed that the dogs were
calm (wild enough at seeing me, but in no way indicating
that there was anyone else in the house). I went upstairs
and found that the light in the bedroom was also off. I
checked the entire house and there was absolutely no sign
that anyone had just been there. . .and there hadn’t been,
I'm sure.”
* * *
On Sunday, March 15, we arrived at the 1780 House,
again at dusk. A delicious meal awaited us in the down-
stairs room, then we repaired to the upstairs part of the
house.
We seated ourselves in the large living room where
the music had been heard, and where we had been stand-
ing at the time we heard the uncanny footsteps overhead.
“I sense a woman in a white dress,” Ethel said sud-
denly. “She’s got dark hair and a high forehead. Rather a
small woman.”
“I was looking through the attic earlier,” Bob Cowan
said thoughtfully, "and look what I found — a waistcoat
that would fit a rather smallish woman or girl.”
The piece of clothing he showed us seemed rather
musty. There were a number of articles up there in the
attic that must have belonged to an earlier owner of the
house — much earlier.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
A moment later, Ethel Meyers showed the character-
istic signs of onsetting trance. We doused the lights until
only one back light was on.
At first, only inarticulate sounds came from the
medium’s lips. “You can speak,” I said, to encourage her,
"you’re among friends.” The sounds now turned into
crying.
"What is your name?” 1 asked, as I always do on
such occasions. There was laughter — whether girlish or
mad was hard to tell.
Suddenly, she started to sing in a high-pitched voice.
“You can speak, you can speak,” I kept assuring the
entity. Finally she seemed to have settled down somewhat
in control of the medium.
“Happy to speak with you,” she mumbled faintly.
“What is your name?”
I had to ask it several times before I could catch the
answer clearly.
“Lucy.
“Tell me, Lucy, do you live here?”
“God be with you.”
“Do you life in this house?”
“My house.”
“What year is this?”
The entity hesitated a moment, then turned towards
Dorothy and said, “I like you.”
I continued to question her.
"How old are you?”
“Old lady.”
“How old?”
“God be with you.”
The conversation had been friendly, but when I
asked her, "What is your husband’s name?” the ghost drew
back as if I had spoken a horrible word.
“What did you say?” she almost shouted, her voice
trembling with emotion. “I have no husband — God bless
you — what were you saying?” she repeated, then started to
cry again. "Husband, husband,” she kept saying it as if it
was a thought she could not bear.
“You did not have a husband, then?”
“Yes, I did.”
"Your name again?”
“Lucy. . .fair day. . .where is he? The fair day. . .the
pretty one, he said to me look in the pool and you will see
my face.”
“Who is he?” I repeated.
But the ghost paid no heed to me. She was evidently
caught up in her own memories.
“I heard a voice, Lucy, Lucy — fair one — alack — they
took him out — they laid him cold in the ground. . . .”
"What year was that?” 1 wanted to know.
“Year, year?” she repeated. “Now, now!”
“Who rules this country now?”
“Why, he who seized it.”
“Who rules?”
278
Psychic photo in the living
room
"They carried him out. . . . The Savior of our country.
General Washington. ”
“When did he die?”
“Just now.”
I tried to question her further, but she returned to
her thoughts of her husband.
“I want to stay here — I wait at the pool — look, he is
there!” She was growing excited again.
“I want to stay here now, always, forever — rest in
peace — he is there always with me.”
“How long ago did you die?” I asked, almost casu-
ally. The reaction was somewhat hostile.
“I have not died — never — All Saints!”
I asked her to join her loved one by calling for him
and thus be set free of this house. But the ghost would
have none of it.
“Gainsay what I have spoke — ”
“How did you come to this house?” I now asked.
“Father — I am born here.”
“Was it your father’s house?”
“Yes.”
“What was his name?” I asked, but the restless spirit
of Lucy was slipping away now, and Albert, the medium’s
control, took over. His crisp, clear voice told us that the
time had come to release Ethel.
“What about this woman, Lucy?” I inquired. Some-
times the control will give additional details.
“He was not her husband. . .he was killed before she
married him,” Albert said.
No wonder my question about a husband threw Lucy
into an uproar of emotions.
In a little while, Ethel Meyers was back to her old
self, and as usual, did not remember anything of what had
come through her entranced lips.
* * *
Shortly after this my wife and I went to Europe.
As soon as we returned, I called Bob Cowan. How
were things up in Stamford Hill? Quiet? Not very.
“Last June,” Bob recalled, "Dottie and I were at
home with a friend, a lady hair dresser, who happens to be
psychic. We were playing around with the Ouija board,
more in amusement than seriously. Suddenly, the Sunday
afternoon quiet was disrupted by heavy footsteps coming
up the steps outside the house. Quickly, we hid the Ouija
board, for we did not want a potential buyer of the house
to see us in this unusual pursuit. We were sure someone
was coming up to see the house. But the steps stopped
abruptly when they reached the front door. I opened, and
there was no one outside.”
“Hard to sell a house that way,” I commented.
“Anything else?”
“Yes, in July we had a house guest, a very balanced
person, not given to imagining things. There was a sudden
crash upstairs, and when I rushed up the stairs to the
sewing room, there was this bolt of material that had been
standing in a corner, lying in the middle of the room as if
thrown there by unseen hands! Margaret, our house guest,
also heard someone humming a tune in the bathroom,
although there was no one in there at the time. Then in
November, when just the two of us were in the house,
The Ghosts of Stamford Hill
279
someone knocked at the door downstairs. Again we looked,
but there was nobody outside. One evening when I was in
the ship room and Dottie in the bedroom, we heard foot-
falls coming down the staircase.
“Since neither of us was causing them and the door
was closed, only a ghost could have been walking down
those stairs.”
“But the most frightening experience of all,” Dorothy
Cowan broke in, “was when I was sleeping downstairs and,
waking up, wanted to go to the bathroom without turning
on the lights, so as not to wake Bob. Groping my way back
to bed, I suddenly found myself up on the next floor in the
blue room, which is pretty tricky walking in the dark. I
had the feeling someone was forcing me to follow them
into that particular room.”
I had heard enough, and on December 1 5, we took
Ethel Johnson Meyers to the house for another go at the
restless ones within its confines. Soon we were all seated in
the ship room on the first floor, and Ethel started to drift
into trance.
"There is a baby’s coffin here,” she murmured. “Like
a newborn infant’s.”
The old grandfather clock in back of us kept ticking
away loudly.
“I hear someone call Maggie,” Ethel said, “Mar-
garet.”
“Do you see anyone?”
“A woman, about five foot two, in a long dress, with
a big bustle in the back. Hair down, parted in the middle,
and braided on both sides. There is another young woman
. . .Laurie. . .very pretty face, but so sad. . .she’s looking at
you, Hans. ...”
“What is it she wants?” I asked quietly.
“A youngish man with brown hair, curly, wearing a
white blouse, taken in at the wrists, and over it a tan waist-
coat, but no coat over it. . . ”
I asked what he wanted and why he was here. This
seemed to agitate the medium somewhat.
“Bottom of the well,” she mumbled, “stones at bot-
tom of the well.”
Bob Cowan changed seats, moving away from the
coffin door to the opposite side of the room. He com-
plained of feeling cold at the former spot, although neither
door nor window was open to cause such a sensation.
"Somebody had a stick over his shoulder,” the
medium said now, “older man wearing dark trousers, heavy
stockings. His hair is gray and kind of longish; he’s got
that stick.”
I asked her to find out why.
“Take him away,” Ethel replied. “He says, ‘Take
him away!”'
“But he was innocent, he went to the well. Who is
down the well? Him who I drove into the well, him. . . I
mistook. . .”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
280
Ethel was now fully entranced and the old man
seemed to be speaking through her.
What is your name?” I asked.
"She was agrievin’,” the voice replied, “she were
grievin’ I did that.”
“What is your name?”
“Ain’t no business to you.”
"How can I help you?”
“They're all here. . .accusin’ me. . . I see her always
by the well.”
“Did someone die in this well?” Outside, barely
twenty yards away, was the well, now cold and silent in the
night air.
“Him who I mistook. I find peace, I find him, I put
him together again.”
“What year was that?”
"No matter to you now. . .1 do not forgive
myself. . .1 wronged, I wronged. . .1 see always her face
look on me.”
“Are you in this house now?" I asked.
“Where else can I be and talk with thee?” the ghost
shot back.
“This isn’t your house any more,” I said quietly.
"Oh, yes it is,” the ghost replied firmly. “The young
man stays here only to look upon me and mock me. It will
not be other than mine. I care only for that flesh that I
could put again on the bone and I will restore him to the
bloom of life and the rich love of her who suffered through
my own misdemeanor.”
“Is your daughter buried here?” I asked, to change
the subject. Quietly, the ghostly voice said “Yes.”
But he refused to say where he himself was laid to
final — or not so final — rest.
At this point the ghost realized that he was not in his
own body, and as I explained the procedure to him, he
gradually became calmer. At first, he thought he was in his
own body and could use it to restore to life the one he had
slain. I kept asking who he was. Finally, in a soft whisper,
came the reply, “Samuel.”
“And Laurie?”
“My daughter. ... oh, he is here, the man I
wronged. . .Margaret, Margaret!” He seemed greatly
agitated with fear now.
The big clock started to strike. The ghost somehow
felt it meant him.
“The judgment, the judgment. ..Laurie.... they
smile at me. I have killed. He has taken my hand! He
whom I have hurt.”
But the excitement proved too much for Samuel.
Suddenly, he was gone, and after a brief interval, an
entirely different personality inhabited Ethel’s body. It was
Laurie.
“Please forgive him,” she pleaded, "I have forgiven
him.”
The voice was sweet and girlish.
“Who is Samuel?”
“My grandfather.”
“What is your family name?”
“Laurie Ho-Ho-. . .if I could only get that name.”
But she couldn't.
Neither could she give me the name of her beloved,
killed by her grandfather. It was a name she was not
allowed to mention around the house, so she had difficulty
remembering now, she explained,
“What is your mother’s name?” I asked.
“Margaret.”
"What year were you born?”
Hesitatingly, the voice said, "Seven-teen-fifty-six.”
“What year is this now?”
“Seventeen seventy-four. We laid him to rest in sev-
enteen seventy-four.”
“In the church?”
"No, Grandfather could not bear it. We laid him to
rest on the hill to the north. We dug with our fingers all
night.
“Don’t tell Grandpa where we put it.”
“How far from here is it?”
“No more than a straight fly of the lark.
"Is the grave marked?”
“Oh, no.”
"What happened to your father?”
"No longer home, gone.”
I explained to Laurie that the house would soon
change hands, and that she must not interfere with this.
The Cowans had the feeling that their ghosts were some-
how keeping all buyers away, fantastic though this may be
at first thought. But then all of psychic research is pretty
unusual and who is to say what cannot be?
Laurie promised not to interfere and to accept a new
owner of “their” house. She left, asking again that her
grandfather be forgiven his sins.
I then asked Albert, Ethel’s control, to take over the
medium. That done, I queried him regarding the whole
matter.
“The father is buried far from here, but most of the
others are buried around here,” he said, “during the year
1777. . .grandfather was not brought here until later when
there was forgiveness. The body was removed and put in
Christian burial."
“Where is the tombstone?” I asked.
“Lying to the west of a white structure,” Albert
replied in his precise, slightly accented speech, “on these
grounds. The tombstone is broken off, close to the earth.
The top has been mishandled by vandals. The old man is
gone, the young man has taken him by the hand.”
“What was the young man’s name?”
“She called him Benjamin.”
“He was killed in the well?”
“That is right. He has no grave except on the hill.”
“Is the old man the one who disturbs this house?”
“He is the main one who brings in his rabble, look-
ing for the young man.”
“Who is Lucy?” I asked, referring back to the girl
who had spoken to us at the last seance in the late spring.
“That is the girl you were talking about, Laurie. Her
name is really Lucy. One and the same person.”
“She was not actually married to the young man?”
"In her own way, she was. But they would not recog-
nize it. There were differences in religious ideas. . . . But we
had better release the medium for now.”
I nodded, and within a moment or two, Ethel was
back to herself, very much bewildered as to what went on
while she was in trance.
“How do you reconcile these dates with the tradition
that this house was built in 1780?” I asked Bob Cowan.
He shook his head.
“It is only a tradition. We have no proof of the actual
date.”
We went to the upstairs sewing room where the latest
manifestations had taken place, and grouped ourselves
around the heavy wooden table. Ethel almost immediately
fell into trance again. She rarely does twice in one sitting.
The voice reverberating in the near-darkness now was
clearly that of a man, and a very dominating voice it was.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“Sergeant-major. . ..” No name followed. I asked why
was he here in this house.
“One has pleasant memories.”
“Your name?”
"Sergeant-major Harm.”
"First name?”
Instead of giving it, he explained that he once owned
the house and was "friend, not foe.” I looked at Bob
Cowan, who knows all the owners of the property in the
old records, and Bob shook his head. No Harm.
“When I please, I come. I do not disturb willingly.
But I will go,” the new visitor offered, “I will take him
with me; you will see him no more. I am at peace with him
now. He is at peace with me.”
“How did you pass over?” I inquired.
“On the field of battle. On the banks of the
Potomac... 1776.”
“What regiment were you in?” I continued.
“York. ... Eight. ... I was a foot soldier. ..18th regi-
ment...”
“What Army?”
“Wayne. . .Wayne.
"Who was your commanding general?”
“Broderick.”
"Who was the Colonel of your regiment?”
“Wayne, Wayne.”
“You were a Sergeant-major?”
“Sergeant-major, 18th regiment, foot infantry.”
“Where were you stationed?”
“New York.”
“Where in New York?”
The Ghosts of Stamford Hill
281
“Champlain.”
“Your regimental commander again?”
"Broderick.” Then he added, not without emotion, “I
died under fire, first battle of Potomac.”
“Where are you buried?”
“FortTiconderoga, New York.”
I wondered how a soldier fighting on the banks of the
Potomac could be buried in upstate New York. But I must
confess that the word “Potomac” had come so softly that I
could have been mistaken.
“The date of your death?”
“1776.”
Then he added, as the voice became more and more
indistinct, “I will leave now, but I will protect you from
those who. . .who are hungry to. The voice trailed off
into silence.
A few moments later, Ethel emerged from the trance
with a slight headache, but otherwise her old self.
* * *
We returned to New York soon after, hoping that all
would remain quiet in the Cowan house, and, more impor-
tantly, that there would soon be a new laird of the manor
at the 1780 House.
I, too, heard the ghostly music, although I am sure it
does not connect with the colonial ghosts we were able to
evoke. The music I heard sounded like a far-off radio,
which it wasn't, since there are no houses near enough to
be heard from. What I heard for a few moments in the liv-
ing room sounded like a full symphony orchestra playing
the music popular around the turn of this century.
* 47
The “Spy House” Ghosts
of New Jersey
In JUNE, 1696, ONE Daniel Seabrook, aged 26 and a
planter by profession, took his inheritance of 80 pounds
sterling and bought 202 acres of property from his stepfa-
ther, Thomas Whitlock. For 250 years this plantation was
in the hands of the Seabrook family who worked the land
and sailed their ships from the harbor. The “Spy House” is
probably one of the finest pieces of colonial architecture
available for inspection in the eastern United States, having
been restored meticulously over the years.
The house is built in the old manner, held together
with wooden pegs. There are handmade bricks, filled with
clay mortar. The house has two stories and is painted
white. Every room has its own fireplace as that was the
only way in which colonial houses could be heated.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
Old houses impregnated with layers upon layers of
people’s emotions frequently also absorb music and other
sounds as part of the atmosphere.
What about the Sergeant-major?
I checked the regimental records. No soldier named
Harm, but a number of officers (and men) named Harmon.
I rechecked my tapes. The name “Harm” had been given
by the ghost very quietly. He could have said Harmon. Or
perhaps he was disguising his identity as they sometimes
will.
But then I discovered something very interesting. In
the Connecticut state papers there is mention of a certain
Benjamin Harmon, Jr. Lt., who was with a local regiment
in 1776. The murdered young man had been identified as
“Benjamin." Suddenly we have another ghost named Harm
or Harmon, evidently an older personality. Was he the
father of the murdered young man?
The 1780 House is, of course, recorded as dating
back to 1780 only. But could not another building have
occupied the area? Was the 1780 house an adaptation of a
smaller dwelling of which there is no written record?
We can neither prove nor disprove this.
It is true, however, that General “Mad” Anthony
Wayne was in charge of the Revolutionary troops in the
New York area at the time under discussion.
At any rate, all this is knowledge not usually pos-
sessed by a lady voice teacher, which is what Ethel Meyers
is when not being a medium.
The house, which is located near Middletown, New
Jersey, can easily be reached from New York City. It was
kept by a group headed by curator Gertrude Neidlinger,
helped by her historian-brother, Travis Neidlinger, and as
a museum it displays not only the furniture of the Colonial
period but some of the implements of the whalers who
were active in the area well into the nineteenth century. As
an historical attraction, it is something that should not be
missed by anyone, apart from any ghostly connections.
One of the rooms in the house is dedicated to the
period of the Battle of Monmouth. This room, called the
spy room by the British for good reasons, as we shall see,
has copies of the documents kept among General Washing-
ton’s private papers in the Library of Congress in Wash-
ington, D.C.
In 1778, the English were marching through Middle-
town, pillaging and burning the village. Along the shoreline
the Monmouth militia and the men who were working the
whale boats, got together to try to cut down the English
shipping. General Washington asked for a patriot from
Shoal Harbor, which was the name of the estate where the
282
The New Jersey Spy House, in
the center of revolutionary
plotting
spy house is located, to help the American side fight the
British. The volunteer was a certain Corporal John Still-
well, who was given a telescope and instructions to spy on
the British from a hill called Garrett’s Hill, not far away,
the highest point in the immediate area.
The lines between British and Americans were inter-
twined and frequently intercut each other, and it was diffi-
cult for individuals to avoid crossing them at times. The
assignment given Corporal Stillwell was not an easy one,
especially as some of his own relatives favored the other
side of the war. Still, he was able to send specific messages
to the militia who were able to turn these messages into
attacks on the British fleet.
At that point, Stillwell observed there were 1,037 ves-
sels in the fleet lying off the New Jersey coastline, at a time
when the American forces had no navy at all. But the fish-
ermen and their helpers on shore did well in this phase of
the Revolutionary War. John Stillwell’s son, Obadiah Still-
well, 1 7 years old, served as message carrier from his
father’s observation point to the patriots.
Twenty-three naval battles were fought in the harbor
after the battle of Monmouth. The success of the whale-
boat operation was a stunning blow to the British fleet and
a great embarrassment. Even daylight raids became so bold
and successful that in one day two pilot boats were cap-
tured upsetting the harbor shipping.
Finally, the British gave the order to find the spy and
end the rebel operation. The searching party declared the
Seabrook homestead as a spy house, since they knew its
owner, Major Seabrook, was a patriot. They did not realize
that the real spy was John Stillwell, operating from Gar-
rett’s Hill. Nevertheless, they burned the spy house. It was,
of course, later restored. Today, descendants of John Still-
well are among the society of friends of the museum, sup-
porting it.
Gertrude Neidlinger turned to me for help with the
several ghosts she felt in the house. Considering the history
of the house, it is not surprising that there should be
ghosts there. Miss Neidlinger, herself, has felt someone in
the entrance room whenever she has been alone in the
house, especially at night. There is also a lady in white
who comes down from the attic, walks along the hall and
goes into what is called the blue and white room, and there
tucks in the covers of a crib or bed. Then she turns and
goes out of sight. Miss Neidlinger was not sure who she
was, but thought she might have been the spirit of Mrs.
Seabrook, who lived through the Revolutionary War in a
particularly dangerous position, having relatives on both
sides of the political fence.
In 1976, 1 brought Ingrid Beckman, my psychic
friend, to the spy house, which is technically located in
Keansburg, New Jersey, near Middletown. The number on
the house is 1 19, but of course everyone in the area calls it
the Spy House. As Ingrid walked about the place, she
immediately pointed out its ancient usage as an outpost.
While we were investigating the house, we both clearly
heard footsteps overhead where there was no one walking.
Evidently, the ghosts knew of our arrival.
Without knowing anything about the history of the
house, Ingrid commented, "Down here around the fireplace
I feel there are people planning strategy, worried about
The “Spy House” Ghosts of New Jersey
283
British ships.” Then she continued, "This was to mobilize
something like the minutemen, farming men who were to
fight. This was a strategic point because it was the entry
into New York.”
I then asked Ingrid to tell me whether she felt any
ghosts, any residues of the past still in the house.
When we went upstairs, Ingrid tuned into the past
with a bang. "There’s a woman here. She ties in with this
house and something about spying, some kind of spying
went on here.” Then she added, “Somebody spied behind
the American lines and brought back information.”
Upstairs near the window on the first floor landing,
Ingrid felt a man watching, waiting for someone to come
his way. Ingrid felt there was a man present who had com-
mitted an act of treason, a man who gave information back
to the British. His name was Samuels. She felt that this
man was hanged publicly. The people call him an ex-
patriot. This is the entity, Ingrid said, who cannot leave
this house out of remorse.
Ingrid also asserted that the house was formerly used
as a public house, an inn, when meetings took place here.
The curator, Miss Neidlinger, later confirmed this. Also,
Ingrid felt that among the families living in the area, most
of the members served in the patriot militia, but that there
were occasional traitors, such as George Taylor. Colonel
George Taylor might have been the man to whom Ingrid
was referring. As for the man who was hanged, it would
have been Captain Huddy, and he was hanged for having
caused the death of a certain Philip White. Captain Joshua
Huddy had been unjustly accused of having caused the
death of the patriot Philip White and despite his inno-
cence, was lynched by the patriots. Again, Ingrid had
touched on something very real from history.
But the ghostly lady and the man who was hanged
and the man who stared out the window onto the bay are
not the only ghosts at the spy house. On the Fourth of
July, 1975, a group of local boys were in the house in the
blue and white room upstairs. Suddenly, the sewing
machine door opened by itself and the pedals worked
themselves without benefit of human feet. One of the boys
looked up, and in the mirror in the bureau across the
room, he could see a face with a long beard.
Another boy looked down the hall and there he saw a
figure with a tall black hat and a long beard and sort of
very full trousers as they were worn in an earlier age. That
was enough for them and they ran from the house and
never went back again.
One of the ladies who assists the curator, Agnes
Lyons, refuses to do any typing in the upstairs room
because the papers simply will not stand still. A draft
seems to go by all the time and blow the papers to the
floor even though the windows are closed. A Mrs. Lillian
Boyer also saw the man with the beard standing at the top
of the stairs, wearing a black hat and dressed in the period
of the later 1 700s. He had very large eyes, and seemed to
be a man in his forties. He just stood there looking at her
and she of course wouldn’t pass him. Then he seemed to
flash some sort of light back and forth, a brilliant light like
a flashlight. And there were footsteps all over the house at
the same time. She could even hear the man breathe, yet he
was a ghost!
» 48
The Strange Case of the
Colonial Soldier
Somerton, Pennsylvania, is now a suburb of Philadelphia,
albeit a pretty outlaying one. It takes you all of an hour by
car from downtown Philadelphia, but when you get there,
it’s worth it, especially Byberry Road. How the builders of
modern chunks of concrete managed to overlook this
delightful country lane in the backyard of the big city is
beyond my knowledge, but the fact is that we have here a
winding, bumpy road, good enough for one car at a time,
that goes for several miles without a single high-rise build-
ing. Instead, old homes line it in respectable intervals,
allowing even a bit of green and open spaces between the
dwellings.
One of the most unusual sights along this winding
road is a pretty, wooden colonial house built in 1732, and
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
untouched except for minor alterations, mainly inside the
house. That in itself is a rarity, of course, but the owners
who lived here since the Revolutionary period evidently
were house-proud people who cared.
The current tenants are David and Dolores Robin-
son, whose greatest pleasure is being in that house. They
don’t advertise the fact they’ve got an authentic pre-
Revolutionary home, but they’re not exactly shy about it
either; to them, it is a thrill to live as our ancestors did,
without the constant urge to “improve” things with shiny
new gadgets that frequently don’t work, or to tear down
some portion of their home just because it looks old or has
been used for a long time.
The Robinsons are house-proud, and they have a
keen sense of the antiquarian without any formal education
in that area. Mr. Robinson works for the telephone com-
pany and his wife works for her brother, a photographer, as
a retouch artist. Both are in early middle age and they have
three children in the preteenage group.
Theirs is a happy family without problems or frustra-
tions: They’d like to make a little more money, advance a
284
little faster, get a better car — but that is the normal average
American’s dream. With the Robinsons lives Mr. Robin-
son Senior, an elderly gentleman whose main occupation
seemed to be watching TV.
I first heard of the Robinsons and their homestead
when I appeared on a local radio show in the area, and I
was fascinated by the prospect of an apparently untouched
house with many layers of history clinging to it that a
psychic might be able to sense. I put the house on my
mental list of places to visit for possible psychometry
experiments.
Finally, in April of 1967, that opportunity arose and
a friend, Tom Davis, drove us out to Byberry Road. There
is something strange about Philadelphia distances; they
grow on you somehow, especially at night. So it was with
considerable delay that we finally showed up at the house,
but we were made welcome just the same by the owners.
The house could not be missed even in the dark of
night. It is the only one of its kind in the area, and sits
back a bit from the road. With its graceful white pillars
that support the roof of the porch, it is totally different
from anything built nowadays or even in Victorian times.
From the outside it looks smaller than it really is. There
are three stories, and a storage room beneath the rear part
of the house, the oldest portion. We entered through the
front door and found ourselves in a delightfully appointed
living room leading off to the left into the older portion of
the house. The house had a mixture of Colonial and Victo-
rian furniture in it, somehow not out of context with the
over-all mood of the place, which was one of remoteness
from the modern world. Across the narrow hall from the
downstairs living room, a staircase led to the next floor,
which contained bedrooms and one of the largest bath-
rooms I ever saw. Considering the Colonial reluctance to
bathe to excess, it struck me as incongruous, until I real-
ized later that the house had had some quasi-public usage
at one period.
A few steps led from the living room to the rear sec-
tion, which was the original portion of the house. A large
fireplace dominates it. Next to it is a rear staircase also
leading to the upper stories, and the low ceiling shows the
original wooden beams just as they were in pre-
Revolutionary days.
The Robinsons weren’t particularly addicted to the
psychic even though they’re both Irish, but Mrs. Robinson
admits to having had ESP experiences all her life. Whether
this is her Irishness (with a well -developed sense of imagi-
nation, as she puts it) or just a natural ability, it's there for
better or worse. When she was fourteen, she was reading
in bed one night, and it was very, very late. This was
against the rules, so she had made sure the door to her
bedroom was shut. Suddenly, the door opened and her
brother Paul stood there looking at her reproachfully. He
had been dead for eight years. Dolores screamed and went
under the covers. Her mother rushed upstairs to see what
was the matter. When she arrived, the door was still wide
open! Since that time, Mrs. Robinson has often known
things before they really happened — such as who would be
at the door before she answered it, or just before the tele-
phone rang, who would be calling. Today, this is just a
game to her, and neither her husband nor she takes it too
seriously. Both of them are high school graduates, Dolores
has had some college training, and her husband has electro-
engineering skills which he uses professionally; nevertheless
they don’t scoff at the possibility that an old house might
contain some elements from its violent past.
When they first moved into the house in 1960, Mrs.
Robinson felt right at home in it, as if she had always lived
there. From the very first, she found it easy to move up
and down the stairs even in the dark without she slightest
accident or need to orient herself. It was almost as if the
house, or someone it, were guiding her steps.
* * *
But soon the Robinsons became acutely aware that
the house was alive : There were strange noises and creak-
ing boards, which they promptly ascribed to the settling of
an old building. But there were also human footsteps that
both husband and wife heard, and there were those doors.
The doors, in particular, puzzled them. The first time Mrs.
Robinson noticed anything unusual about the doors in
their house was when she was working late over some pho-
tography assignments she had brought home with her. Her
husband was out for the evening and the three children
were fast asleep upstairs. The children have their bedrooms
on the third floor, while the Robinsons sleep on the second
floor. Suddenly Mrs. Robinson heard footsteps on the ceil-
ing above her bedroom. Then the door of the stairwell
opened, steps reverberated on the stairs, then the door to
the second floor opened, and a blast of cold air hit her.
Without taking her eyes from her work, Mrs. Robinson
said, "Go back to bed!” assuming it was one of her chil-
dren who had gotten up for some reason. There was no
answer.
She looked up, and there was no one there. Annoyed,
she rose and walked up the stairs to check her children’s
rooms. They were indeed fast asleep. Not satisfied and
thinking that one of them must be playing tricks on her,
she woke them one by one and questioned them. But they
had trouble waking up, and it was evident to Mrs. Robin-
son that she was on a fool’s errand; her children had not
been down those stairs.
That was the beginning of a long succession of inci-
dents involving the doors in the house. Occasionally, she
would watch with fascination when a door opened quite by
itself, without any logical cause, such as wind or draft; or
to see a door open for her just as she was about to reach
for the doorknob. At least, whatever presence there was in
the old house, was polite: It opened the door to a lady! But
reassuring it was not, for to live with the unseen can be
The Strange Case of the Colonial Soldier
285
A haunted colonial house in
Pennsylvania
infuriating, too. Many times she would close a door, only
to see it stand wide open again a moment later when she
knew very well it could not do that by itself.
She began to wonder whether there wasn’t perhaps a
hidden tunnel beneath their back living room. Frequently
they would hear a booming sound below the floor, coming
from the direction of the cold storage room below. The
doors would continually open for her now, even when she
was alone in the house and the children could not very well
be blamed for playing pranks on her. During the summer
of 1966, there were nights when the activities in the house
rose to frenzy comparable only with the coming and going
of large crowds. On one occasion her daughter Leigh came
down the stairs at night wondering who was in the living
room. She could hear the noises up to the top floor! That
night Mrs. Robinson was awakened six times by footsteps
and closing doors.
Around that time also, her father-in-law reported a
strange experience in his room on the second floor. He was
watching television when his door opened late one night,
and a woman came in. He was so startled by this unex-
pected visitor, and she disappeared again so quickly, he did
not observe her too closely, but he thought she had either
long black hair or a black veil. There was of course no one
of that description in the house at the time.
Then there were those moments when an invisible
rocking chair in the living room would rock by itself as if
someone were in it.
Just prior to our visit, Mrs. Robinson’s patience was
being sorely tried. It was the week of April 4, and we had
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
already announced our coming about a week or so after-
ward. Mrs. Robinson was on the cellar stairs when she
heard a clicking sound and looked up. A rotisserie rack was
sailing down toward her! Because she had looked up, she
was able to duck, and the missile landed on the stairs
instead of on her head. But she thought this just too much.
Opening doors, well, all right, but rotisserie racks? It was
high time we came down to see her.
I carefully went all over the house, examining the
walls, floors, and especially the doors. They were for the
most part heavy hinged doors, the kind that do not slide
easily but require a healthy push before they will move.
We looked into the back room and admired the beams, and
I must confess I felt very uneasy in that part of the house.
Both Catherine and I had an oppressive feeling, as if we
were in the presence of something tragic, though unseen,
and we could not get out of there fast enough.
I promised the Robinsons to return with a good psy-
chometrist and perhaps have a go at trance, too, if I could
get Mrs. Leek to come down with me on her next visit
east. The prospect of finding out what it was that made
their house so lively, and perhaps even learn more about its
colorful past, made the mysterious noises more bearable for
the Robinsons, and they promised to be patient and bear
with me until I could make the required arrangements.
It was not until June 1967 that the opportunity arose,
but finally Mrs. Leek and I were planning to appear on
Murray Burnett’s radio program together, and when I
mentioned what else we intended doing in the area, Mur-
ray’s eyes lit up and he offered to include himself in the
expedition and drive us to and fro.
286
The fireplace where the soldier
wanted to warm himself
The offer was gladly accepted, and after a dinner at
one of Murray’s favorite places — during which not a word
was exchanged about the Robinson house — we were off in
search of adventure in his car. “If there’s one thing I do
well,” he intoned, as we shot out onto the expressway, “it’s
driving an automobile.” He did indeed. He drove with
verve and so fast we missed the proper exit, and before
long we found ourselves at a place called King of Prussia,
where even a Prussian would have been lost.
We shrugged our combined shoulders and turned
around, trying to retrace our steps. Murray assured me he
knew the way and would have us at the Robinson house in
no time at all. There was a time problem, for we all had to
be back in the studio by eleven so that we could do the
radio program that night. But the evening was still young
and the Pennsylvania countryside lovely.
It was just as well that it was, for we got to see a
good deal of it that evening. There was some confusion
between Roosevelt Boulevard and Roosevelt Avenue, and
the directions I had faithfully written down were being
interpreted by us now the way two of Rommel’s Afrika
Korps officers must have studied the caravan routes.
“We should have turned off where we didn’t,” I
finally remarked, and Murray nodded grimly. The time
was about an hour after our appointed hour. No doubt the
Robinsons must be thinking we’re lost, I thought. At least
I hoped that that’s what they would think, not that we had
abandoned the project.
The neighborhood seemed vaguely familiar now; no
doubt it was. We had been through it several times already
that same evening. Were the “forces” that kept opening
and closing doors at the Robinson homestead preventing
our coming so that they could continue to enjoy their
anonymity?
When you’re lost in Pennsylvania, you’re really lost.
But now Murray came to a decision. He turned north and
we entered an entirely different part of town. It bore no
similarity to the direction in which we wanted to go, but at
least it was a well-lit section of town. I began to under-
stand Murray’s strategy: He was hoping we would run
across someone — no, that’s an unhappy word — find some-
one who just might know which way Somerton was. We
met several motorists who didn’t and several others who
thought they did but really didn’t, as we found out when
we tried to follow their directions.
Ultimately, Murray did the smart thing: He hailed
the first cop he saw and identified himself, not without
pride. Everybody in Philadelphia knew his radio show.
"We’re lost, officer,” he announced, and explained
our predicament.
“It’s Mercury retrograding,” Sybil mumbled from the
back seat. All during our wild ghost chase she had insisted
that astrologically speaking it was not at all surprising that
we had gotten lost.
“Beg your pardon?” the officer said, and looked
inside.
“Never mind Mercury,” Murray said impatiently,
“will you please show us the way?”
“I’ll do better than that, sir,” the policeman beamed
back, “I’ll personally escort you.”
The Strange Case of the Colonial Soldier
287
The dining room, never quite still
And so it came to pass that we followed a siren -
tooting patrol car through the thick and thin of suburban
Philadelphia.
Suddenly, the car in front of us halted. Murray
proved how skillful a driver he really was. He did not hit
anyone when he pulled up short. He merely jumbled us.
“Anything wrong, officer?” Murray asked, a bit ner-
vously. It was half past nine now.
“My boundary," the officer explained. "I’ve already
telephoned for my colleague to take you on further.”
We sat and waited another ten minutes, then another
police car came up and whisked us in practically no time to
our destination. When the Robinsons saw the police car
escort us to their house, they began to wonder what on
earth we had been up to. But they were glad to see us, and
quickly we entered the house. Sybil was hysterical with
laughter by now, and if we had had something to drink en
route, the whole odyssey might have been a jolly good
party. But now her face froze as she entered the downstairs
portion of the house. I watched her change expression, but
before I had a chance to question her, she went to the
lady’s room. On emerging from it she reported that the
first word that had impressed itself upon her was a name —
"Ross.”
She explained that she felt the strongest influence of
this person to the right of the fireplace in the oldest part of
the house, so I decided we should go to that area and see
what else she might pick up.
Although the house itself was started in 1732, the
particular section we were in had definitely been dated to
1755 by local historians, all of whom admired the Robin -
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
288
son house as a showcase and example of early American
houses.
“1746 is what I get,” Sybil commented.
“Sybil's underbidding you,” I remarked to Mrs.
Robinson.
"This is some kind of a meeting place,” Sybil contin-
ued her appraisal of the room, “many people come here. . .
1744. . .and the name Ross. The whole house has an
atmosphere which is not unpleasant, but rather alive.”
Just as Mrs. Robinson had felt on first contact with the
house, I thought. As for the meeting place, I later found
out that the house was used as a Quaker meeting house in
the 1740s and later, and even today the “Byberry Friends”
meet down the road! John Worthington, the first owner of
the house, was an overseer for the meeting house in 1752.
“There are many impressions here,” Sybil explained
as she psychometrized the room more closely, “many peo-
ple meeting here, but this is superimposed on one domi-
nant male person, this Ross.”
After a moment of further walking about, she added,
“The date 1774 seems to be very important.”
She pointed at a “closet” to the right of the ancient
fireplace, and explained that this personality seemed to be
strongest there.
"It’s a staircase,” Mrs. Robinson volunteered, and
opened the door of the “closet. ” Behind it a narrow, wind-
ing wooden staircase led to the upper floors.
I motioned to Sybil to sit down in a comfortable chair
near the fireplace, and we grouped ourselves around her.
We had perhaps thirty minutes left before we were to
return to Philadelphia, but for the moment I did not worry
about that. My main concern was the house: What would
it tell us about its history? What tragedies took place here
and what human emotions were spent in its old walls?
Soon we might know. Sybil was in deep trance within
a matter of minutes.
“Ross,” the voice speaking through Sybil said faintly
now, “I’m Ross. John Ross. . . . Virtue in peace. ...”
“Is this your house?”
“No.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“Praying. Hope for peace. Too much blood. People
must pray for peace.”
“Is there a war going on?”
“I say there’s war. . .the enemies are gone.. ..”
"Are you a soldier?”
"Captain — John — Ross,” the voice said, stressing
each word as if it were painful to pronounce it.
“What regiment?” I shot back, knowing full well that
regimental lists exist and can be checked out for names.
“Twenty-first.”
“Calvary or Infantry?”
“I — am — for — peace.”
“But what branch of the Army were you in?”
“Twenty-first of Horse.”
This is an old English expression for cavalry.
“Who is your superior officer?” I asked.
"Colonel Moss is bad. ..he must pray....”
“Who commands?”
“Albright.”
“Where did you serve?”
“Battle... here....”
He claimed to be thirty-eight years old, having been
born in 1726. This would make him thirty-eight in the
year 1764. His place of birth was a little place named Ver-
ruck, in Holstein, and when he said this I detected a very
faint trace of a foreign accent in the entranced voice of the
medium.
“Are you German then?” I asked.
“German?” he asked, not comprehending.
“Are you American?”
“American — is good,” he said, with appreciation in
his voice. Evidently we had before us a mercenary of the
British Army.
“Are you British?” I tried.
“Never!” he hissed back.
“Whom do you serve?”
“The thirteen... pray....”
Was he referring to the thirteen colonies, the name
by which the young republic was indeed known during the
revolutionary war?
"This Albrecth. . . . What is his first name?”
“Dee-an-no. .1 don't like him.. .. Peace for this
country!!! It was meant for peace.”
I could not make out what he meant by Dee-an-no,
or what sounded like it. I then questioned the personality
whether he was hurt.
“I wait for them to fetch me,” he explained, halt-
ingly, "sickness, make way for me!”
“Why are you in this house — what is there here?”
"Meeting place to pray.”
“What religion are you?”
“Religion of peace and silence.”
Suddenly, the medium broke into almost uncontrol-
lable sighs and cries of pain. Tears flowed freely from
Sybil’s closed eyes. The memory of something dreadful
must have returned to the communicator.
“I’m dying. . .hands hurt. . . . Where is my hand?”
You could almost see the severed hand, and the bro-
ken tone of voice realizing the loss made it the more imme-
diate and dramatic.
“I — am — for peace. ...”
“What sort of people come here?”
“Silent people. To meditate.”
What better way to describe a Quaker meeting
house?
"Don’t stop praying,” he beseeched us.
We promised to pray for him. But would he describe
his activities in this house?
“Send for the Friend. . .dying.”
He wanted spiritual guidance, now that he was at
death’s door. The term Friend is the official name for what
we now call a Quaker.
Was there someone he wanted us to send for?
"William Proser...my brother. ..in England.”
“Were you born in England?”
“No. William.”
“He is your brother?”
“All — men — are brothers.”
He seemed to have trouble speaking. I started to
explain what our mission was and that we wanted to help
him find the elusive peace he so longed for.
“Name some of your fellow officers in the regiment,”
I then requested.
“Erich Gerhardt,” the voice said. “Lieutenant
Gerhardt.”
"Was he in the cavalry? What regiment?”
"My — cavalry — Twenty-first — ”
“What year did you serve together? What year are
we in now?”
"Seventy -four.”
“Where are you stationed?”
Sybil was completely immersed in the past now, with
her face no longer hers; instead, we were watching a man
in deep agony, struggling to speak again. Murray Burnett
had his fingers at his lips, his eyes focused on the medium.
It was clear he had never witnessed anything like it, and
the extraordinary scene before him was bound to leave a
deep and lasting impression, as indeed it did.
But the question went unanswered. Instead, Sybil was
suddenly back again, or part of her, anyway. She seemed
strangely distraught, however.
The Strange Case of the Colonial Soldier
289
"Hands are asleep,” she murmured, and I quickly
placed her back into the hypnotic state so that the person-
ality of Captain Ross might continue his testimony.
“Get me out, get me out,” Sybil screamed now, “my
hands. . .my hands are asleep. . ..”
I realized that the severed hand or hands of the Colo-
nial soldier had left a strong imprint. Quickly I suggested
that she go back into trance. I then recalled her to her own
self, suggesting at the same time that no memory of the
trance remain in her conscious mind.
Pearls of sweat stood on Sybil’s forehead as she
opened her eyes. But she was in the clear. Nothing of the
preceding hour had remained in her memory. After a
moment of heavy silence, we rose. It was time to return to
the city, but Murray did not care. He knew that his pro-
ducer, Ted Reinhart, would stall for time by playing a
tape, if need be. The Robinsons offered us a quick cup of
coffee, which tasted even more delicious than it must have
been, under the circumstances. Everybody was very tense
and I thought how wise it had been of Mrs. Robinson to
keep the children away from the seance.
Hurriedly, we picked up our gear and drove back to
the station. It took us about one-fifth of the time it had
taken us to come out. Murray Burnett showed his skill
behind the wheel as he literally flew along the expressway.
Traffic was light at this hour and we managed to get back
just as the announcer said, "And now, ladies and gentle-
men, Murray Burnett and his guests....”
As if nothing had happened, we strode onto the plat-
form and did a full hour of light banter. By the time we
left Philadelphia to return to New York, though, Sybil was
exhausted. When we staggered out of our coaches in New
York, it was well past one in the morning. The silence of
the night was a welcome relief from the turbulent atmos-
phere of the early evening.
The following day I started to research the material
obtained in the Robinson homestead.
To begin with, the Robinsons were able to trace pre-
vious ownership back only to 1841, although the local his-
torical society assured her that it was built in 1732. The
early records are often sketchy or no longer in existence
because so many wars — both of foreign origin and Indian —
have been fought around the area, not counting fire and
just plain carelessness.
The Robinsons were the ninth family to own the
place since the Civil War period. Prior to that the only
thing known for certain was that it was a Quaker meeting
house and this fit in with the references Sybil had made in
trance.
But what about Ross?
The gentleman had claimed that he was Captain John
Ross, and the year, at the beginning of our conversation,
was 1764.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
290
In W. C. Ford’s British Officers Serving in America
1 754-1 774, I found, on page 88, that there was a certain
Captain John Ross, commissioned November 8, 1764. This
man of course was a Tory, that is, he would have fought
on the side of the British. Now the Revolutionary War
started only in April 1775, and the man had expressed a
dislike for the British and admiration for the “thirteen,” the
American colonies. Had he somehow switched sides during
the intervening year? If he was a German mercenary, this
would not have been at all surprising. Many of these men,
often brought here against their desire, either left the
British armies or even switched sides. Later on he referred
to the date 1774, and Sybil had said it was important. At
that time the war was already brewing even though no
overt acts had happened. But the atmosphere in this area
was tense. It was the seat of the Continental Congress, and
skirmishes between Tories and Revolutionaries were not
uncommon, although they were on a smaller or even indi-
vidual level. What traumatic experience had happened to
Captain Ross at that time? Did he lose his hands then?
* * *
I needed additional proof for his identity, of course.
The name John Ross is fairly common. A John Ross was
Betsy Ross’s husband. He was guarding munitions on the
Philadelphia waterfront one night in 1 776 when the muni-
tions and Ross blew up. Another John Ross was a purchas-
ing agent for the Continental Army, and he used much of
his own money in the process. Although Robert Morris
later tried to help him get his money back, he never really
did, and only a year ago his descendants petitioned Con-
gress for payment of this ancient debt of honor. Neither of
these was our man, I felt, especially so as I recalled his
German accent and the claim that he was born in a little
place called Verruck in Holstein. That place name really
had me stumped, but with the help of a librarian at the
New York Public Library I got hold of some German
source books. There is a tiny hamlet near Oldesloe, Hol-
stein, called Viertbruch. An English-speaking person would
pronounce this more like "Vertbrook.” Although it is not
on any ordinary map, it is listed in Mueller’s Grosses
Deutsches Wortbuch, published in Wuppertal in 1958, on
page 1008.
Proser, his brother’s name, is a German name. Why
had he adopted an English name? Perhaps he had spent
many years in England and felt it more expedient. He also
mentioned belonging to the 21st Cavalry Regiment. The
Captain John Ross I found in the records served in the
31st, not the 21st. On the other hand, there is, curiously
enough, another Ross, first name David, listed for the 21st
Regiment for the period in question, 1774.
I could not trace the superior named Albright or
Albrecht, not knowing whether this was someone German
or English. Since the first name given us by the communi-
cator was unclear, I can’t even be sure if the Philip
Albright, a captain in the Pennsylvania Rifles 1776-77,
The stairs where footfalls keep
reverberating
according to F. B. Heitman, Historical Register of the Con-
tinental Army during the War of the Revolution, is this man.
This Philip Albright was a rebel, and if he was only a cap-
tain in 1 776 he could not have been John Ross command-
ing officer in 1774, unless he had changed sides, of course.
I was more successful with the fellow officer Lieu-
tenant “Gerhardt,” who also served in “his” 21st Regi-
ment, Ross had claimed. Spellings of names at that period
are pretty free, of course, and as I only heard the names
without any indication as to proper spelling, we must make
allowances for differences in the letters of these names. I
did trace a Brevet Lieutenant Gerard (first name not given)
of the Dragoons, a cavalry regiment, who served in the
Pulaski Legion from September 3, 1778 to 1782.
Is this our man? Did he change sides after the Revo-
lutionary War started in earnest? ffe could have been a
regimental comrade of John Ross in 1774 and prior. The
source for this man’s data is F. B. Heitman's Historical
Register of the Continental Army, Volume 1775-83, page
189. The Pulaski Legion was not restricted to Polish vol-
unteers who fought for the new republic, but it accepted
voluntary help from any quarters, even former Britishers or
mercenaries so long as they wanted to fight for a free
America. Many Germans also served in that legion.
* * *
The Colonel Moss who was “bad” might have been
Colonel Mosses Allen, a Tory, who was from this area and
who died February 8, 1779. ffe is listed in Saffell’s Records
of the Revolutionary War.
It was a confusing period in our history, and men
changed their minds and sides as the need of the times
demanded. Had the unfortunate soldier whom we had
found trapped here in this erstwhile Quaker meeting house
been one of those who wanted to get out from under, first
to join what he considered “the good boys,” and then,
repelled by the continuing bloodshed, could he not even
accept t heir war? Had he become religiously aware through
his Quaker contacts and had he been made a pacifist by
them? Very likely, if one is to judge the words of the colo-
nial soldier from the year 1774 as an indication. His plea
for peace sounds almost as if it could be spoken today.
* * *
Captain John Ross was not an important historical
figure, nor was he embroiled in an event of great signifi-
cance in the overall development of the United States of
America. But this very anonymity made him a good sub-
ject for our psychometric experiment. Sybil Leek surely
could not have known of Captain Ross, his comrades, and
the Quaker connections of the old house on Byberry Road.
It was her psychic sense that probed into the impressions
left behind by history as it passed through and onward
relentlessly, coating the house on Byberry Road with an
indelible layer of human emotions and conflict.
* * *
I sincerely hope we managed to “decommission”
Captain Ross in the process of our contact, to give him
that much-desired “peace and silence” at last.
The Strange Case of the Colonial Soldier
291
* 49
The House on Plant Avenue
PLANT Avenue IS a charming suburban boulevard run-
ning through one of the better sectors of Webster Groves,
Missouri, in itself a better -than -average small town, near
St. Louis. Plant Avenue is not known for anything in par-
ticular except perhaps that it does have some plants,
mainly very old trees that give it a coolness other streets
lack, even in the heat of summer when this part of the
country can be mighty unpleasant.
Webster Groves wasn’t much of a landmark either
until Life magazine published an article on its high school
activities, and then it had a short-lived flurry of excitement
as the “typical” American upper-middle-class town with all
its vices and virtues. But now the town has settled back to
being just one of many such towns and the people along
Plant Avenue sigh with relief that the notoriety has ebbed.
They are not the kind that enjoy being in the headlines
and the less one pays attention to them, the happier they
are.
In the three hundred block of Plant Avenue there are
mainly large bungalow type houses standing in wide plots
and surrounded by shrubbery and trees. One of these
houses is a two-story wood and brick structure of uncertain
style, but definitely distinguished looking in its own pecu-
liar way. The roof suggests old English influences and the
wide windows downstairs are perhaps southern, but the
overall impression is that of a home built by an individual-
ist who wanted it his way and only his way. It does not
look like any other house on the block, yet fits in perfectly
and harmoniously. The house is somewhat set back and
there is a garden around it, giving it privacy. From the
street one walks up a front lawn, then up a few stairs and
into the house. The downstairs contains a large living
room, a day room and a kitchen with a rear exit directly
into the garden. From the living room, there is a winding
staircase to the upper floor where the bedrooms are located.
The house was built in the final years of the last cen-
tury by a man of strange character. The neighborhood
knew little enough about this Mr. Gehm. His business was
the circus and he seems to have dealt with various circus
performers and represented them in some way. He was not
a good mixer and kept mainly to himself and ultimately
died in the house he had built for himself.
This much was known around the neighborhood, but
to tell the truth, people don’t much care what you do so
long as you don’t bother them, and the real estate agent
who took on the house after Mr. Gehm passed away was
more concerned with its wiring and condition than Mr.
Gehm’s unusual occupation. As the house had a certain
nobility about it, perhaps due to the German background
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
292
of its builder, it seemed a good bet for resale and so it
turned out to be.
In 1956 the house passed into the hands of Mr. and
Mrs. S. L. Furry, who had been married twenty years at
the time, and had two young daughters, now long married
also.
Mrs. Furry’s ancestry was mainly English and she
worked for the Washington University Medical school in
St. Louis, having been a major in psychology in college.
Thus she found herself more than shaken when she
discovered some peculiarities about the house they had
moved into — such as being awakened, night after night at
precisely 2 A.M. with a feeling of having been shaken
awake. On one occasion, she clearly heard a heavy hammer
hit the headboard of her bed, turned on the lights only to
discover everything intact where she was sure she would
find splinters and a heavy indentation. Soon this was
amplified by the sound of something beating against the
windows at night. "It sounds just like a heavy bird,” Mrs.
Furry thought, and shuddered. There was nothing visible
that could have caused the sounds.
One morning she discovered one of the heavy wall
sconces, downstairs, on the floor. Yet it had been securely
fastened to the wall the night before. On examination she
discovered no logical reason for how the piece could have
fallen.
By now she realized that the footsteps she kept hear-
ing weren’t simply caused by overwrought nerves due to
fatigue or simply her imagination. The footsteps went up
and down the stairs, day and night, as if someone were
scurrying about looking for something and not finding it.
They always ended on the upstairs landing.
At first, she did not wish to discuss these matters
with her husband because she knew him to be a practical
man who would simply not believe her. And a woman is
always vulnerable when it comes to reporting the psychic.
But eventually he noticed her concern and the problem was
brought out into the open. He readily remarked he had
heard nothing to disturb his sleep and advised his wife to
forget it.
But shortly after, he sheepishly admitted at the
breakfast table that he, too, had heard some odd noises.
"Of course, there must be a logical explanation,” he added
quickly. “It is very likely only the contraction and expan-
sion of the old house. Lots of old houses do that.” He
seemed satisfied with this explanation, but Mrs. Furry was
not. She still heard those scurrying footfalls and they did
not sound to her like a house contracting.
Eventually, Mr. Furry did not insist on his explana-
tion, but had no better one to offer and decided to shrug
the whole thing off. One night he was awakened in the
bedroom adjoining his wife’s boudoir because of something
strange: he then noticed a filmy, white shape go through the
door into the hall and proceed into their little girl’s room.
He jumped out of bed and looked into the room, but could
see nothing. “Must have been the reflection of car lights
from the street,” he concluded. But it never happened
again, and cars kept passing the house at all hours.
The years went on and the Furry’s got somewhat
used to their strange house. They had put so much money
and work into it, not to say love, that they were reluctant
to let a ghost dislodge them. But they did become alarmed
when their three-year-old child kept asking at breakfast,
"Who is the lady dressed in black who comes into my
room at night?” As no lady in black had been to the house
at any time, this of course upset the parents.
“What lady?” Mrs. Furry demanded to know.
"The lady,” the three-year-old insisted. “She’s got a
little boy by the hand.”
Some time later, the child complained about the lady
in black again. "She spanks me with a broom, but it
doesn’t hurt,” she said. Mrs. Furry did not know what to
do. Clearly there was something in the house the real estate
people had failed to tell her about. After nine years, they
found a better house — one more suitable to their needs —
and moved. Again, the house on Plant Avenue was for
sale. It wasn’t long until a new tenant for the handsome
house appeared.
In the middle of November 1965, the Walshes rented
the house and moved in with two of their three children,
ten-year-old Wendy and twenty-year-old Sandy. They had
of course not been told anything about the experiences of
the previous owners and they found the house pleasant and
quiet, at least at first.
A short time after moving in, Mrs. Walsh was
preparing dinner in the kitchen. She was alone except for
her dog. The time was 6:30. Suddenly, she noticed the dog
cringe with abject fear. This puzzled her and she wondered
what the cause was. Looking up, she noticed a white cloud,
roughly the shape and height of a human being, float in
through the open door leading into the living room. The
whole thing only lasted a moment but she had never seen
anything like it.
“A ghost!” she thought immediately, for that was
exactly what is looked like. Clare Walsh is not a simple-
minded believer in the supernatural. She has a master’s
degree in biochemistry and did research professionally for
five years. But what she saw was, indeed a ghost! She
wasn’t frightened. In fact, she felt rather good, for her
sneaking suspicion had been confirmed. On the day she
first set foot into the house, when they had not yet taken it,
she had had a deep feeling that there was a presence there.
She dismissed it as being a romantic notion at the time, but
evidently her intuition had been correct. With a sigh Mrs.
Walsh accepted her psychic talents. This wasn’t the first
time that they had shown themselves.
At the time her husband’s ship was torpedoed, she
dreamed the whole incident in detail. When she was a
child, her aunt died, and she saw her aunt’s apparition
before anyone in the family knew she had passed on. Since
then she had developed a good deal of telepathy, especially
with her daughters.
She dismissed the apparition she had seen in the
kitchen, especially since nothing similar followed. But the
nights seemed strangely active. At night, the house came to
life. Noises of human activity seemed to fill the halls and
rooms and in the darkness Mrs. Wash felt unseen pres-
ences roaming about her house at will. It wasn’t a pleasant
feeling but she decided to brave it our and wait for some
kind of opening wedge, whereby she could find out more
about the background of her house. In February 1966, her
neighbors next door invited them to dinner.
Over dinner, the question of the house came up and
casually Mrs. Walsh was asked how quiet the house was.
With that, she confessed her concern and reported what
she had seen and heard. The neighbors — a couple named
Kurus — nodded to each other with silent understanding.
“There seems to be a pattern to these noises,” Mrs.
Walsh said, “it’s always at 4 A.M. and upstairs.”
The Kurus had almost bought the house themselves
but were dissuaded from it by the experiences of another
neighbor who lived across the street. The man had been a
frequent house guest at the house and while there, had
encountered ghostly phenomena sufficient to convince him
that the house was indeed haunted. The Kurus then
bought the house next door instead. When Mrs. Walsh
obtained the name of the man across the street, she called
him and asked what he knew about their house.
“The original owner has hidden some valuables in a
number of places, niches, all over the houses,” the gentle-
man explained, "and now he’s looking for his treasures.”
One of those secret hiding places apparently was the
fireplace downstairs. Upon putting down the receiver, Mrs.
Walsh started to examine the fireplace. There was a
strange hollow sound in one spot, but unless she took tools
to pry it open, there was no way of telling what, if any-
thing, was hidden there.
The vague promise of hidden treasure was not suffi-
cient to outweigh the pride of ownership in a handsome
fireplace, so she did not proceed to cut open the fireplace,
but instead went to bed.
About midnight she was awakened by a peculiar,
musty odor in the room. She got up and walked about the
room, but the musty door lingered on. It reminded her of
the smell of death.
The next morning she told her husband about it.
“Ridiculous,” he laughed, but the following morning
the same odor invaded his bedroom and he, too, smelled it.
Since Mr. Walsh works for a large chemical concern odors
are his business, in a manner of speaking. But he could not
classify the peculiar odor he was confronted with in his
own house.
After that, not much happened beyond the 4 A.M.
noises that kept recurring with punctuality — almost of Ger-
manic character.
The House on Plant Avenue
293
But Mrs. Walsh noticed that the door to the attic was
always open. The stairs leading up to the attic from the
second story have a stair whose tread lifts. Underneath the
stairs she discovered a hollow space! So the tales of hidden
treasure might have some basis of fact after all, she mused.
The secret space was once completely closed, but the catch
had long disappeared.
On one occasion, when Mr. Walsh was down with
the flu, he used an adjoining bedroom. While Mrs. Walsh
was resting she heard the attic door open and close again
four times, and thought it was her husband going to the
bathroom. But he had only been up once that night. The
other three times, it was another person, one they could
not see.
As time went on, Mrs. Walsh kept notes of all occur-
rences, more as a sport than from fear. Both she and her
husband, and soon the children, kept hearing the footsteps
going up to the attic, pausing at the now empty hiding
place. Each following morning the attic door, securely
closed the night before, was found wide open. It got to be
such a routine they stopped looking for real people as the
possible culprits. They knew by now they wouldn’t find
anyone.
One morning she went up to the attic and closed the
door again, then continued with her breakfast work in the
kitchen. Suddenly she had the strange urge to return to the
attic once more. Almost as if led by a force outside of her-
self, she dropped the bread knife and went up the stairs.
The door was open again, and she stepped through it into
a small room they had never used for anything but storage.
It was chock-full of furniture, all of it securely fastened and
closed.
To her amazement, when she entered the little room,
things were in disorder. The heavy chest of drawers at one
side had a drawer opened wide. She stepped up to it and
saw it was filled with blueprints. She picked one of them
up, again as if led by someone, and at the bottom of the
blueprint saw the name "Henry Gehm."
She had been looking in the attic for a supposedly
hidden doorway and had never been able to locate it. Was
it after all just gossip and was there no hidden door?
At this moment, she had held the blueprints of the
house in her hands, she received the distinct impression
she should look in a certain spot in the attic. As she did,
she noticed that the furniture against that wall had recently
been moved. No one of flesh and blood had been up there
for years, of course, and this discovery did not contribute
to her sense of comfort. But as she looked closer she saw
there was now a door where before a large piece of furni-
ture had blocked the view!
Who had moved the furniture?
She felt a chill run down her back as she stood there.
It wasn’t the only time she had felt cold. Many times a
cold blast of air, seemingly out of nowhere, had enveloped
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
294
her in the bedroom or in the kitchen. As she thought of it
now, she wondered why she had not investigated the
source of that air but taken it for granted. Perhaps she did
not want to know the results.
The events in the attic occurred on March 1 , 1966.
The following day, she was awakened quite early by inces-
sant footsteps in the hallway. Someone was walking up and
down, someone she could not see.
She got up. At that moment, she was distinctly
impressed with the command to take out an old music box
that had belonged to her mother. The box had not played
for years and was in fact out of order. She opened the box
and it started to play. It has remained in working order
ever since. Who had fixed it and was this a reward for hav-
ing looked at the blueprints for “someone?”
On March 5, she was roused from deep sleep once
more at the "witching hour” of 4 A.M., but the house was
quiet, strangely so, and she wondered why she had been
awakened. But she decided to have a look downstairs. In
the dining room, the breakfront which she had left closed
the night before, stood wide open. The teaspoons in one of
the drawers had been rearranged by unseen hands! A plant
had a shoot broken off and the twig lay on the table
nearby. Since the dog had not been in the room, there was
no one who could have done this.
The next day, her sleep was interrupted again at 4
o’clock. This time the drawer containing her underclothes
was all shaken up. Suddenly it dawned on her that her ten-
year-old daughter might have spoken the truth when she
reported someone in her mother’s bedroom opening and
closing the dresser when Mrs. Walsh knew for sure she
had not been in the room.
She realized now what it was. The bedroom she
occupied had been Henry Gehm’s room. If he had hidden
anything in it, he might be mistaking her dresser for his
own furniture and still keep looking.
On March 8 Mrs. Walsh was in the basement, and
her ten-year-old girl, Wendy, was in the garden playing.
The house was quite empty.
Suddenly, she heard the sound of a child running at a
mad pace through the dining room and kitchen. It must be
Sandy, she thought, and called out to her. She received no
reply. She went upstairs to investigate and found the house
empty and quiet. Yet the footsteps had been those of a
child, not the same footfalls she had so often heard on the
stairs and in the attic. So there were two of them now, she
thought, with a shudder.
It was then also that she recalled the baby hair she
had found under the couch shortly after they had first
moved in. At the time she had dismissed it as unimpor-
tant, even though no one with blond hair lived in the
house. The hair was very fine, clearly blond and seemed
like the hair of a very young child.
"Like angel’s hair,” she thought and wondered.
Five days later all but Mr. Walsh were out of the
house, in church. He was still in bed, but after the family
had left for church he came downstairs, and fixed himself
breakfast in the kitchen. At that moment, he thought he
heard Wendy running upstairs.
He assumed the child was not well and had been left
behind, after all. Worried, he went upstairs to see what
was the matter. No child. He shook his head and returned
to his breakfast, less sure that the house didn’t have
"something strange” in it.
Upon the return of the others, they discussed it and
came to the conclusion that the house was haunted by at
least two, possibly three, people. It was a large enough
house, but to share one’s home with people one could not
see was not the most practical way to live.
A few days later Mrs. Walsh was again in the base-
ment, doing the laundry. A sweater hanging from the
rafters on the opposite side of the basement suddenly
jumped down from the rafters, hanger and all, and landed
in front of her. The windows were firmly closed and there
was no breeze. What amazed Mrs. Walsh even more was
the way the sweater came down. Not straight as if pulled
by gravity, but in an ark, as if held by unseen hands.
“Mrs. Gehm,” she heard herself exclaiming. “What
did you do that for?”
There she was talking to a ghost.
What is your first name, anyway? she heard herself
think.
Instantly, a counterthought flashed into her mind.
My name is Mary.
On March 16 she woke again early in the morning
with the sure sensation of not being alone. Although she
could not see anyone, she knew there was someone upstairs
again. However she decided to stay in bed this time. First
thing in the morning, as soon as its was light, she ventured
up the stairs to the attic. In the little room the furniture
had been completely reshuffled! She then recalled having
heard a dull thud during the night.
A trunk had been moved to the center of the room
and opened; a doll house had been placed from one shelf to
a much lower shelf, and a tool box she had never seen
before had suddenly appeared in the room. There were
fresh markings in the old dust of the room. They looked
like a child’s scrawl ....
Mrs. Walsh looked at the scrawl. It looked as if
someone had made a crude attempt to write a name in the
dust. She tried to decipher it, but could not. The next day
she returned to the room. No one had been there. The
children were by now much too scared to go up there.
The scribbled signature was still there, and not far
from it, someone had made handprint in the dust. A small
child’s hand!
As Mrs. Walsh stared at the print of the child’s
hand, it came back to her how she had the month before
heard a child’s voice crying somewhere in the house. None
of her children had been the cause of the crying, she knew,
and yet the crying persisted. Then on another occasion, a
humming sound such as children like to make, had come
to her attention, but she could determine no visible source
for it.
Two days later, still bewildered by all this, she found
herself again alone in the house. It was afternoon, and she
clearly heard the muffled sound of several voices talking.
She ran up the stairs to the attic — for it seemed to her that
most of the phenomena originated here — and sure enough
the door to the attic, which she had shut earlier, was wide
open again.
Early the next morning Mrs. Walsh heard someone
calling a child up in the attic. Who was up there? Not any
of the Walshes, she made sure. Slowly it dawned upon her
that a family from the past was evidently unaware of the
passage of time and that the house was no longer theirs.
But how to tell them?
A busy family it was, too. At 5 A.M. one morning a
typewriter was being worked. The only typewriter in the
house stood in Wendy’s room. Had she used it? She
hadn’t, but that morning she found her typewriter had
been used by someone. The cover had been put back dif-
ferently from the way she always did it. A doll she had left
next to the machine the night before was now on top of it.
That night, while the family was having dinner in the
kitchen, the lights in the living were turned on by unseen
forces. Pieces of brightly wrapped candy disappeared from
a tray and were never seen again.
The dog, too, began to change under the relentless
turn of events. She would refuse to sleep in the basement
or go near certain spots where most of the psychic phe-
nomena had occurred. The seven-year-old dog, once the
very model of a quiet suburban canine, soon turned into a
neurotic, fear-ridden shadow of her former self.
It got to be a little too much for the Walshes.
The treasure Mr. Gehm was haunting had no doubt
long ago been found and taken away by some earlier tenant
or stranger. As for the house itself, the ghosts could have
it, if they wanted it that much. The Walshes decided to
build a new home of their own, from scratch. No more old
homes for them. That way, they would not inherit the
ghosts of previous owners.
They notified the owner of their intent to move and
as soon as the new home was ready, they moved out.
Even on the last day, the sounds of footsteps scurrying
up the stairs could be heard.
Plant Avenue gossips can add another chapter to the
lore of the Gehm house, but the sad little girl up in the attic
won’t have any playmates now. Even if they couldn’t see
her, the children knew she was there.
And that's all a ghost can hope for, really.
The House on Plant Avenue
295
m so
The Whaley House Ghosts
I FIRST HEARD about the ghosts at San Diego’s Whaley
House through an article in Cosmic Star, Merle Gould’s
psychic newspaper, back in 1963. The account was not too
specific about the people who had experienced something
unusual at the house, but it did mention mysterious foot-
steps, cold drafts, unseen presences staring over one’s
shoulder and the scent of perfume where no such odor
could logically be — the gamut of uncanny phenomena, in
short. My appetite was whetted. Evidently the curators,
Mr. and Mrs. James Redding, were making some alter-
ations in the building when the haunting began.
I marked the case as a possibility when in the area,
and turned to other matters. Then fate took a hand in
bringing me closer to San Diego.
I had appeared on Regis Philbin’s network television
show and a close friendship had developed between us.
When Regis moved to San Diego and started his own pro-
gram there, he asked me to be his guest.
We had already talked of a house he knew in San
Diego that he wanted me to investigate with him; it turned
out to be the same Whaley House. Finally we agreed on
June 25th as the night we would go to the haunted house
and film a trance session with Sybil Leek, then talk about it
the following day on Regis’ show.
Sybil Leek came over from England a few years ago,
after a successful career as a producer and writer of televi-
sion documentaries and author of a number of books on
animal life and antiques. At one time she ran an antique
shop in her beloved New Forest area of southern England,
but her name came to the attention of Americans primarily
because of her religious convictions: she happened to be a
witch. Not a Halloween type witch, to be sure, but a fol-
lower of “the Old Religion,” the pre-Christian Druidic cult
which is still being practiced in many parts of the world.
Her personal involvement with witchcraft was of less inter-
est to me than her great abilities as a trance medium. I
tested her and found her capable of total "dissociation of
personality,” which is the necessary requirement for good
trance work. She can get “out of her own body” under my
prodding, and lend it to whatever personality might be pre-
sent in the atmosphere of our quest. Afterwards, she will
remember nothing and merely continue pleasantly where
we left off in conversation prior to trance — even if it is two
hours later! Sybil Leek lends her ESP powers exclusively to
my research and confines her “normal” activities to a career
in writing and business.
We arrived in sunny San Diego ahead of Regis
Philbin, and spent the day loafing at the Half Moon Inn, a
romantic luxury motel on a peninsula stretching out into
San Diego harbor. Regis could not have picked a better
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
296
place for us — it was almost like being in Hawaii. We dined
with Kay Sterner, president and chief sensitive of the local
California Parapsychology Foundation, a charming and
knowledgeable woman who had been to the haunted Wha-
ley House, but of course she did not talk about it Sybil’s
presence. In deference to my policy she waited until Sybil
left us. Then she told me of her forays into Whaley House,
where she had felt several presences. I thanked her and
decided to do my own investigating from scratch.
My first step was to contact June Reading, who was
not only the director of the house but also its historian. She
asked me to treat confidentially whatever I might find in
the house through psychic means. This I could not
promise, but I offered to treat the material with respect and
without undue sensationalism, and I trust I have not disap-
pointed Mrs. Reading too much. My readers are entitled to
all the facts as I find them.
Mrs. Reading herself is the author of a booklet about
the historic house, and a brief summary of its development
also appears in a brochure given to visitors, who keep com-
ing all week long from every part of the country. I quote
from the brochure.
The Whaley House, in the heart of Old Town, San
Diego — restored, refurnished and opened for public
viewing — represents one of the finest examples extant of
early California buildings.
Original construction of the two-story mansion was
begun on May 6, 1856, by Thomas Whaley, San Diego
pioneer. The building was completed on May 10, 1857.
Bricks used in the structure came from a clay-bed and
kiln — the first brick-yard in San Diego — which Thomas
Whaley established 300 yards to the southwest of his
projected home.
Much of “old San Diego’s” social life centered
around this impressive home. Later the house was used
as a theater for a traveling company, “The Tanner
Troupe,” and at one time served as the San Diego
County Court House.
The Whaley House was erected on what is now the
corner of San Diego Avenue and Harney Street, on a
1 50-by-217-foot lot, which was part of an 8'/2-acre par-
cel purchased by Whaley on September 25, 1855. The
North room originally was a granary without flooring,
but was remodeled when it became the County Court
House on August 12, 1869.
Downstairs rooms include a tastefully furnished par-
lor, a music room, a library and the annex, which served
as the County Court House. There are four bedrooms
upstairs, two of which were leased to “The Tanner
Troupe” for theatricals.
Perhaps the most significant historical event involving
the Whaley House was the surreptitious transfer of the
county court records from it to “New Town,” present
site of downtown San Diego, on the night of March 31,
1871.
Despite threats to forcibly prevent even legal transfer
of the court house to "New Town,” Col. Chalmers
Scott, then county clerk and recorder, and his henchmen
removed the county records under cover of darkness and
transported them to a "New Town” building at 6th and
G Streets.
The Whaley House would be gone today but for a
group of San Diegans who prevented its demolition in
1956 by forming the Historical Shrine Foundation of
San Diego County and buying the land and the build-
ing.
Later, the group convinced the County of San Diego
that the house should be preserved as an historical
museum, and restored to its early-day spendor. This
was done under the supervision and guidance of an
advisory committee including members of the Founda-
tion, which today maintains the Whaley House as an
historical museum.
Most of the furnishings, authenticated as in use in
Whaley’s time, are from other early-day San Diego
County homes and were donated by interested citizens.
The last Whaley to live in the house was Corinne
Lillian Whaley, youngest of Whaley’s six children. She
died at the age of 89 in 1953. Whaley himself died
December 14, 1890, at the age of 67. He is buried in
San Diego in Mount Hope Cemetery, as is his wife,
Anna, who lived until February 24, 1913.
When it became apparent that a thorough investiga-
tion of the haunting would be made, and that all of San
Diego would be able to learn of it through television and
newspapers, excitement mounted to a high pitch.
Mrs. Reading kept in close touch with Regis Philbin
and me, because ghosts have a way of “sensing” an
impending attempt to oust them — and this was not long in
coming. On May 24th the “activities” inside the house had
already increased to a marked degree; they were of the
same general nature as previously noticed sounds.
Was the ghost getting restless?
I had asked Mrs. Reading to prepare an exact
account of all occurrences within the house, from the very
first moment on, and to assemble as many of the witnesses
as possible for further interrogation.
Most of these people had worked part-time as guides
in the house during the five years since its restoration. The
phenomena thus far had occurred, or at any rate been
observed, mainly between 10 A.M. and 5:30 P.M., when the
house closes to visitors. There is no one there at night, but
an effective burglar alarm system is in operation to prevent
flesh -and -blood intruders from breaking in unnoticed. Inef-
fective with the ghostly kind, as we were soon to learn!
I shall now quote the director’s own report. It
vouches for the accuracy and caliber of witnesses.
PHENOMENA OBSERVED AT WHALEY HOUSE
By Visitors
Oct 9, 1960 — Dr. & Mrs. Kirbey, of New Westminster,
B.C., Canada, 1:30 — 2:30 P.M. (He was then Director of
the Medical Association of New Westminster.)
The Whaley House — San Diego, California
While Dr. Kirbey and his wife were in the house, she
became interested in an exhibit in one of the display
cases and she asked if she might go through by herself,
because she was familiar with the Victorian era, and felt
very much at home in these surroundings. Accordingly,
I remained downstairs with the Doctor, discussing early
physicians and medical practices.
When Mrs. Kirbey returned to the display room, she
asked me in a hesitating fashion if I had ever noticed
anything unusual about the upstairs. I asked her what
she had noticed. She reported that when she started
upstairs, she felt a breeze over her head, and though she
saw nothing, felt a pressure against her, that seemed to
make it hard for her to go up. When she looked into the
rooms, she had the feeling that someone was standing
behind her, in fact so close to her that she turned
around several times to look. She said she expected
someone would tap her on the shoulder. When she
joined us downstairs, we all walked toward the court-
room. As we entered, again Mrs. Kirbey turned to me
and asked if I knew that someone inhabited the court-
room. She pointed to the bailiff’s table, saying as she
did, “Right over there.” I asked her if the person was
clear enough for her to describe, and she said:
"I see a small figure of a woman who has a swarthy
complexion. She is wearing a long full skirt, reaching to
the floor. The skirt appears to be of calico or gingham,
small print. She has a kind of cap on her head, dark hair
and eyes and she is wearing gold hoops in her pierced
ears. She seems to stay in this room, lives here, I gather,
and I get the impression we are sort of invading her pri-
vacy."
Mrs. Kirbey finished her description by asking me if
any of the Whaley family were swarthy, to which I
replied, “No.”
This was, to my knowledge, the only description
given to an apparition by a visitor, and Mrs. Kirbey the
only person who brought up the fact in connection with
the courtroom. Many of the visitors have commented
The Whaley House Ghosts
297
upon the atmosphere in this room, however, and some
people attempting to work in the room mentioned upon
the difficulty they have in trying to concentrate here.
By Persons Employed at Whaley House
April, I960, 10:00 A.M. By myself , June A. Reading, 3447
Kite St. Sound of Footsteps — in the Upstairs.
This sound of someone walking across the floor, I
first heard in the morning, a week before the museum
opened to the public. County workmen were still paint-
ing some shelving in the hall, and during this week
often arrived before I did, so it was not unusual to find
them already at work when I arrived.
This morning, however, I was planning to furnish
the downstairs rooms, and so hurried in and down the
hall to open the back door awaiting the arrival of the
trucks with the furnishings. Two men followed me
down the hall; they were going to help with the furni-
ture arrangement. As I reached up to unbolt the back
door, I heard the sound of what seemed to be someone
walking across the bedroom floor. I paid no attention,
thinking it was one of the workmen. But the men, who
heard the sounds at the time I did, insisted I go upstairs
and find out who was in the house. So, calling out, I
started to mount the stairs. Halfway up, I could see no
lights, and that the outside shutters to the windows were
still closed. I made some comment to the men who had
followed me, and turned around to descend the stairs.
One of the men joked with me about the spirits coming
in to look things over, and we promptly forgot the
matter.
However, the sound of walking continued. And for
the next six months I found myself going upstairs to see
if someone was actually upstairs. This would happen
during the day, sometimes when visitors were in other
parts of the house, other times when I was busy at my
desk trying to catch up on correspondence or bookwork.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
At times it would sound as though someone were
descending the stairs, but would fade away before reach-
ing the first floor. In September, 1962, the house was
the subject of a news article in the San Diego Evening
Tribune, and this same story was reprinted in the Sep-
tember 1962 issue of Fate magazine.
* * *
Oct. & Nov. 1 96 2 We began to have windows in the
upper part of the house open unaccountably. We
installed horizontal bolts on three windows in the front
bedroom, thinking this would end the matter. However,
the really disturbing part of this came when it set off
our burglar alarm in the night, and we were called by
the police and San Diego Burglar Alarm Co. to come
down and see if the house had been broken into. Usu-
ally, we would find nothing disturbed. (One exception
to this was when the house was broken into by vandals,
about 1963, and items from the kitchen display stolen.)
In the fall of 1962, early October, while engaged in
giving a talk to some school children, a class of 25
pupils, I heard a sound of someone walking, which
seemed to come from the roof. One of the children
interrupted me, asking what that noise was, and excus-
ing myself from them, I went outside the building,
down on the street to see if workmen from the County
were repairing the roof. Satisfied that there was no one
on the roof of the building, I went in and resumed the
tour.
Residents of Old Town are familiar with this sound,
and tell me that it has been evident for years. Miss
Whaley, who lived in the house for 85 years, was aware
of it. She passed away in 1953.
Mrs. Grace Bourquin, 2938 Beech St. Sat. Dec. 14,
1963, noon — Was seated in the hall downstairs having
lunch, when she heard walking sound in upstairs.
Sat. Jan. 10, 1964, 1 :30 P.M. — Walked down the hall
and looked up the staircase. On the upper landing she
saw an apparition — the figure of a man, clad in frock
298
Psychic photograph of one of the
restored bedrooms taken by the staff
coat and pantaloons, the face turned away from her, so
she could not make it out. Suddenly it faded away.
Lawrence Riveroll, resides on Jefferson St., Old Town.
Jan. 5, 1963, 12:30 noon — Was alone in the house. No
visitors present at the time. While seated at the desk in
the front hall, heard sounds of music and singing,
described as a woman’s voice. Song “Home Again.”
Lasted about 30 seconds.
Jan. 7, 1963, 1:30 P.M. — Visitors in upstairs. Down-
stairs, he heard organ music, which seemed to come
from the courtroom, where there is an organ. Walked
into the room to see if someone was attempting to play
it. Cover on organ was closed. He saw no one in the
room.
Jan. 19, 1963, 5:15 P.M. — Museum was closed for
the day. Engaged in closing shutters downstairs. Heard
footsteps in upper part of house in the same area as
described. Went up to check, saw nothing.
Sept. 10-12, 1964 — at dusk, about 5:15 P.M. —
Engaged in closing house, together with another worker.
Finally went into the music room, began playing the
piano. Suddenly felt a distinct pressure on his hands, as
though someone had their hands on his. He turned to
look toward the front hall, in the direction of the desk,
hoping to get the attention of the person seated there,
when he saw the apparition of a slight woman dressed in
a hoop skirt. In the dim light was unable to see clearly
the face. Suddenly the figure vanished.
J. Milton Keller, 4114 Middlesex Dr. Sept. 22, 1964,
2:00 P.M. — Engaged in tour with visitors at the parlor,
when suddenly he, together with people assembled at
balustrade, noticed crystal drops hanging from lamp on
parlor table begin to swing back and forth. This
occurred only on one side of the lamp. The other drops
did not move. This continued about two minutes.
Dec. 15, 1964, 5:15 P.M. — Engaged in closing house
along with others. Returned from securing restrooms,
walked down hall, turned to me with the key, while I
stepped into the hall closer to reach for the master
switch which turns off all lights. I pulled the switch,
started to turn around to step out, when he said, “Stop,
don’t move, you’ll step on the dog!” He put his hands
out, in a gesture for me to stay still. Meantime, I turned
just in time to see what resembled a flash of light
between us, and what appeared to be the back of a dog,
scurry down the hall and turn into the dining room. I
decided to resume a normal attitude, so I kidded him a
little about trying to scare me. Other people were pre-
sent in the front hall at the time, waiting for us at the
door, so he turned to them and said in a rather hurt
voice that I did not believe him. I realized then that he
had witnessed an apparition, so I asked him to see if he
could describe it. He said he saw a spotted dog, like a fox
terrier, that ran with his ears flapping, down the hall and
into the dining room.
May 29, 1965, 2:30 P.M. — Escorting visitors through
house, upstairs. Called to me, asking me to come up.
Upon going up, he, I and visitors all witnessed a black
rocking chair, moving back and forth as if occupied by a
person. It had started moving unaccountably, went on
about three minutes. Caused quite a stir among visitors.
Dec. 27, 1964, 5:00P.M. — Late afternoon, prior to
closing, saw the apparition of a woman dressed in a green
plaid gingham dress. She had long dark hair, coiled up in
a bun at neck, was seated on a settee in bedroom.
Feb. 1965, 2:00 P.M. — Engaged in giving a tour with
visitors, when two elderly ladies called and asked him to
come upstairs, and step over to the door of the nursery.
These ladies, visitors, called his attention to a sound
that was like the cry of a baby, about 16 months old.
All three reported the sound.
The Whaley House Ghosts
299
More psychic photographs taken by
the Whaley House staff
March 24, 1965, 1:00 P.M. — He, together with Mrs.
Bourquin and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Keller, engaged
in touring the visitors, when for some reason his atten-
tion was directed to the foot of the staircase. He walked
back to it, and heard the sound of someone in the upper
part of the house whistling. No one was in the upstairs
at the time.
Mrs. Suzanne Pere, 106 Albatross, El Cajon. April 8,
1963, 4:30 P.M. — Was engaged in typing in courtroom,
working on manuscript. Suddenly she called to me, call-
ing my attention to a noise in the upstairs. We both
stopped work, walked up the stairs together, to see if
anyone could possibly be there. As it was near closing
time, we decided to secure the windows. Mrs. Pere kept
noticing a chilly breeze at the back of her head, had the
distinct feeling that someone, though invisible, was pre-
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
300
sent and kept following her from one window to
another.
Oct. 14, 21; Nov. 18, 1964 — During the morning and
afternoon on these days, called my attention to the smell
of cigar smoke, and the fragrance of perfume or cologne.
This occurred in the parlor, the upstairs hall and bed-
room. In another bedroom she called my attention to
something resembling dusting powder.
Nov. 28, 1964, 2:30 P.M. Reported seeing an
apparition in the study. A group of men there, dressed
in frock coats, some with plain vests, others figured
material. One of this group had a large gold watch chain
across vest. Seemed to be a kind of meeting; all figures
were animated, some pacing the floor, others conversing;
all serious and agitated, but oblivious to everything else.
One figure in this group seemed to be an official, and
stood off by himself. This person was of medium stocky
build, light brown hair, and mustache which was quite
full and long. He had very piercing light blue eyes, pen-
etrating gaze. Mrs. Pere sensed that he was some kind
of official, a person of importance. He seemed about to
speak. Mrs. Pere seemed quite exhausted by her experi-
ence witnessing this scene, yet was quite curious about
the man with the penetrating gaze. I remember her ask-
ing me if I knew of anyone answering this description,
because it remained with her for some time.
Oct. 7, 1963, 10:30 A. M.— Reported unaccountable
sounds issuing from kitchen, as though someone were at
work there. Same day, she reported smelling the odor of
something baking.
Nov. 27, 1964, 10:15 A. M. — Heard a distinct noise
from kitchen area, as though something had dropped to
the floor. I was present when this occurred. She called to
me and asked what I was doing there, thinking I had
been rearranging exhibit. At this time I was at work in
courtroom, laying out work. Both of us reached the
kitchen, to find one of the utensils on the shelf rack had
disengaged itself, fallen to the floor, and had struck a
copper boiler directly below. No one else was in the
house at the time, and we were at a loss to explain this.
Mrs. T.R. Allen, 3447 Kite Street — Was present Jan.
7 , 1963, 1 :30 P.M. Heard organ music issue from court-
room, when Lawrence Riveroll heard the same (see his
statement).
Was present Sept. 10-12, 1964, at dusk, with
Lawrence Riveroll, when he witnessed apparition. Mrs.
Allen went upstairs to close shutters, and as she
ascended them, described a chill breeze that seemed to
come over her head. Upstairs, she walked into the bed-
room and toward the windows. Suddenly she heard a
sound behind her, as though something had dropped to
the floor. She turned to look, saw nothing, but again
experienced the feeling of having someone, invisible,
hovering near her. She had a feeling of fear. Completed
her task as quickly as possible, and left the upstairs
hastily. Upon my return, both persons seemed anxious
to leave the house.
May, 1965 (the last Friday), 1:30 P.M. — Was seated
in the downstairs front hall, when she heard the sound
of footsteps.
Regis Philbin himself had been to the house before.
With him on that occasion was Mrs. Philbin, who is highly
sensitive to psychic emanations, and a teacher-friend of
theirs considered an amateur medium.
They observed, during their vigil, what appeared to
be a white figure of a person, but when Regis challenged it,
unfortunately with his flashlight, it disappeared immedi-
ately. Mrs. Philbin felt extremely uncomfortable on that
occasion and had no desire to return to the house.
By now I knew that the house had three ghosts, a
man, a woman and a baby — and a spotted dog. The scene
observed in one of the rooms sounded more like a psychic
impression of a past event to me than a bona fide ghost.
I later discovered that still another part-time guide at
the house, William H. Richardson, of 470 Silvery Lane, El
Cajon, had not only experienced something out of the ordi-
nary at the house, but had taken part in a kind of seance
with interesting results. Here is his statement, given to me
in September of 1965, several months after our own trance
session had taken place.
In the summer of 1963 I worked in Whaley House as
a guide.
One morning before the house was open to the pub-
lic, several of us employees were seated in the music
room downstairs, and the sound of someone in heavy
boots walking across the upstairs was heard by us all.
When we went to investigate the noise, we found all the
windows locked and shuttered, and the only door to the
outside from upstairs was locked. This experience first
sparked my interest in ghosts.
I asked June Reading, the director, to allow several of
my friends from Starlight Opera, a local summer musi-
cal theatre, to spend the night in the house.
At midnight, on Friday, August 13, we met at the
house. Carolyn Whyte, a member of the parapsychology
group in San Diego and a member of the Starlight Cho-
rus, gave an introductory talk on what to expect, and we
all went into the parlor to wait for something to happen.
The experience was that of a cool breeze blowing
through the room, which was felt by several of us
despite the fact that all doors and windows were locked
and shuttered.
The next thing that happened was that a light
appeared over a boy’s head. This traveled from his head
across the wall, where it disappeared. Upon later investi-
gation it was found to have disappeared at the portrait
of Thomas Whaley, the original owner of the house.
Footsteps were also heard several times in the room
upstairs.
At this point we broke into groups and dispersed to
different parts of the house. One group went into the
study which is adjacent to the parlor, and there wit-
nessed a shadow on the wall surrounded by a pale light
which moved up and down the wall and changed shape
as it did so. There was no source of light into the room
and one could pass in front of the shadow without dis-
turbing it.
Another group was upstairs when their attention was
directed simultaneously to the chandelier which began to
swing around as if someone were holding the bottom
and twisting the sides. One boy was tapped on the leg
several times by some unseen force while seated there.
Meanwhile, downstairs in the parlor, an old-fash-
ioned lamp with prisms hanging on the edges began to
act strangely. As we watched, several prisms began to
swing by themselves. These would stop and others
would start, but they never swung simultaneously.
There was no breeze in the room.
At this time we all met in the courtroom. Carolyn
then suggested that we try to lift the large table in the
room.
The Whaley House Ghosts
301
We sat around the table and placed our fingertips on
it. A short while later it began to creak and then slid
across the floor approximately eight inches, and finally
lifted completely off the floor on the corner where I was
seated.
Later on we brought a small table from the music
room into the courtroom and tried to get it to tip, which
it did. With just our fingertips on it, it tilted until it was
approximately one inch from the floor, then fell. We
righted the table and put our fingertips back on it, and
almost immediately it began to rock. Since we knew the
code for yes, no and doubtful, we began to converse
with the table. Incidentally, while this was going on, a
chain across the doorway in the courtroom was almost
continually swinging back and forth and then up and
down.
Through the system of knocking, we discovered that
the ghost was that of a little girl, seven years old. She
did not tell us her name, but she did tell us that she had
red hair, freckles, and hazel eyes. She also related that
there were four other ghosts in the house besides herself,
including that of a baby boy. We conversed with her
spirit for nearly an hour.
At one time the table stopped rocking and started
moving across the floor of the courtroom, into the din-
ing room, through the pantry, and into the kitchen.
This led us to believe that the kitchen was her usual
abode. The table then stopped and several antique
kitchen utensils on the wall began to swing violently.
Incidentally, the kitchen utensils swung for the rest of
the evening at different intervals.
The table then retraced its path back to the court-
room and answered more questions.
At 5:00 a.m. we decided to call it a night — a most
interesting night. When we arrived our group of 1 5 had
had in it a couple of real believers, several who half
believed, and quite a few who didn’t believe at all. After
the phenomena we had experienced, there was not one
among us who was even very doubtful in the belief of
some form of existence after life.
It was Friday evening, and time to meet the ghosts.
Sybil Leek knew nothing whatever about the house, and
when Regis Philbin picked us up the conversation
remained polite and non-ghostly.
When we arrived at the house, word of mouth had
preceded us despite the fact that our plans had not been
announced publicly; certainly it had not been advertised
that we would attempt a seance that evening. Nevertheless,
a sizable crowd had assembled at the house and only Regis’
polite insistence that their presence might harm whatever
results we could obtain made them move on.
It was quite dark now, and I followed Sybil into the
house, allowing her to get her clairvoyant bearings first,
prior to the trance session we were to do with the cameras
rolling. My wife Catherine trailed right behind me carrying
the tape equipment. Mrs. Reading received us cordially.
The witnesses had assembled but were temporarily out of
reach, so that Sybil could not gather any sensory impres-
sions from them. They patiently waited through our clair-
voyant tour. All in all, about a dozen people awaited us.
The house was lit throughout and the excitement in the
atmosphere was bound to stir up any ghost present!
And so it was that on June 25, 1965, the Ghost
Hunter came to close quarters with the specters at Whaley
House, San Diego. While Sybil meandered about the house
by herself, I quickly went over to the court house part of
the house and went over their experiences with the wit-
nesses. Although I already had their statements, I wanted
to make sure no detail had escaped me.
From June Reading I learned, for instance, that the
court house section of the building, erected around 1855,
had originally served as a granary, later becoming a town
hall and court house in turn. It was the only two-story
brick house in the entire area at the time.
Not only did Mrs. Reading hear what sounded to her
like human voices, but on one occasion, when she was tape
recording some music in this room, the tape also contained
some human voices — sounds she had not herself heard
while playing the music!
"When was the last time you yourself heard anything
unusual?” I asked Mrs. Reading.
“As recently as a week ago,” the pert curator replied,
“during the day I heard the definite sound of someone
opening the front door. Because we have had many visitors
here recently, we are very much alerted to this. I happened
to be in the court room with one of the people from the
Historical Society engaged in research in the Whaley
papers, and we both heard it. I went to check to see who
had come in, and there was no one there, nor was there
any sound of footsteps on the porch outside. The woman
who works here also heard it and was just as puzzled about
it as I was.”
I discovered that the Mrs. Allen in the curator’s
report to me of uncanny experiences at the house was Lil-
lian Allen, her own mother, a lively lady who remembered
her brush with the uncanny only too vividly.
“I’ve heard the noises overhead,” she recalled.
"Someone in heavy boots seemed to be walking across,
turning to come down the stairway — and when I first came
out here they would tell me these things and I would not
believe them — but I was sitting at the desk one night,
downstairs, waiting for my daughter to lock up in the back.
I heard this noise overhead and I was rushing to see if we
were locking someone in the house, and as I got to almost
the top, a big rush of wind blew over my head and made
my hair stand up. I thought the windows had blown open
but I looked all around and everything was secured.”
"Just how did this wind feel?” I asked. Tales of cold
winds are standard with traditional hauntings, but here we
had a precise witness to testify.
“It was cold and I was chilly all over. And another
thing, when I lock the shutters upstairs at night, I feel like
someone is breathing down the back of my neck, like
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
302
they’re going to touch me — at the shoulder — that hap-
pened often. Why, only a month ago.”
A Mrs. Frederick Bear now stepped forward. I could
not find her name in Mrs. Reading’s brief report. Evidently
she was an additional witness to the uncanny goings-on at
this house.
"One evening I came here — it was after 5 o’clock;
another lady was here also — and June Reading was coming
down the stairs, and we were talking. I distinctly heard
something move upstairs, as if someone were moving a
table. There was no one there — we checked. That only
happened a month ago.”
Grace Bourquin, another volunteer worker at the
house, had been touched upon in Mrs. Reading’s report.
She emphasized that the sounds were those of a heavy man
wearing boots — no mistake about it. When I questioned
her about the apparition of a man she had seen, about six
weeks ago, wearing a frock coat, she insisted that he had
looked like a real person to her, standing at the top of the
stairs one moment, and completely gone the next.
"He did not move. I saw him clearly, then turned my
head for a second to call out to Mrs. Reading, and when I
looked again, he had disappeared.”
I had been fascinated by Mrs. Suzanne Pere’s account
of her experiences, which seemed to indicate a large degree
of mediumship in her makeup. I questioned her about any-
thing she had not yet told us. "On one occasion June
Reading and I were in the back study and working with
the table. We had our hands on the table to see if we could
get any reaction.”
"You mean you were trying to do some table-tip-
ping.”
"Yes. At this point I had only had some feelings in
the house, and smelled some cologne. This was about a
year ago, and we were working with some papers concern-
ing the Indian uprising in San Diego, and all of a sudden
the table started to rock violently! All of the pulses in my
body became throbbing, and in my mind’s eye the room
was filled with men, all of them extremely excited, and
though I could not hear any sound, I knew they were talk-
ing, and one gentleman was striding up and down the cen-
ter of the room, puffing on his cigar, and from my
description of him June Reading later identified him as
Sheriff McCoy, who was here in the 1850s. When it was
finished I could not talk for a few minutes. I was com-
pletely disturbed for a moment.”
McCoy, I found, was the leader of one of the factions
during the "battle” between Old Town and New Town
San Diego for the county seat.
Evidently, Mrs. Bourquin had psychically relived that
emotion -laden event which did indeed transpire in the very
room she saw it in!
"Was the court house ever used to execute anyone?”
I interjected.
Mrs. Reading was not sure; the records were all there
but the Historical Society had not gone over them as yet
for lack of staff. The court functioned in this house for two
years, however, and sentences certainly were meted out in
it. The prison itself was a bit farther up the street.
A lady in a red coat caught my attention. She identi-
fied herself as Bernice Kennedy.
"I’m a guide here Sundays,” the lady began, "and
one Sunday recently, I was alone in the house and sitting
in the dining room reading, and I heard the front door
open and close. There was no one there. I went back to
continue my reading. Then I heard it the second time.
Again I checked, and there was absolutely no one there. I
heard it a third time and this time I took my book and sat
outside at the desk. From then onward, people started to
come in and I had no further unusual experience. But one
other Sunday, there was a young woman upstairs who came
down suddenly very pale, and she said the little rocking
chair upstairs was rocking. I followed the visitor up and I
could not see the chair move, but there was a clicking
sound, very rhythmic, and I haven’t heard it before or
since.”
The chair, it came out, once belonged to a family
related to the Whaleys.
“I’m Charles Keller, father of Milton Keller,” a
booming voice said behind me, and an imposing gentleman
in his middle years stepped forward.
“I once conducted a tour through the Whaley House.
I noticed a lady who had never been here act as if she were
being pushed out of one of the bedrooms!”
“Did you see it?” I said, somewhat taken aback.
“Yes,” Mr. Keller nodded, "I saw her move, as if
someone were pushing her out of the room.”
"Did you interrogate her about it?”
"Yes, I did. It was only in the first bedroom, where
we started the tour, that it happened. Not in any of the
other rooms. We went back to that room and again I saw
her being pushed out of it!”
Mrs. Keller then spoke to me about the ice-cold draft
she felt, and just before that, three knocks at the back door!
Her son, whose testimony Mrs. Reading had already
obtained for me, then went to the back door and found no
one there who could have knocked. This had happened
only six months before our visit.
1 then turned to James Reading, the head of the
Association, responsible for the upkeep of the museum and
house, and asked for his own encounters with the ghosts.
Mr. Reading, in a cautious tone, explained that he did not
really cotton to ghosts, but —
“The house was opened to the public in April 1960.
In the fall of that year, October or November, the police
called me at 2 o’clock in the morning, and asked me to
please go down and shut off the burglar alarm, because
they were being flooded with complaints, it was waking up
everybody in the neighborhood. I came down and found
two officers waiting for me. 1 shut off the alarm. They had
The Whaley House Ghosts
303
meantime checked the house and every door and shutter
was tight.”
“How could the alarm have gone off by itself then?”
“I don’t know. I unlocked the door, and we searched
the entire house. When we finally got upstairs, we found
one of the upstairs front bedroom windows open. We
closed and bolted the window, and came down and tested
the alarm. It was in order again. No one could have gotten
in or out. The shutters outside that window were closed
and hooked on the inside. The opening of the window had
set off the alarm, but it would have been impossible for
anyone to open that window and get either into or out of
the house. Impossible. This happened four times. The sec-
ond time, about four months later, again at two in the
morning, again that same window was standing open. The
other two times it was always that same window.”
“What did you finally do about it?”
“After the fourth incident we added a second bolt at
right angles to the first one, and that seemed to help.
There were no further calls.”
Was the ghost getting tired of pushing two bolts out
of the way?
I had been so fascinated with all this additional testi-
mony that I had let my attention wander away from my
favorite medium, Sybil Leek. But now I started to look for
her and found to my amazement that she had seated her-
self in one of the old chairs in what used to be the kitchen,
downstairs in back of the living room. When I entered the
room she seemed deep in thought, although not in trance
by any means, and yet it took me a while to make her real-
ize where we were.
Had anything unusual transpired while I was in the
court room interviewing?
“I was standing in the entrance hall, looking at the
postcards,” Sybil recollected, “when I felt I just had to go
to the kitchen, but I didn't go there at first, but went
halfway up the stairs, and a child came down the stairs and
into the kitchen and I followed her.”
“A child?” I asked. I was quite sure there were no
children among our party.
"I thought it was Regis’ little girl and the next thing I
recall I was in the rocking chair and you were saying
something to me.”
Needless to say, Regis Philbins’ daughter had not
been on the stairs. I asked for a detailed description of the
child.
“It was a long-haired girl,” Sybil said. “She was very
quick, you know, in a longish dress. She went to the table
in this room and I went to the chair. That’s all I
remember.”
I decided to continue to question Sybil about any
psychic impressions she might now gather in the house.
“There is a great deal of confusion in this house,”
she began. “Some of it is associated with another room
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
upstairs, which has been structurally altered. There are two
centers of activity.”
Sybil, of course, could not have known that the house
consisted of two separate units.
“Any ghosts in the house?”
“Several,” Sybil assured me. "At least four!”
Had not William Richardson’s group made contact
with a little girl ghost who had claimed that she knew of
four other ghosts in the house? The report of that seance
did not reach me until September, several months after our
visit, so Sybil could not possibly have “read our minds”
about it, since our minds had no such knowledge at that
time.
“This room where you found me sitting,” Sybil con-
tinued, “I found myself drawn to it; the impressions are
very strong here. Especially that child — she died young.”
We went about the house now, seeking further
contacts.
"I have a date now,” Sybil suddenly said, “1872.”
The Readings exchanged significant glances. It was
just after the greatest bitterness of the struggle between
Old Town and New Town, when the removal of the court
records from Whaley House by force occurred.
“There are two sides to the house,” Sybil continued.
“One side I like, but not the other.”
Rather than have Sybil use up her energies in clair-
voyance, I felt it best to try for a trance in the court room
itself. This was arranged for quickly, with candles taking
the place of electric lights except for what light was neces-
sary for the motion picture cameras in the rear of the large
room.
Regis Philbin and I sat at Sybil’s sides as she
slumped forward in a chair that may well have held a mer-
ciless judge in bygone years.
But the first communicator was neither the little girl
nor the man in the frock coat. A feeble, plaintive voice was
suddenly heard from Sybil’s lips, quite unlike her own, a
voice evidently parched with thirst.
“Bad. . .fever everybody had the fever. . .”
“What year is this?”
“Forty-six.”
I suggested that the fever had passed, and generally
calmed the personality who did not respond to my request
for identification.
"Send me. . .some water. ...” Sybil was still in trance,
but herself now. Immediately she complained about there
being a lot of confusion.
"This isn’t the room where we’re needed. . .the
child. . .she is the one. ...”
What is her name?”
"Anna. . .Bell. . .she died very suddenly with some-
thing, when she was thirteen. . .chest. ...”
"Are her parents here too?”
“They come. . .the lady comes.”
"What is this house used for?”
“Trade. . .selling things, buying and selling.”
304
"Is there anyone other than the child in this house?”
“Child is the main one, because she doesn’t under-
stand anything at all. But there is something more vicious.
Child would not hurt anyone. There’s someone else. A
man. He knows something about this house. . .about
thirty-two, unusual name, C. . .Calstrop. . .five feet ten,
wearing a green coat, darkish, mustache and side whiskers,
he goes up to the bedroom on the left. He has business
here. His business is with things that come from the sea.
But it is the papers that worry him.”
"What papers?” I demanded.
"The papers. . .1872. About the house. Dividing the
house was wrong. Two owners, he says.”
“What is the house being used for, now, in 1872?”
“To live in. Two places. . .1 get confused for I go one
place and then I have to go to another.”
“Did this man you see die here?”
“He died here. Unhappy because of the
place. . .about the other place. Two buildings. Some people
quarrelled about the spot. He is laughing. He wants all this
house for himself.”
“Does he know he is dead?” I asked the question that
often brings forth much resistance to my quest for facts
from those who cannot conceive of their status as “ghosts.”
Sybil listened for a moment.
"He does as he wants in this house because he is
going to live here,” she finally said. “ It's his house"
“Why is he laughing?”
A laughing ghost, indeed!
“He laughs because of people coming here thinking
it’s their house! When he knows the truth.”
“What is his name?” I asked again.
“Cal. . .Calstrop. . .very difficult as he does not speak
very clearly. . .he writes and writes. . .he makes a
noise. . .he says he will make even more noise unless you
go away.”
“Let him,” I said, cheerfully hoping I could tape-
record the ghost’s outbursts.
“Tell him he has passed over and the matter is no
longer important,” I told Sybil.
“He is upstairs."
I asked that he walk upstairs so we could all hear
him. There was nobody upstairs at this moment — every-
body was watching the proceedings in the court room
downstairs.
We kept our breath, waiting for the manifestations,
but our ghost wouldn’t play the game. I continued with my
questions.
“What does he want?”
“He is just walking around, he can do as he likes,”
Sybil said. “He does not like new things. . .he does not like
anynoise...exceptwhenhe makes it .... ”
“Who plays the organ in this house?”
“He says his mother plays.”
“What is her name?”
“Ann Lassay. . .that’s wrong, it’s Lann — he speaks so
badly. ..Lannay. ..his throat is bad or something. ...”
I later was able to check on this unusual name. Anna
Lannay was Thomas Whaley’s wife!
At the moment, however, I was not aware of this fact
and pressed on with my interrogation. How did the ghost
die? How long ago?
‘“89. . .he does not want to speak; he only wants to
roam around....”
Actually, Whaley died in 1890. Had the long interval
confused his sense of time? So many ghosts cannot recall
exact dates but will remember circumstances and emotional
experiences well.
“He worries about the house. . .he wants the whole
house. . .for himself. . .he says he will leave them. . .
papers. . .hide the papers. . .he wants the other papers
about the house. . .they’re four miles from here. . .several
people have these papers and you’ll have to get them back
or he’ll never settle. . .never. . .and if he doesn’t get the
whole house back, he will be much worse. . .and then, the
police will come. . .he will make the lights come and the
noise. . .and the bell. . .make the police come and see him,
the master. . .of the house, he hears bells upstairs. . .he
doesn’t know what it is. . .he goes upstairs and opens the
windows, wooden windows. . .and looks out. . .and then he
pulls the. . .no, it’s not a bell. . .he'll do it again. . .when he
wants someone to know that he really is the master of the
house. . .people today come and say he is not, but he is!”
I was surprised. Sybil had no knowledge of the dis-
turbances, the alarm bell, the footsteps, the open win-
dow. . .and yet it was all perfectly true. Surely, her
communicator was our man!
“When did he do this the last time?” I inquired.
“This year... not long....”
“Has he done anything else in this house?"
“He said he moved the lights. In the parlor.”
Later I thought of the Richardson seance and the
lights they had observed, but of course I had no idea of
this when we were at the house ourselves.
“What about the front door?”
“If people come, he goes into the garden. . .walks
around because. . .he meets mother there.”
“What is in the kitchen?”
“Child goes to the kitchen. I have to leave him, and
he doesn’t want to be left. . .it was an injustice, anyway,
don’t like it. . .the child is twelve. . .chest trouble. . .some-
thing from the kitchen. . .bad affair. ...”
"Anyone’s fault?”
“Yes. Not chest. . .from the cupboard, took
something. . .it was an acid like salt, and she ate it. . .she
did not know. . .there is something strange about this
child, someone had control of her, you see, she was in the
way. . .family. . .one girl. . .those boys were not too
good. . .the other boys who came down. . .she is like two
The Whaley House Ghosts
305
people. . .someone controlled her. . .made her do strange
things and then. . .could she do that.”
“Was she the daughter of the man?”
“Strange man, he doesn’t care so much about the girl
as he does about the house. He is disturbed.”
"Is there a woman in this house?”
“Of course. There is a woman in the garden.”
“Who is she?”
“Mother. Grandmother of the girl.”
“Is he aware of the fact he has no physical body?”
"No.”
“Doesn’t he see all the people who come here?”
“They have to be fought off, sent away.”
“Tell him it is now seventy years later.”
“He says seventy years when the house was built.”
“Another seventy years have gone by,” I insisted.
“Only part of you is in the house.”
“No, part of the house. . .you’re making the mis-
take,” he replied.
I tried hard to convince him of the real circum-
stances. Finally, I assured him that the entire house was, in
effect, his.
Would this help?
“He is vicious,” Sybil explains. “He will have his
revenge on the house.”
I explained that his enemies were all dead.
"He says it was an injustice, and the court was wrong
and you have to tell everyone this is his house and land
and home.”
I promised to do so and intoned the usual formula
for the release of earthbound people who have passed over
and don’t realize it. Then I recalled Sybil to her own self,
and within a few moments she was indeed in full control.
I then turned to the director of the museum, Mrs.
Reading, and asked for her comments on the truth of the
material just heard.
“There was a litigation,” she said. “The injustice
could perhaps refer to the County’s occupancy of this por-
tion of the house from 1 869 to 1 87 1 . Whaley’s contract,
which we have, shows that this portion of the house was
leased to the County, and he was to supply the furniture
and set it up as a court room. He also put in the two win-
dows to provide light. It was a valid agreement. They
adhered to the contract as long as the court continued to
function here, but when Alonzo Horton came and devel-
oped New Town, a hot contest began between the two
communities for the possession of the county seat. When
the records were forcefully removed from here, Whaley felt
it was quite an injustice, and we have letters he addressed
to the Board of Supervisors, referring to the fact that his
lease had been broken. The Clerk notified him that they
were no longer responsible for the use of this house — after
all the work he had put in to remodel it for their use. He
would bring the matter up periodically with the Board of
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
Supervisors, but it was tabled by them each time it came
up.”
“In other words, this is the injustice referred to by
the ghost?"
“In 1872 he was bitterly engaged in asking redress
from the County over this matter, which troubled him
some since he did not believe a government official would
act in this manner. It was never settled, however, and
Whaley was left holding the bag.”
“Was there a child in the room upstairs?”
“In the nursery? There were several children there.
One child died here. But this was a boy.”
Again, later, I saw that the Richardson seance spoke
of a boy ghost in the house.
At the very beginning of trance, before I began tap-
ing the utterances from Sybil’s lips, I took some handwrit-
ten notes. The personality, I now saw, who had died of a
bad fever had given the faintly pronounced name of Fedor
and spoke of a mill where he worked. Was there any sense
to this?
“Yes,” Mrs. Reading confirmed, “this room we are in
now served as a granary at one time. About 1855 to 1867.”
“Were there ever any Russians in this area?”
"There was a considerable otter trade here prior to
the American occupation of the area. We have found evi-
dence that the Russians established wells in this area. They
came into these waters then to trade otters.”
"Amazing,” I conceded. How could Sybil, even if she
wanted to, have known of such an obscure fact?
"This would have been in the 1800s,” Mrs. Reading
continued. “Before then there were Spaniards here, of
course.”
“Anything else you wish to comment upon in the
trance session you have just witnessed?” I asked.
Mrs. Reading expressed what we all felt.
"The references to the windows opening upstairs, and
the ringing of these bells. ...”
How could Sybil have known all that? Nobody told
her and she had not had a chance to acquaint herself with
the details of the disturbances.
What remained were the puzzling statements about
"the other house.” They, too were soon to be explained.
We were walking through the garden now and inspected
the rear portion of the Whaley House. In back of it, we
discovered to our surprise still another wooden house
standing in the garden. I questioned Mrs. Reading about
this second house.
“The Pendington House, in order to save it, had to
be moved out of the path of the freeway. . .it never
belonged to the Whaleys although Thomas Whaley once
tried to rent it. But it was always rented to someone else.”
No wonder the ghost was angry about "the other
house.” It had been moved and put on his land. . .without
his consent!
The name Cal. ..trop still did not fall into place. It
was too far removed from Whaley and yet everything else
306
that had come through Sybil clearly fitted Thomas Whaley.
Then the light began to dawn, thanks to Mrs. Reading’s
detailed knowledge of the house.
“It was interesting to hear Mrs. Leek say there was
a store here once. . . ” she explained. "This is correct,
there was a store here at one time, but it was not Mr.
Whaley’s.”
“Whose was it?”
“It belonged to a man named Wallack. . Hal
Wallack. . .that was in the seventies.”
Close enough to Sybil's tentative pronunciation of a
name she caught connected with the house.
“He rented it to Wallack for six months, then Wal-
lack sold out,” Mrs. Reading explained.
I also discovered, in discussing the case with Mrs.
Reading, that the disturbances really began after the second
house had been placed on the grounds. Was that the straw
that broke the ghost’s patience?
Later, we followed Sybil to a wall adjoining the gar-
den, a wall, I should add, where there was no visible door.
But Sybil insisted there had been a French window there,
and indeed there was at one time. In a straight line from
this spot, we wound up at a huge tree. It was here, Sybil
explained, that Whaley and his mother often met — or are
meeting, as the case may be.
I was not sure that Mr. Whaley had taken my advice
to heart and moved out of what was, after all, his house.
Why should he? The County had not seen fit to undo an
old wrong.
We left the next morning, hoping that at the very
least we had let the restless one know someone cared.
A week later Regis Philbin checked with the folks at
Whaley House. Everything was lively — chandelier swing-
ing, rocker rocking; and June Reading herself brought me
up to date on July 27th, 1965, with a brief report on activi-
ties— other than flesh-and-blood — at the house.
Evidently the child ghost was also still around, for
utensils in the kitchen had moved that week, especially a
cleaver which swings back and forth on its own. Surely that
must be the playful little girl, for what would so important
a man as Thomas Whaley have to do in the kitchen?
Surely he was much to preoccupied with the larger aspects
of his realm, the ancient wrong done him, and the many
intrusions from the world of reality. For the Whaley House
is a busy place, ghosts or not.
On replaying my tapes, I noticed a curious confusion
between the initial appearance of a ghost who called him-
self Fedor in my notes, and a man who said he had a bad
fever. It was just that the man with the fever did not have
a foreign accent, but I distinctly recalled “fedor” as sound-
ing odd.
Were they perhaps two separate entities?
My suspicions were confirmed when a letter written
May 23, 1966 — almost a year later — reached me. A Mrs.
Carol Dejuhasz wanted me to know about a ghost at Wha-
ley House. . .no, not Thomas Whaley or a twelve-year-old
girl with long hair. Mrs. Dejuhasz was concerned with an
historical play written by a friend of hers, dealing with the
unjust execution of a man who tried to steal a harbor boat
in the 1800s and was caught. Make no mistake about it,
nobody had observed this ghost at Whaley House. Mrs.
Dejuhasz merely thought he ought to be there, having
been hanged in the backyard of the house.
Many people tell me of tragic spots where men have
died unhappily but rarely do I discover ghosts on such
spots just because of it. I was therefore not too interested
in Mrs. Dejuhasz’ account of a possible ghost. But she
thought that there ought to be present at Whaley House
the ghost of this man, called Yankee Jim Robinson. When
captured, he fought a sabre duel and received a critical
wound in the head. Although alive, he became delirious
and was tried without representation, sick of the fever. Sen-
tenced to death, he was subsequently hanged in the yard
behind the Court House.
Was his the ghostly voice that spoke through Sybil,
complaining of the fever and then quickly fading away?
Again it was William Richardson who was able to provide
a further clue or set of clues to this puzzle. In December of
1966 he contacted me again to report some further experi-
ences at the Whaley House.
“This series of events began in March of this year.
Our group was helping to restore an historic old house
which had been moved onto the Whaley property to save it
from destruction. During our lunch break one Saturday,
several of us were in Whaley House. I was downstairs
when Jim Stein, one of the group, rushed down the stairs
to tell me that the cradle in the nursery was rocking by
itself. I hurried upstairs but it wasn’t rocking. I was just
about to chide Jim for having an overactive imagination
when it began again and rocked a little longer before it
stopped. The cradle is at least ten feet from the doorway,
and a metal barricade is across it to prevent tourists from
entering the room. No amount of walking or jumping had
any effect on the cradle. While it rocked, I remembered
that it had made no sound. Going into the room, I rocked
the cradle. I was surprised that it made quite a bit of noise.
The old floorboards were somewhat uneven and this in
combination with the wooden rockers on the cradle made a
very audible sound.
“As a matter of fact, when the Whaleys were fur-
nishing carpeting for the house, the entire upstairs portion
was carpeted. This might explain the absence of the noise.
“In June, Whaley House became the setting for an
historical play. The play concerned the trial and hanging of
a local bad man named Yankee Jim Robinson. It was pre-
sented in the court room and on the grounds of the man-
sion. The actual trial and execution had taken place in
August of 1852. This was five years before Whaley House
was built, but the execution took place on the grounds.
The Whaley House Ghosts
307
“Yankee Jim was hanged from a scaffold which stood
approximately between the present music room and front
parlor.
“Soon after the play went into rehearsal, things began
to happen. I was involved with the production as an actor
and therefore had the opportunity to spend many hours in
the house between June and August. The usual footsteps
kept up and they were heard by most of the members of
the cast at one time or another. There was a group of us
within the cast who were especially interested in the phe-
nomenon: myself, Barry Bunker, George Carroll, and his
fiancee, Toni Manista. As we were all dressed in period
costumes most of the time, the ghosts should have felt
right at home. Toni was playing the part of Anna, Thomas
Whaley’s wife. She said she often felt as if she were being
followed around the house (as did we all).
“I was sitting in the kitchen with my back to the wall
one night, When I felt a hand run through my hair. I
quickly turned around but there was nothing to be seen. I
have always felt that it was Anna Whaley who touched me.
It was my first such experience and I felt honored that she
had chosen me to touch. There is a chair in the kitchen
which is made of rawhide and wood. The seat is made of
thin strips of rawhide crisscrossed on the wooden frame.
When someone sits on it, it sounds like the leather in a
saddle. On the same night I was touched, the chair made
sounds as if someone were sitting in it, not once but sev-
eral times. There always seems to be a change in the tem-
perature of a room when a presence enters. The kitchen is
no exception. It really got cold in there!
“Later in the run of the show, the apparitions began
to appear. The cast had purchased a chair which had
belonged to Thomas Whaley and placed it in the front
parlor. Soon after, a mist was occasionally seen in the chair
or near it. In other parts of the house, especially upstairs,
inexplicable shadows and mists began to appear. George
Carroll swears that he saw a man standing at the top of the
stairs. He walked up the stairs and through the man. The
man was still there when George turned around but faded
and disappeared almost immediately.
“During the summer, we often smelled cigar smoke
when we opened the house in the morning or at times
when no one was around. Whaley was very fond of cigars
and was seldom without them.
“The footsteps became varied. The heavy steps of the
man continued as usual, but the click-click of high heels
was heard on occasion. Once, the sound of a small child
running in the upstairs hall was heard. Another time, I was
alone with the woman who took ticket reservations for
Yankee Jim. We had locked the doors and decided to check
the upstairs before we left. We had no sooner gotten up
the stairs than we both heard footfalls in the hail below.
We listened for a moment and then went back down the
stairs and looked. No one. We searched the entire house,
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
not really expecting to find anyone. We didn’t. Not a liv-
ing soul.
"Well, this just about brings you up to date. I’ve
been back a number of times since September but there’s
nothing to report except the usual footfalls, creaks, etc.
“I think that the play had much to do with the sum-
mer’s phenomena. Costumes, characters, and situations
which were known to the Whaleys were reenacted nightly.
Yankee Jim Robinson certainly has reason enough to
haunt. Many people, myself included, think that he got a
bad deal. He was wounded during his capture and was
unconscious during most of the trial. To top it off, the
judge was a drunk and the jury and townspeople wanted
blood. Jim was just unlucky enough to bear their combined
wrath.
“His crime? He had borrowed (?) a boat. Hardly a
hanging offense. He was found guilty and condemned. He
was unprepared to die and thought it was a joke up to the
minute they pulled the wagon out from under him. The
scaffold wasn’t high enough and the fall didn’t break his
neck. Instead, he slowly strangled for more than fifteen
minutes before he died. I think I’d haunt under the same
circumstances myself.
“Two other points: another of the guides heard a
voice directly in front of her as she walked down the hall.
It said, ‘Hello, hello.’ There was no one else in the house
at the time. A dog fitting the description of one of the
Whaley dogs has been seen to run into the house, but it
can never be found.”
Usually, ghosts of different periods do not “run into”
one another, unless they are tied together by a mutual
problem or common tragedy. The executed man, the proud
owner, the little girl, the lady of the house — they form a
lively ghost population even for so roomy a house as the
Whaley House is.
Mrs. Reading doesn't mind. Except that it does get
confusing now and again when you see someone walking
about the house and aren’t sure if he has bought an admis-
sion ticket.
Surely, Thomas Whaley wouldn’t dream of buying
one. And he is not likely to leave unless and until some
action is taken publicly to rectify the ancient wrong. If the
County were to reopen the matter and acknowledge the
mistake made way back, I am sure the ghostly Mr. Whaley
would be pleased and let matters rest. The little girl ghost
has been told by Sybil Leek what has happened to her, and
the lady goes where Mr. Whaley goes. Which brings us
down to Jim, who would have to be tried again and found
innocent of stealing the boat.
There is that splendid courtroom there at the house
to do it in. Maybe some ghost-conscious county adminis-
tration will see fit to do just that.
I’ll be glad to serve as counsel for the accused, at no
charge.
308
m 51
The Ghost at the Altar
I HAD HEARD RUMORS for some time of a ghost parson in
a church near Pittsburgh, and when I appeared on the John
Reed King show on station KDKA-TV in the spring of
1963, one of the crew came up to me after the telecast and
told me how much he enjoyed hearing about ghosts.
“Have you ever visited that haunted church in M —
— ?” he asked, and my natural curiosity was aroused. A
ghost here in Pittsburgh, and I haven’t met him? Can’t
allow that. But my stay was over and I had to return to
New York.
Still, the ghostly person of M was very much on
my mind. When I returned to Pittsburgh in September of
1963, I was determined to have a go at that case.
With the help of Jim Sieger and his roving reporter,
John Stewart, at station KDKA, we got together a car, a
first-class portable tape recorder, and photographer Jim
Stark. Immediately following my telecast, we set out for
Milvale.
Fate must have wanted us to get results, for the
attendant of the first gasoline station we stopped at directed
us to the Haunted Church. Both the name of the church
and its current pastor must remain hidden at their own
request, but the story is nevertheless true.
The Haunted Church is an imposing Romanesque
building of stone, erected at the turn of the century on a
bluff overlooking the Pittsburgh River. It is attached to a
school and rectory and gives a clean and efficient impres-
sion, nothing haunted or mysterious about it.
When I rang the doorbell of the rectory, a portly,
imposing man in sweater and slacks opened the door. I
asked to talk to him about the history of the church. Evi-
dently he had more than a share of the sixth sense, for he
knew immediately what I was after.
“I am priest,” he said firmly, with a strong Slavic
accent. I was somewhat taken aback because of his casual
clothes, but he explained that even priests are allowed to
relax now and then. Father X., as we shall call him, was a
well-educated, soft-spoken man of about forty-five or fifty,
and he readily admitted he had heard the rumors about
"spirits,” but there was, of course, nothing to it. Actually,
he said, the man to talk to was his superior, Father H.
A few moments later, Father H. was summoned and
introduced to me as "the authority” on the subject. When
the good Father heard I was a parapsychologist and inter-
ested in his ghost, he became agitated. “I have nothing to
say,” he emphasized, and politely showed us the door. I
chose to ignore his move.
Instead, I persisted in requesting either confirmation
or denial of the rumors of hauntings in his church. Evi-
dently, Father H. was afraid of the unusual. Many priests
are not and discuss freely that which they know exists. But
Father H. had once met with another writer, Louis
Adamic, and apparently this had soured him on all other
writers, like myself.
It seems that Adamic, a fellow Croatian, had men-
tioned in one of his books the story about the ghost at the
altar — and seriously at that — quite a feat for a nonbeliever
as Adamic was said to have been. Father H. had nothing to
say for publication.
“No, no, no — nothing. I bless you. Good-bye.” He
bowed ceremoniously and waited for us to depart. Instead,
I turned and smiled at Father X., the assistant pastor.
“May we see the church?” I said and waited. They
couldn’t very well refuse. Father H. realized we weren’t
going to leave at once and resigned himself to the fact that
his assistant pastor would talk to us.
“Very well. But without me!” he finally said, and
withdrew. That was all Father X. had needed. The field
was clear now. Slowly he lit a cigarette and said, "You
know, I’ve studied parapsychology myself for two years in
my native Croatia.”
After his initial appearance, nothing about Father X.
surprised me. As we walked across the yard to the church,
we entered into an animated discussion about the merits of
psychic research. Father X. took us in through the altar
door, and we saw the gleaming white and gold altar emerg-
ing from the semidarkness like a vision in one of Raphael’s
Renaissance paintings.
There was definitely something very unusual about
this church. For one thing, it was a typically European,
Slavonically tinged edifice and one had the immediate feel
of being among an ethnic group of different origin from
one’s own. The large nave culminated in a balcony on
which an old-fashioned — that is, nonelectric, nonautomatic
— organ was placed in prominent position. No doubt ser-
vices at this church were imposing and emotionally satisfy-
ing experiences.
We stepped closer to the altar, which was flanked on
either side by a large, heavy vigil light, the kind Europeans
call Eternal Light. “See this painting,” Father X. said and
pointed at the curving fresco covering the entire inner
cupola behind the altar, both behind it and above it. The
painting showed natives of Croatia in their costumes, and a
group of Croatians presenting a model of their church.
These traditional scenes were depicted with vivid col-
ors and a charming, primitive style not found elsewhere. I
inquired about the painter. “Maxim Hvatka,” the priest
said, and at once I recognized the name as that of a cele-
brated Yugoslav artist who had passed on a few years ago.
The frescos were done in the early part of the century.
As we admired the altar, standing on its steps and
getting impressions, Father X. must again have read my
mind, for he said without further ado, “Yes, it is this spot
where the ‘spirits were seen.’”
There was no doubt in my mind that our assistant
pastor was quite convinced of the truth of the phenomena.
The Ghost at the Altar
309
The haunted church at M , Pennsylvania
“What exactly happened?” I asked.
“Well, not so long ago, Father H. and this painter
Hvatka, they were here near the altar. Hvatka was painting
the altar picture and Father FI. was here to watch him.
Suddenly, FIvatka grabbed Father’s arm and said with
great excitement, ‘Look, Father — this person — there is
someone here in the church, in front of the altar!’
“Father H. knew that the church was locked up tight
and that only he and the painter were in the building.
There couldn’t be another person. ‘Where? Who?’ he said
and looked hard. He didn’t see anything. Hvatka insisted
he had just seen a man walk by the altar and disappear
into nothing. They stepped up to the vigil light on the left
and experienced a sudden chill. Moreover, the light was out.
“Now to extinguish this light with anything less than
a powerful blower or fan directly above it is impossible.
Glass-enclosed and metal-covered, these powerful wax can-
dles are meant to withstand the wind and certainly ordi-
nary drafts or human breath. Only a supernormal agency
could have put out that vigil light, gentlemen.”
Father X. paused. I was impressed by his well-told
story, and I knew at once why Father H. wanted no part of
us. How could he ever admit having been in the presence
of a spirit without having seen it? Impossible. We took
some photographs and walked slowly towards the exit.
Father X. warmed up to me now and volunteered an
experience from his own youth. It seems that when he was
studying theology in his native Croatia, he lived among a
group or perhaps a dozen young students who did not
share his enthusiasm for psychic studies — who, in fact,
ridiculed them.
One young man, however, who was his roommate,
took the subject seriously, so seriously in fact that they
made a pact — whoever died first would let the other know.
A short time later, Father X., asleep on a warm afternoon,
suddenly woke up. He knew his friend had died that
instant, for he saw him sitting on a chair near his bed,
laughing and waving at him. It was more than a mere
dream, a vividly powerful impression. Father X. was no
longer asleep at that moment; the impression had actually
awakened him.
He looked at his watch; it was just three in the after-
noon. Quickly, he made inquiries about is friend. Within a
few hours he knew what he had already suspected — his
friend had died in an accident at precisely the moment he
had seen him in his room, back at the seminary!
“You’re psychic then,” I said.
Father X. shrugged. "I know many psychic cases,” he
said obliquely. “There was that nun in Italy, who left her
hand prints on the church door to let her superiors know
she was now in purgatory.”
Father X. spoke softly and with the assurance of a
man who knows his subject well. “There are these things,
but what can we do? We cannot very well admit them.”
A sudden thought came to my mind. Did he have
any idea who the ghost at the altar was? Father X. shook
his head.
“Tell me,” I continued, “did anyone die violently in
the church?”
Again, a negative answer.
“That’s strange,” I said. "Was there another building
on this spot before the present church?”
“No,” Father X. said nonchalantly.
“That’s even stranger,” I countered, “for my research
indicates there was a priest here in the nineteenth century,
and it is his ghost that has been seen.”
Father X. swallowed hard.
"As a matter of fact,” he said now, “you’re right.
There was an earlier wooden church here on this very spot.
The present stone building only dates back to about 1901 .
Father Ranzinger built the wooden church.”
“Was that around 1885,” I inquired. That is how I
had it in my notes.
"Probably correct," the priest said, and no longer
marveled at my information.
“What happened to the wooden church, Father?” I
asked, and here I had a blank, for my research told me
nothing further.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
310
"Oh, it burned down. Completely. No, nobody got
hurt, but the church, it was a total loss.”
Father Ranzinger’s beloved wooden church went up
in flames, it appeared, and the fifteen years he had spent
with his flock must have accumulated an emotional backlog
of great strength and attachment. Was it not conceivable
that Father Ranzinger’s attachment to the building was
transferred to the stone edifice as soon as it was finished?
Was it his ghost the two men had seen in front of the
altar? Until he puts in another appearance, we won’t know,
but Pittsburgh’s Haunted Church is a lovely place in which
to rest and pray — ghost or no ghost.
» 52
A Ghost’s Last Refuge
Near Charlottesville, Virginia, stands a farmhouse
built during Revolutionary days, now owned by Mary W.,
a lady in her early fifties, who, some years ago, had a fleet-
ing interest in the work of Professor Rhine at Duke
University.
Her own psychic talents are acknowledged, but she
insists she has not done any automatic writing lately and
isn’t really very much interested anymore. Later I realized
that her waning interest must have some connection with
the events at the house which we shall call Wickham, since
the real name must at present remain veiled in deference to
the owner’s request.
Virginia Cloud had come along to serve as a combi-
nation guide and clairvoyant, and writer Booton Herndon
also came along to observe what he had always found a fas-
cinating subject. Thus a caravan of two cars made its way
to Wickham one bright May morning when nature’s bril-
liance belied the sober subject of our goal.
On arrival, my wife, Catherine, and I sat down with
Mary W. to hear her tell of her own experiences in the
haunted house. Only after she had done so did Virginia
Cloud enter the house.
The oldest part of the house, rather skilfully con-
nected to the rest, consists of a hall or main room and a
small bedroom reached by a narrow winding staircase.
This portion, dating back to 1781, has been the loca-
tion of some uncanny happenings beginning at the time
when Mrs. W. acquired the house and acreage in 1951 .
Whether previous owners had had any experiences couldn’t
be ascertained.
Emotionally keyed at the time, Mrs. W. recalls, she
was in a small adjoining room downstairs, which has been
turned into a small home bar, when she clearly heard foot-
steps in the main room, and a noise like that made by rid-
ing clothes, swishing sounds; she called out, but she knew
it was not her husband; the steps continued; someone was
walking up and down in the room. Mrs. W. took a look
through the window and saw her entire family outside near
the barn, some twenty yards away.
This alarmed her even more and she stepped into the
main room. There was no one there. But the eerie thing
was that even in her presence the steps continued, reached
The door that kept coming open by itself
the doorway and then went back across the room to the
stairway where they stopped abruptly at the landing lead-
ing to old room above.
The previous owner, by the name of Deauwell, had
told Mary W. that when his predecessor at the house, Mrs.
Early, had died, there had been a strange noise as if some-
one were falling down stairs.
Two years later, in 1953, Mrs. W.’s two girls, aged
twelve and nine at the time, were playing in the upstairs
room while the parents were entertaining some guests in
the nearby cottage apart from the main house. It was 10
P.M. when the girls distinctly heard someone walk around
downstairs in the empty house. They called out, but got no
answer. They thought it was a friend of their parents, but
A Ghost’s Last Refuge
311
The fireplace — center of psychic
phenomena
later checking revealed nobody had left the party to return
to the main house even for a moment.
Around 1960-61, Mrs. W. again heard the by-now-
familiar footsteps in the same spot. They started, then
stopped, then started up again. Although Mrs. W. admit-
ted some psychic talent, her automatic writing had yielded
no one claiming to be connected with the house except per-
haps a slave girl named Rebecca, who claimed to have been
captured by Indians who cut out her tongue; she was found
by the Early sons, and became their servant since; Mrs. W.
also claimed a guide or control named Robert.
The place had been in litigation for many years, and
there are no less than three family cemeteries on the
grounds. The house itself was built by one Richard Dur-
rette in 1781. When the fireplace was rebuilt prior to 1938,
before Mrs. W. owned the place, an inscription turned up
explaining that Hessian- soldier prisoners from a nearby
barracks had helped build the chimney in 1781. Three
thousand prisoners were kept in barracks nearby. Some
stayed afterwards and married local girls.
This was not discussed in the presence of Virginia
Cloud, who soon went into semi-trance in the presence of
Mary W. and myself. She “saw” an Albert or Alfred, in
white shirt, boots, trousers, but not a uniform, dragging
himself into the house; perhaps he was an injured Hessian
entering an empty house, chased here by Redcoats. “The
British are farther away . . . . Something was burned near
here.” At this point, both Mary W. and I smelled smoke.
Independent of Virginia Cloud’s testimony, both of
us also heard a faint knock at the entrance door, two short
raps.
Virginia, in her chair near the stairway, started to
shiver. "The ghost remembers his mother and calls her,
but she is not here any more. . .only a memory; he may
have died here, since I don’t see him leave again. His arm
is hurt by metal, perhaps a shell.”
Mary W. had lived through tragedy in her own life.
Her husband, Kenneth, had committed suicide in the very
house we were visiting. I had the feeling that Mary’s inter-
est in the occult coincided with this event, and that per-
haps she thought the ghostly footsteps were actually her
late husband’s restless movements in the room he had
called his own.
But the noises and disturbances go back farther than
Mary’s tenancy of the house. Premeditated suicide seldom
yields ghosts. I am convinced that the ghost at Wickham is
not Mary’s husband, but the Hessian deserter who wanted
to find refuge from the pursuing British.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
312
* 53
The Octagon Ghosts
COLONEL JOHN Tayloe, in 1800, built his mansion, the
magnificent building now known as the Octagon because of
its shape. It stood in a fashionable part of Washington, but
now houses the offices and exhibit of the American Insti-
tute of Architects.
In the early 1800s the Colonel’s daughter ran away
with a stranger and later returned home, asking forgive-
ness. This she did not get from her stern father and in
despair she threw herself from the third-floor landing of
the winding staircase that still graces the mansion. She
landed on a spot near the base of the stairs, and this
started a series of eerie events recorded in the mansion over
the years.
Life magazine reported in an article in 1962 on
haunted mansions that some visitors claim to have seen a
shadow on the spot where the girl fell, while others refuse
to cross the spot for reasons unknown; still others have
heard the shriek of the falling girl.
The July, 1959, issue of the American Institute of
Architects Journal contains a brief account of the long ser-
vice record of employee James Cypress. Although he him-
self never saw any ghosts, he reports that at one time when
his wife was ill, the doctor saw a man dressed in the
clothes of one hundred fifty years ago coming down the
spiral staircase. As the doctor looked at the strange man in
puzzlement, the man just disappeared into thin air.
After some correspondence with J. W. Rankin,
Director of the Institute, my wife and I finally started out
for Washington on May 17, 1963. It was a warm day and
the beautiful Georgian mansion set back from one of the
capital’s busier streets promised an adventure into a more
relaxed past.
Mr. Rankin received us with interest and showed us
around the house which was at that time fortunately empty
of tourists and other visitors. It was he who supplied some
of the background information on the Octagon, from which
I quote:
The White House and the Octagon are relations, in a
way. Both date from the beginning of government in the
national capital; the White House was started first but
the Octagon was first completed. Both have served as
the official residence of the President.
It was early in 1797 that Colonel John Tayloe of
Mount Airy, Virginia, felt the need for a town house.
Mount Airy was a magnificent plantation of some three
thousand acres, on which the Colonel, among many
activities, bred and raced horses, but the call of the city
was beginning to be felt, even in that early day;
Philadelphia was the Colonel’s choice, but his friend
General Washington painted a glowing picture of what
the new national capital might become and persuaded
The Octagon ghosts— Washington, D.C.
him to build the Octagon in surroundings that were
then far removed from urbanity.
Dr. William Thornton, winner of the competition for
the Capitol, was Colonel Tayloe’s natural selection of
architect.
On April 19, 1797, Colonel Tayloe purchased for
$1,000 from Gustavus W. Scott — one of the original
purchasers from the Government on November 21,1 796
— Lot 8 in Square 1 70 in the new plot of Washington.
Although, as the sketch of 1813 shows, the site was
apparently out in a lonely countryside, the city streets
had been definitely plotted, and the corner of New York
Avenue and Eighteenth Street was then where it is
today.
Obviously, from a glance at the plot plan, Colonel
Tayloe’s house derived its unique shape from the angle
formed at the junction of these two streets. In spite of
the name by which the mansion has always been known,
Dr. Thornton could have had no intention of making
the plan octagonal; the house planned itself from the
street frontages.
Work on the building started in 1798 and progressed
under the occasional inspection of General Washington,
who did not live to see its completion in 1800. The
mansion immediately took its place as a center of official
and nonofficial social activities. Through its hospitable
front door passed Madison, Jefferson, Monroe, Adams,
Jackson, Decatur, Porter, Webster, Clay, Lafayette, Von
Steuben, Calhoun, Randolph, Van Renssalaer and their
ladies.
Social activities were forgotten, however, when the
War of 1812 threatened and finally engulfed the new
The Octagon Ghosts
313
The winding staircase at the Octagon and the
chandelier that moves at times
From this landing Colonel Taylor’s daughter
jumped to her death
nation’s capital. On August 24, 1814, the British left the
White House a fire-gutted ruin. Mrs. Tayloe’s foresight
in establishing the French Minister — with his country’s
flag — as a house guest may have saved the Octagon
from a like fate.
Colonel Tayloe is said to have dispatched a courier
from Mount Airy, offering President Madison the use of
the mansion, and the Madisons moved in on September
8, 1814.
For more than a year Dolly Madison reigned as host-
ess of the Octagon. In the tower room just over the
entrance President Madison established his study, and
here signed the Treaty of Ghent on February 17, 1815,
establishing a peace with Great Britain which endures to
this day.
After the death of Mrs. John Tayloe in 1855, the
Octagon no longer served as the family’s town house.
That part of Washington lost for a time its residential
character and the grand old mansion began to deterio-
rate.
In 1865 it was used as a school for girls. From 1866
to 1879 the Government rented it for the use of the
Hydrographic Office. As an office and later as a studio
dwelling, the Octagon served until about 1885, when it
was entrusted by the Tayloe heirs to a caretaker.
Glenn Brown, longtime secretary of the American
Institute of Architects, suggested in 1889 that the house
would make an appropriate headquarters for the Insti-
tute.
When the architects started to rehabilitate the build-
ing, it was occupied by ten Negro families. The fine old
drawing room was found to be piled four feet deep with
rubbish. The whole interior was covered with grime, the
fireplaces closed up, windows broken, but the structure,
built a century before, had been denied no effort or
expense to make it worthy of the Tayloes, and it still
stood staunch and sound against time and neglect.
Miraculously the slender balusters of the famous
stairway continued to serve, undoubtedly helped by the
fact that every fifth baluster is of iron, firmly jointed to
the handrail and carriage. Even the Coade Stone mantels
in drawing room and dining room, with their deeply
undercut sculpture, show not a chip nor scar. They had
been brought from London in 1799 and bear that date
with the maker’s name.
On January 1 , 1 899, the Institute took formal posses-
sion of the rehabilitated mansion, its stable, smokehouse
and garden.
So much for the house itself. I was given free rein to
interview the staff, and proceeded to do so. I carefully tab-
ulated the testimony given me by the employees individu-
ally, and checked the records of each of them for reliability
and possible dark spots. There were none.
In view of the fact that nobody was exactly eager to
be put down as having heard or seen ghosts, far from seek-
ing publicity or public attention, I can only regard these
accounts as respectable experiences of well-balanced indi-
viduals.
The building itself was then and still is in the care
of Alric H. Clay, a man in his thirties, who is an executive
with the title of superintendent. The museum part of the
Octagon, as different from the large complex of offices of
the American Institute of Architects, is under the supervi-
sion of Mrs. Belma May, who is its curator. She is assisted
by a staff of porters and maids, since on occasion formal
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
314
The haunted stairs
The carpet where the girl landed and died
continues to fling itself back and forth by unseen
hands.
dinners or parties take place in the oldest part of the
Octagon.
Mrs. May is not given to hallucinations or ghost sto-
ries, and in a matter-of-fact voice reported to me what she
had experienced in the building. Most of her accounts are
of very recent date.
Mrs. May saw the big chandelier swing of its own
volition while all windows in the foyer were tightly shut;
she mentioned the strange occurrence to a fellow worker.
She also hears strange noises, not accounted for, and
mostly on Saturdays. On one occasion, Mrs. May, accom-
panied by porters Allen and Bradley, found tracks of
human feet in the otherwise undisturbed dust on the top
floor, which had long been closed to the public. The tracks
looked to her as “if someone were standing on toes, tiptoe-
ing across the floor.’’ It was from there that the daughter of
Colonel Tayloe had jumped.
Mrs. May often smells cooking in the building when
there is no party. She also feels “chills” on the first-floor
landing.
Caretaker Mathew reports that when he walks up the
stairs, he often feels as if someone is walking behind him,
especially on the second floor. This is still happening to
him now.
Ethel Wilson, who helps with parties, reports “chills”
in the cloakroom.
Porter Allen was setting up for a meeting on the
ground floor in the spring of 1962, when he heard noises
“like someone dragging heavy furniture across the floor
upstairs.” In March, 1963, he and his colleague saw the
steps “move as if someone was walking on them, but there
was no one there.” This happened at 9:30 A.M.
Porter Bradley has heard groaning, but the sound is
hard to pin down as to direction. Several times he has also
heard footsteps.
Alric H. Clay was driving by with his wife and two
children one evening in the spring of 1962, when he
noticed that the lights in the building were on. Leaving his
family in the car, he entered the closed building by the
back door and found everything locked as it should be.
However, in addition to the lights being on, he also noticed
that the carpet edge was flipped up at the spot where the
girl had fallen to her death in the 1 800s.
Clay, not believing in ghosts, went upstairs; there was
nobody around, so he turned the lights off, put the carpet
back as it should be, and went downstairs into the base-
ment where the light controls are.
At that moment, on the main floor above (which he
had just left) he clearly heard someone walk from the draw-
ing room to the door and back. Since he had just checked
all doors and knew them to be bolted firmly, he was so
upset he almost electrocuted himself at the switches. The
steps were heavy and definitely those of a man.
In February of 1963 there was a late party in the
building. After everybody had left, Clay went home secure
in the knowledge that he alone possessed the key to the
back door. The layout of the Octagon is such that nobody
can hide from an inspection, so a guest playing a prank by
staying on is out of the question.
At 3 A.M. the police called Clay to advise him that
all lights at the Octagon were blazing and that the building
was wide open. Mr. Woverton, the controller, checked and
The Octagon Ghosts
315
together with the police went through the building, turning
off all lights once more. Everything was locked up again, in
the presence of police officers.
At 7 A.M., however, they returned to the Octagon
once more, only to find the door unlocked, the lights again
burning. Yet, Clay was the only one with the key!
“Mr. Clay,” I said, “after all these weird experiences,
do you believe in ghosts?”
“No, I don’t,” Clay said, and laughed somewhat
uneasily. He is a man of excellent educational background
and the idea of accepting the uncanny was not at all wel-
come to him. But there it was.
“Then how do you explain the events of the past
couple of years?”
“I don’t,” he said and shrugged. “I just don’t have a
rational explanation for them. But they certainly
happened.”
From the testimony heard, I am convinced that there
are two ghosts in the Octagon, restlessly pacing the creak-
ing old floors, vying with each other for the attention of the
flesh -and -blood world outside.
There are the dainty footsteps of Colonel Tayloe’s
suicide daughter, retracing the walks she enjoyed but too
briefly; and the heavy, guilt-laden steps of the father, who
cannot cut himself loose from the ties that bind him to his
house and the tragedy that darkened both the house and
his life.
» 54
The Octagon Revisited
BACK IN 1965 I published a comprehensive account of the
hauntings and strange goings-on at one of Washington’s
most famous houses. Frequently referred to as "the second
White House” because it served in that capacity to Presi-
dent Madison during the War of 1812, the Octagon still
stands as a superb monument to American architecture of
the early nineteenth century. Most people hear more about
the Pentagon than about the Octagon when referring to
Washington these days, but the fact is that the Octagon is
still a major tourist attraction, although not for the same
reasons that brought me there originally. As a matter of
fact, The American Institute of Architects, who own the
building, were and are quite reluctant to discuss their
unseen tenants. It took a great deal of persuasion and per-
sistence to get various officials to admit that there was
something amiss in the old building.
After my first account appeared in Ghosts I’ve Met,
which Bobbs-Merrill published in 1965, I received a num-
ber of calls from people in Washington who had also been
to the Octagon and experienced anything ranging from
chills to uncanny feelings. I also found that the executives
of The American Institute of Architects were no longer
quite so unfriendly towards the idea of a parapsychologist
investigating their famous old headquarters. They had read
my account and found in it nothing but truthful statements
relating to the history and psychic happenings in the house,
and there really was nothing they could complain about.
Thus, over the years I remained on good terms with the
management of The American Institute of Architects. I
had several occasions to test the relationship because once
in a while there seemed to be a chance to make a docu-
mentary film in Washington, including, of course, the
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
Octagon. It didn’t come to pass because of the difficulties
involved not with The American Institute of Architects but
the more worldly difficulties of raising the needed capital
for such a serious-minded film.
* * *
Originally I became aware of the potential hauntings
at the Octagon because of a Life magazine article in 1962.
In a survey of allegedly haunted houses, Life claimed that
some visitors to the Octagon had seen a shadow on the
spot where a daughter of Colonel Tayloe, who had built
the house, had fallen to her death. As far as I could ascer-
tain at the time, there was a tradition in Washington that
Colonel John Tayloe, who had been the original owner of
the Octagon, had also been the grieving father of a daugh-
ter who had done the wrong thing marriage-wise. After she
had run away from home, she had later returned with her
new husband asking forgiveness from her stern father and
getting short shrift. In desperation, so the tradition goes,
she then flung herself from the third-floor landing of the
winding staircase, landing on a spot near the base of the
stairs. She died instantly. That spot, by the way, is one of
those considered to be the most haunted parts of the
Octagon.
A somewhat different version is given by Jacqueline
Lawrence in a recent survey of Washington hauntings pub-
lished by the Washington Post in October of 1969. Accord-
ing to Miss Lawrence, Colonel Tayloe had more than one
daughter. Another daughter, the eldest one, had fallen in
love with a certain Englishman. After a quarrel with her
father, who did not like the suitor, the girl raced up the
stairs and when she reached the second landing, went over
the bannister and fell two flights to her death. This, then,
would have been not a suicide but an accident. As for the
other daughter, the one who had brought home the wrong
suitor according to tradition, Miss Lawrence reports that
she did not marry the man after all. Her father thought of
this young Washington attorney as a man merely after his
316
daughter's money and refused to accept him. This was
especially necessary as he himself had already chosen a
wealthy suitor for his younger daughter. Again an argu-
ment ensued, during which he pushed the girl away from
him. She fell over that same ill-fated bannister, breaking
her neck in the fall. This also according to Miss Lawrence
was an accident and not suicide or murder.
In addition to these two unfortunate girls, she also
reports that a slave died on that same staircase. Pursued by
a British naval officer, she threw herself off the landing
rather than marry him. According to Miss Lawrence, the
young man immediately leaped after her and joined her in
death.
It is a moot question how easily anyone could fall
over the bannister, and I doubt that anyone would like to
try it as an experiment. But I wondered whether perhaps
the story of the two girls had not in the course of time
become confused into one tradition. All three deaths would
have had to take place prior to 1814. In that year Wash-
ington was taken by the British, and after the burning of
the White House President Madison and his family moved
temporarily into the Octagon. They stayed there for one
full year, during which the Octagon was indeed the official
White House.
Only after President Madison and his family had left
the Octagon did accounts of strange happenings there
become known. People in Washington started to whisper
that the house was haunted. Allegedly, bells could be heard
when there was no one there to ring them. The shade of a
girl in white had been observed slipping up the stairway.
The usual screams and groans associated with phantoms
were also reported by those in the know. According to
Miss Lawrence, seven years after the Civil War five men
decided to stay in the house after dark to prove to them-
selves that there was nothing to the stories about the
haunting. They too were disturbed by footsteps, the sound
of a sword rattling, and finally, human shrieks. Their
names, unfortunately, are not recorded, but they did not
stay the night.
After some correspondence with J. W. Rankin,
Director of the Institute, my wife, Catherine, and I finally
started out for Washington on May 17, 1963. The beauti-
ful Georgian mansion greeted us almost as if it had
expected us. At the time we did not come with a medium.
This was our first visit and I wanted to gain first impres-
sions and interview those who actually had come in contact
with the uncanny, be it visual or auditory. First I asked
Mr. Rankin to supply me with a brief but concise rundown
on the history of the house itself. It is perhaps best to
quote here my 1965 report in Ghosts I’ve Met. (See quote
on page 313.)
Only one prior account of any unusual goings-on at
the Octagon had come to my attention before my visit in
1963. The July 1959 issue of The American Institute of
Architects’ Journal contains a brief account of the long ser-
vice record of a certain employee named James Cypress.
Although Mr. Cypress himself had never seen any ghosts,
he did report that there was an unusual occurrence at one
time when his wife was ill and in need of a doctor. The
doctor had reported that he had seen a man dressed in the
clothes of about one hundred fifty years ago coming down
the spiral staircase. The doctor looked at the stranger
somewhat puzzled. At that instant the apparition dissolved
into thin air, leaving the medical man even more bewil-
dered. A short time before publication of Ghosts I’ve Met,
Joy Miller of the Associated Press wrote to me about the
Octagon ghosts, adding a few more details to the story.
Legend has it that on certain days, particularly the
anniversary of the tragic affair, no one may cross the
hall at the foot of the stairway where the body landed
without unconsciously going around an unseen object
lying there.
The story of the bells that ring without due cause
also is embroidered in this account.
Once, so a story goes, a skeptic leaped up and caught
hold of the wires as they started to ring. He was lifted
off the floor but the ringing kept on. To keep supersti-
tious servants, the house was entirely rewired, and this
apparently did the trick.
Of course, accounts of this kind are usually anonymous,
but as a parapsychologist I do not accept reports no matter
how sincere or authentic they sound unless I can speak
personally to the one to whom the event has occurred.
When I started to assemble material for this book, I
wondered what had happened at the Octagon since 1963.
From time to time I keep reading accounts of the haunt -
ings that used to be, but nothing startling or particularly
new had been added. It became clear to me that most of
these newspaper articles were in fact based on earlier pieces
and that the writers spent their time in the research
libraries rather than in the Octagon. In April of 1969 I
contacted The American Institute of Architects again,
requesting permission to revisit the Octagon, quietly and
discreetly but with a medium. The new executive director,
William H. Scheick, replied courteously in the negative:
“The Octagon is now undergoing a complete renovation
and will be closed to visitors until this work is completed.
We hope the Octagon will be ready for visitors in early
1970. Iam sorry that you and your guest will not be able
to see the building when you are in Washington."
But Mr. Scheick had not reckoned with the persis-
tence and flexibility of an erstwhile ghost hunter. I tele-
phoned him and after we had become somewhat better
acquainted, he turned me over to a research staff member
who requested that I let him remain anonymous. For the
purpose of this account, then, I will refer to him simply as
a research assistant. He was kind enough to accompany us
The Octagon Revisited
317
on a tour of the Octagon, when we managed to come to
Washington, despite the fact that the house was in repair
or, rather, disrepair.
The date was May 6, 1969; the day was hot and
humid, as so many days in May are in Washington. With
me was my good friend Ethel Johnson Meyers, whom I
had brought to Washington for the purpose of investigat-
ing several houses, and Mrs. Nicole Jackson, a friend who
had kindly offered to drive us around. I can’t swear that
Mrs. Meyers had not read the account of my earlier inves-
tigation of the Octagon. We never discussed it particularly,
and I doubt very much that she had any great interest in
matters of this kind, since she lives in New York City and
rarely goes to Washington. But the possibility exists that
she had read the chapter, brief as it is, in my earlier book.
As we will see in the following pages, it really didn’t mat-
ter whether she had or had not. To her, primary impres-
sions were always the thing, and I know of no instance
where she referred back to anything she had done before or
read before.
* * *
When we arrived at the Octagon, we first met with
the research assistant. He received us courteously and first
showed us the museum he had installed in the library. We
then proceeded through the garden to the Octagon building
itself, which is connected with the library building by a
short path. Entering the building from the rear rather than
the imposing front entrance as I had in 1963, we became
immediately aware of the extensive work that was going on
inside the old building. Needless to say, I regretted it, but
I also realized the necessity of safeguarding the old struc-
ture. Hammering of undetermined origin and workmen
scurrying back and forth were not particularly conducive to
any psychic work, but we had not choice. From noon to
1 o’clock was the agreed-upon time for us, and I hoped
that we could at least learn something during this brief
period. I urged Ethel to find her own bearings the way she
always does, and the three of us followed her, hoping to
catch what might come from her lips clairvoyantly or per-
haps even in trance.
Immediately inside the building, Ethel touched me,
and I tried to edge closer to catch what came from her. She
was quite herself and the impressions were nothing more
than clairvoyant descriptions of what raced through her
mind. We were standing in the room to the left of the
staircase when I caught the name “Alice.”
“What about Alice?” I asked. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know. It just hit me.”
"I won’t tell you any more than that you should try
to find your way around this general area we are in now,
and upstairs as far as you feel like.”
"Oh yes, my goodness, there’s so many, they won’t
stay still long enough. There’s one that has quite a jaw — I
don’t see the top of the face yet; just a long jaw."
“Man or woman?”
“Man.”
“Is this an imprint from the past or is this a person?”
“From the past.”
“Go over to this bannister here, and touch the ban-
nister and see whether this helps you establish contact.”
“I see a horse face.”
“Is this part of his character or a physical
impairment?”
"Physical impairment.”
“What is his connection with this house?”
“I just see him here, as if he’s going to walk out that
door. Might have a high hat on, also. I keep hearing,
'Alice. Alice.’ As if somebody's calling.”
“Are there several layers in this house, then?”
“I would say there are several layers.”
"Is there anything about this area we’re standing in
that is in any way interesting to you?” We were now in
front of the fatal banister.
“Well, this is much more vivid. This is fear.”
She seemed visibly agitated now, gripping the banis-
ter with both hands. Gently, I pried her loose and led her
up a few steps, then down again, carefully watching her
every move lest she join the hapless Tayloe girls. She
stopped abruptly at the foot of the stairs and began to
describe a man she sensed near the staircase — a phantom
man, that is. Connected with this male ghost, however, was
another person, Ethel indicated.
"Someone has been carried down these steps after an
illness, and out of here. That’s not the man, however. It
seems to be a woman.”
“What sort of illness?”
“I don’t know. I just see the people carrying her
down — like on a stretcher, a body, a sick person.”
“Was this person alive at the time when she was car-
ried down?”
“Alive, but very far gone.”
"From where did she come?”
“I think from down here.” Ethel pointed toward the
spot beneath the bannister. “There is also a Will, but dur-
ing this time I don’t think Will is alive, when this hap-
pens. I also find the long-faced man walking around. I can
see through him.”
“Is he connected with the person on the stretcher?”
“I would say so, because he follows it.” Then she
added, "Someone comes here who is still alive from that.
Moved around.”
“A presence, you mean?” She nodded. “This man
with the horse face — what sort of clothes did he wear?”
“A formal suit with a long coat. Turn of the century
or the twenties?”
“The nineteen- twenties?”
“Somewhere in here, yes.”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“And the person on the stretcher — do you see her?’’
“No, she’s covered up. It is the woman I still see in
here.”
“Why don’t you go up those stairs, to about the first
landing."
“I am afraid of that, for some reason or other.”
“Why do you suppose that is?”
“I don't like it.”
"Did something happen in that area?”
“I don’t know. I’m just getting a feeling as if I don’t
want to go. But I’ll go anyway.”
"See whether you get any more impressions in doing
that!”
“I’m getting a cerebral heaviness, in the back of the
head.”
"Was somebody hurt there?”
"I would say. Or — stricken.”
"What is the connection? Take one or two steps only,
and see whether you feel anything further in doing this.
You’re now walking up the stairs to the first landing.”
“Oh, my head. Whew!”
“You feel — ?”
"Numb.”
“We’re not going further than the first landing. If it
is too difficult, don’t do it.”
"No. I’ll take it for what it is.” Suddenly, she turned.
“Don’t push me!”
"Somebody’s trying to push you?”
"Yes.”
I didn’t feel like testing the matter. "All right, come
back here. Let us stand back of the first landing.”
“I get a George, too. And Wood, and something else.
I’m holding onto my head, that hurts, very badly.”
“Do you know who is this connected with, the injury
to the head?”
“It sounds like Jacques.”
"Is he connected with this house in any official
capacity?”
“Well, this is a definite ghost. He’s laughing at me. I
don’t like it!”
“Can you get any name for this person?”
"Again I get Jacques.”
"Did anything tragic ever happen here?”
"I would say so. I get two individuals here — the
long-faced man, and a shorter-faced man who is much
younger.”
"Are they of the same period?”
"No.”
"Where does the woman on the stretcher fit in?”
“In between, or earlier.”
“What is this tragic event? What happened here?”
“I can hardly get anything. It feels like my brains are
gone.”
“Where do you think it happened? In what part of
the building?”
“Here, of course, here.”
“Did somebody die here? Did somebody get hurt?”
“According to my head, I don’t know how anybody
got through this. It is like blown off. I can’t feel it at all. I
have to put my hand up to find it.”
"Are the presences still here?”
Instead of replying, Ethel put up her hands, as if
warding off an unseen attack. “Oh, no!”
“Why did you just move like this? Did you feel any-
one present?”
“Yes — as if somebody was trying to get hold of me,
and I don’t want that. I don’t know how long I can take
the head business, right here. . . ”
“All right, we'll go down. Tell them, whoever might
be present, that if they have to say something, they should
say it. Whatever information they have to pass on, we are
willing to listen. Whatever problem they might have.”
Ethel seemed to struggle again, as if she were being
possessed.
“There’s something foreign here, and I can’t make
out what is being said.”
"A foreign language?”
“Yes.”
“What language is it?”
“I’m not sure; it's hard to hear. It sounds more Latin
than anything else.”
“A Latin language? Is there anything about this
house that makes it different from any other house?”
“There’s a lot of foreign influence around it.”
“Was it used in any way other than as a dwelling?”
“There were seances in this place.”
“Who do you think held them?”
“Mary.”
“Who is this Mary?”
“She parted her hair in the middle. Heavy girl. I’ve
got to put my hand up, always to my head, it hurts so.”
“Do you get the names of the people involved in this
horrible accident, or whatever it is that you describe, this
painful thing?”
"That has to be Mary who’s taken down the steps. I
think it’s this one.”
“The tragedy you talk about, the pain. . .”
“It seems like it should be here, but it could have
been somewhere else. I don’t understand. There are two
layers here.”
"There may be many layers.”
“There are so many people around here, it’s so hard
to keep them separate.”
“Do you get the impression of people coming and
going? Is there anything special about the house in any
way?”
“I would say there is. The highest people in the land
have lived here. I’m positively torn by the many things.
Someone married here with the name of Alice. That has
nothing to do with the head.”
The Octagon Revisited
319
“Alice is another layer?”
“That’s right.”
“Mary has the injury to her head. Is the marriage of
Alice later or earlier?”
“Much later.” Then she added. "This house is terri-
bly psychic, as it were — it is as if I have been able to find
the easiest possible connections with a lot of people
through what has been done here, psychically. There’s a
psychic circle around this place. From the past.”
“Do you feel that these manifestations are still
continuing?”
“I would say there are, yes. I don’t know what all
this rebuilding is doing to it, particularly when the painting
starts. Has Lincoln had anything to do with this house? I
feel that I see him here.”
“What would be his connection with the house?”
“Nothing at all, but he’s been here."
"Why would he be here?”
“I see an imprint of him.”
“As a visitor?”
“I would say, yes. Some other high people have been
here, too.”
“As high as he?”
“That’s right.”
“Before him or after him?”
“After.”
“What about before? Has anybody been as high as he
here?”
“I would say so.” Ethel, somewhat sheepishly, con-
tinued. “The man with the long face, he looks like
Wilson!”
At that I raised my eyebrows. The mention of Presi-
dent Lincoln, and now Wilson, was perhaps a little too
much name-dropping. On the other hand, it immediately
occurred to me that both of these dignitaries must have
been present at the Octagon at one time or other in their
careers. Even though the Octagon was not used as a second
White House after the disastrous War of 1812, it had fre-
quently been used as a major reception hall for official or
semiofficial functions. We do not have any record as to
President Lincoln’s presence or, for that matter, Wilson's
but it is highly likely that both of these men visited and
spent time at the Octagon. If these occasions included
some festivities, an emotional imprint might very well have
remained behind in the atmosphere and Ethel would, of
course, pick that up. Thus her mention of Lincoln and
Wilson wasn’t quite as outlandish as I had at first thought.
* * *
For several minutes now I had noticed a somewhat
disdainful smile on the research assistant’s face. I decided
to discontinue questioning Ethel, especially as it was close
to 1 o’clock now and I knew that the assistant wanted to go
to lunch.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
I wondered whether any of the foregoing material
made any sense to him. Frankly, I didn’t have much hope
that it did, since he had been honest enough to communi-
cate his lack of faith in the kind of work I was doing. But
he had been kind enough to come along, so the very least I
could do was use his services such as they might turn out
to be.
The name Alice meant nothing to him, but then he
was tuned in on the history of the Octagon rather than
Washington history in general. Later, at the Wilson House
I realized that Ethel was in some peculiar way catapulting
her psychic readings. It appeared that Alice meant a good
deal in the history of President Wilson.
What about Lincoln? The assistant shook his head.
“The family left the house about 1854, and I guess
Lincoln was a Congressman then. He could have been
here, but..."
“You’re not sure?”
“I mean, he’s not on the list that we have of people
who have been here. I have no knowledge of it.”
Colonel Tayloe died in 1854, and the house was
owned by the family until after 1900 when the Institute
bought it. But it was not occupied by the Tayloe family
after the Colonel’s death. I wondered why.
As to the names of the Tayloes’ daughters, the
research assistant wasn’t very helpful either. He did have
the names of some of the daughters, but he couldn’t put
his hands on them right now. He did not remember Mary.
But, on reflection, there might have been.
I turned to Ethel. It was clear to me that the noise of
the returning workmen, who had just finished their lunch
hour, and the general tone of the conversation did not help
to relax her. I thanked the assistant for his presence, and
we left the building. But before we had walked more than a
few steps, Ethel stopped suddenly and turned to me and
said, “Somebody was murdered here, or badly wounded at
least.” She felt it was the woman on the stretcher. She was
not completely sure that death had been due to murder,
but it was certainly of a violent kind. I pointed at a portrait
on the wall; the picture was that of Colonel Tayloe. Did
Ethel recognize the man in the picture, I asked, without of
course indicating who he was. Perhaps she knew anyway.
She nodded immediately.
“That's the man. I saw him.”
He was one of the men she had seen walking about
with a peculiar tall hat. She was quite sure. The face some-
how had stuck in her mind. Ethel then pointed at another
portrait. It was a photograph of Mrs. Wilson. She too had
been at the Octagon. Ethel felt the presence.
“Would this be 1958?” she asked somewhat unsure.
The date seemed possible.
In evaluating Ethel’s performance, I kept in mind
that she had rarely if ever been wrong in pinpointing pres-
ences in haunted houses. Under the circumstances, of
course, there was no possibility of Ethel going into full
trance. Her contact with the entities was at the very best
320
on the surface. Nevertheless, if three lady ghosts mentioned
by Jacqueline Lawrence in her article had been present,
then Ethel would surely have felt, seen, or otherwise indi-
cated them. I am quite sure that Ethel never saw the article
in the Washington Post. I am also equally sure that had she
seen it, it would have made no difference to her, for she is
a dedicated and honest medium. In the building itself she
found her way to the psychic “hot spot’’ without my help,
or in any way relying on my guidance. Had she been there
before it would have made no difference, since the renova-
tion had completely altered the impression and layout of
the downstairs. I myself was hard put to find my way
around, even though I had been to the Octagon on two
previous occasions.
Thus, Ethel Johnson Meyers tended to confirm the
original contention published by me in 1965. One girl
ghost and one male ghost, daughter and father, would be
the logical inhabitants of the Octagon at this time.
Whether or not the entities themselves are aware of their
plight is a moot question.
It appears to be equally difficult to ascertain the true
nature of the girl’s problem. Had she merely brought home
a suitor whom her father did not like, or had she actually
gotten married? Strange as it seems, the records are not
clear in this case. What appears to be certain, at least to
me, is her death by falling from the upper story. Ethel
Johnson Meyers would not have picked up the “passing
condition’’ had she not genuinely felt it. Furthermore, these
impressions were felt by the medium on the very spot
where traditionally the girl landed. Thus, Ethel was able to
confirm the continuous presence of an unfortunate young
woman in what used to be her father’s house. Since the two
* 55
The Integration Ghost
During THE hot, HUMID July days of 1964, while blacks
rioted in Harlem and Brooklyn and the black-and-white
struggle was being brought to fever pitch by agitators on
both sides, I was fortunate enough to help free a black gen-
tleman from his unhappy state between the two worlds.
It all started with my appearance on a program called
“To Tell the Truth,” which, to tell the truth, frequently
doesn’t — in the interest of good showmanship, of course.
The program, as most Americans know, consists of a
panel of three so-called celebrities, who shoot questions at
three guests, and try to determine, by their answers, which
one is the real McCoy, and which two are imposters.
I appeared as one of three alleged ghost hunters, two
of whom were frauds. One of my imposters, incidentally,
was later involved in a real fraud, but my ESP wasn’t work-
Presidents whom the medium felt in some way attached to
the house are hardly of the ghostly kind, it remains for
Colonel Tayloe himself to be the man whose footsteps have
been identified by a number of witnesses.
* * *
The American Institute of Architects no longer con-
siders the Octagon the kind of museum it was before the
renovation. It prefers that it be known primarily as their
headquarters. Also, it is doubtful that the frequent parties
and social functions that used to take place inside its walls
will be as frequent as in the past, if indeed the Institute
will permit them altogether.
If you are a visitor to the nation’s capital and are
bent on unusual sights, by all means include the Octagon
in your itinerary. Surely once the renovation is completed
there can be no reason — I almost said no earthly reason —
for a visitor to be denied the privilege of visiting the Amer-
ican Institute of Architects. And as you walk about the
Octagon itself and look up at the staircase perhaps wonder-
ing whether you will be as fortunate, or unfortunate as the
case may be, as to see one of the two phantoms, remember
that they are only dimly aware of you if at all. You can't
command a ghost to appear. If you manage to wangle an
invitation to spend the night, perhaps something uncanny
might happen — but then again, it might not. What you
can be sure of, however, is that I haven’t “deghosted” the
Octagon by any means even though a medium, Ethel John-
son Meyers, was briefly almost on speaking terms with its
two prominent ghosts.
It remains to be seen, or heard, whether further psy-
chic phenomena take place at the Octagon in the future.
ing well at the time of my meeting with him, or I would
have objected to his presence.
I played it cool, appearing neither too knowing nor
exactly stupid. Nevertheless, the majority of the panel
knew which of us was the Ghost Hunter and I was
unmasked. Panelist Phyllis Newman thought I was pale
enough to be one of my own ghosts, and comedian Milton
Kamen wondered about the love life of my ghosts, to
which I deadpanned, “I never invade the private lives of
my clients.”
Artie Shaw wanted to know if I had read a certain
book, but of course I had to inform him that I usually read
only Ghost Hunter, especially on network television shows.
Actually, I almost became a ghost myself on this pro-
gram, for the lights so blinded me I nearly fell off the high
stage used to highlight the three guests at the start of the
show.
The Integration Ghost
321
The Integration Ghost House— Third
Avenue, New York City
On October 10, 1963, 1 received a note from the
receptionist of the program, who had apparently read Ghost
Hunter and had something of special interest to tell me.
Alice Hille is a young lady of considerable charm, as
I later found, whose family was originally from Louisiana,
and who had always had an interest in ghost stories and
the like.
The experience she was about to report to me con-
cerned a staffer at Goodson-Todman, Frank R., a televi-
sion producer, and about as levelheaded a man as you’d
want to find.
It was he who had had the uncanny experience, but
Alice thought I ought to know about it and, if possible,
meet him. Since she herself, being African-American, had
an interest in an intelligent approach to integration, the
particularities of the case intrigued her even more. She
wrote me:
It seems that there was a colored man named John
Gray. He was a personal friend of Frank’s. Mr. Gray
had renounced his race and had proceeded to live in the
“white world,” dressing with only the finest of taste. He
died of cancer after a long illness, and his family pro-
vided him with a real old-fashioned Southern funeral.
Mr. Gray would have been appalled at the way he was
being laid to rest, as he had once said, should he die, he
wanted to be cremated, and his ashes spread over the
CHAPTER SIX: This House Is Haunted
322
areas of Manhattan where he would not have been
allowed to live, had he been known as a Negro.
Alice then proceeded to tell me of Frank’s uncanny
experience, and gave me the address of the apartment
where it happened.
It took me three or four months to get hold of Frank
R. and get the story firsthand. Finally, over a drink at
Manhattan’s fashionable Sheraton-East Hotel, I was able to
pin him down on details.
Frank had met John Gray through his roommate,
Bob Blackburn. At the time Bob and Frank lived not far
from what was now the haunted apartment, and when they
heard that John Gray was ill, they went to see him in the
hospital. This was the year 1961. Gray, only thirty-three,
knew he was dying. To the last he complained that his
friends did not come to visit him often enough. He had
been an employee of the Department of Welfare, with odd
working hours which usually had brought him home to his
apartment in the middle of the afternoon.
Three months after John Gray’s death, the two
friends took over his vacated apartment. Not long after,
Frank R. found himself alone in the apartment, resting in
bed, with a book. It was the middle of the afternoon.
Suddenly, he clearly heard the front door open and
close. This was followed by a man’s footsteps which could
be heard clearly on the bare floor.
“Who is it?” Frank called out, wondering. Only his
roommate Bob had a key, and he certainly was not due at
that time. There was no reply. The footsteps continued
slowly to the bedroom door, which lies to the right of the
large living-room area of the small apartment.
He heard the characteristic noise of the bedroom door
opening, then closing, and footsteps continuing on through
the room towards the bed. There they abruptly stopped.
Frank was terrified, for he could not see anything in
the way of a human being. It was 3 P.M., and quite light in
the apartment. Sweat started to form on his forehead as he
lay still, waiting.
After a moment, he could hear the unseen visitor’s
footsteps turn around, slowly walk out again, and the noise
of the door opening and closing was repeated in the same
way as a few moments before. Yet despite the noise, the
door did not actually open!
At first Frank thought he was ill, but a quick check
showed that he did not suffer from a fever or other unusual
state. He decided to put the whole incident out of his mind
and within a day or so he had ascribed it to an overactive
imagination. What, however, had brought on just this par-
ticular imaginary incident, he was never able to say.
He also thought better of telling Bob about it, lest he
be branded superstitious or worse. There the matter stood
until about six weeks later, when Bob Blackburn had the
same experience. Alone in bed, he heard the steps, the
doors open and close, but he did not panic. Somehow an
incipient psychic sense within him guided him, and he
knew it was his departed friend, John Gray, paying his for-
mer abode a visit.
The atmosphere had taken on a tense, unreal tinge,
electrically loaded and somehow different from what it had
been only a moment before.
Without thinking twice, Bob Blackburn leaned for-
ward in bed and said in a low, but clear voice, "May your
soul rest in peace, John.”
With that, the unseen feet moved on, and the foot-
steps went out the way they had come in. Somehow, after
this the two roommates got to discussing their psychic
experiences. They compared them and found they had met
John Gray’s ghost under exactly the same conditions.
They left the apartment for a number of reasons, and
it was not until about three years later that the matter
became of interest again to Frank R.
At a party in the same neighborhood — Thirty-fourth
Street and Third Avenue, New York — one of the guests, a
Chilean named Minor, talked of his friend Vern who had
just moved out of a haunted apartment because he could
not stand it any longer.
Frank R., listening politely, suddenly realized, by the
description, that Minor was talking about John Gray’s old
apartment.
“People are walking all over the place,” Vern was
quoted as saying, and he had moved out, a complete ner-
vous wreck.
The apartment remained empty for a while, even
though the rent was unusually low. The building passed
into the hands of the owners of a fish restaurant down-
stairs. Most of the tenants in the five-story walkup are
quiet artists or business people. The building is well kept
and the narrow staircase reveals a number of smallish, but
cozy flatlets, of which Manhattan never has enough to sat-
isfy the needs of the younger white-collar workers and
artists.
John Gray must have been quite comfortable in these
surroundings and the apartment on Third Avenue proba-
bly was a haven and refuge to him from the not -so -friendly
world in which he had lived.
“Very interesting,” I said, thanking Frank R. for his
story. I asked if he himself had had other psychic experi-
ences.
“Well, I' m Irish,” he said, and smiled knowingly,
“and I’m sort of intuitive a lot of times. When I was very
young, I once warned my mother not to go to the beach on
a certain day, or she would drown. I was only fourteen
years old at the time. Mother went, and did have an acci-
dent. Almost drowned, but was pulled out just in time.”
“That explains it,” I said. “You must be psychic in
order to experience the footsteps. Those who have uncanny
experiences are mediumistic to begin with, otherwise they
would not have heard or seen the uncanny.”
Frank R. nodded. He quite understood and, more-
over, was willing to attend a seance I was going to try to
arrange if I could talk to the present occupants of the
haunted apartment. On this note we parted company, and
Frank promised to make inquiries of the landlord as to
whether the apartment was still vacant.
Apartment 5A was far from empty. A young and
attractive couple by the name of Noren had occupied it for
the past six months.
When I called and identified myself, they were puz-
zled about the nature of my business.
“Do you by any chance hear footsteps where no one
is walking, or do you experience anything unusual in your
apartment?” I asked innocently.
It was like a bombshell. There was a moment of
stunned silence, then Mrs. Noren answered, “Why, yes, as
a matter of fact, we do. Can you help us?”
The following day I went to visit them at the
haunted apartment. Mr. Noren, a film editor for one of the
networks, had not had any unusual experiences up to that
time. But his wife had. Two or three months before my
visit, when she was in the shower one evening, she sud-
denly and distinctly heard footsteps in the living room.
Thinking it was her husband and that something was
wrong, she rushed out only to find him still fast asleep in
the bedroom. They decided it must have been he, walking
in his sleep!
But a few weeks later, she heard the footsteps again.
This time there was no doubt in her mind — they had a
ghost.
The Integration Ghost
323
I arranged for a seance on July 22, 1964, to make
contact with the ghost.
My medium was Ethel Johnson Meyers, who was, of
course, totally unaware of the story or purpose of our visit.
Among those present were three or four friends of
the Norens, Frank R., Bob Blackburn, Alice Hille, an edi-
tor from Time-Life, a Mrs. Harrington, student of psychic
science, the Norens, my wife, Catherine, myself — and two
tiny black kittens who — in complete defiance of all tradi-
tion laid down for familiars and black cats in general — paid
absolutely no attention to the ghost. Possibly they had not
yet been told how to behave.
In a brief moment of clairvoyance, Ethel Meyers
described two men attached to the place: one a white-
haired gentleman whom Bob Blackburn later acknowledged
as his late father, and a “dark-complexioned man," not old,
not terribly young.
“He is looking at you and you,” she said, not know-
ing the names of the two men. Frank and Bob tensed up in
expectation. “He looks at you with one eye, sort of,” she
added. She then complained of breathing difficulties and I
remembered that John Gray had spent his last hours in an
oxygen tent.
Suddenly, the ghost took over. With a shriek, Mrs.
Meyers fell to the floor and, on her knees, struggled over to
where Bob Blackburn and Frank sat. Picking out these two
contacts from among the many present was a sure sign of
accuracy, I thought. Naturally, Mrs. Meyers knew nothing
of their connection with the case of the ghost.
She grabbed Bob Blackburn's hand amid heavy sobs,
and the voice emanating now from her throat was a deep
masculine voice, not without a trace of a Southern accent.
“It’s a dream,” he mumbled, then began to complain that
Bob had not come to visit him!
Soothing words from Bob Blackburn and myself
calmed the excited spirit.
When I tried to tell him that he was “dead,” how-
ever, I was given a violent argument.
“He’s mad,” the ghost said, and sought solace from
his erstwhile friend.
“No, John, he's right,” Bob said.
“You too?” the ghost replied and hesitated.
This moment was what I had hoped for. I proceeded
to explain what had happened to him. Gradually, he
understood, but refused to go.
“Where can I go?” he said. “This is my house.”
I told him to think of his parents, and join them in
this manner.
“They’re dead,” he replied.
“So are you,” I said.
Finally I requested the assistance of Ethel’s control,
Albert, who came and gently led the struggling soul of
John Gray over to the “other side” of life.
“He isn’t all there in the head,” he commented, as he
placed the medium back into her chair quickly. “Narcotics
before passing have made him less than rational.”
Was there any unsettled personal business? I wanted
to know.
“Personal wishes, yes. Not all they should have
been.”
Albert explained that he had brought John’s parents
to take his arm and help him across, away from the apart-
ment which had, in earth life, been the only refuge where
he could really be “off guard.”
An hour after trance had set on Mrs. Meyers, she
was back in full command of her own body, remembering
absolutely nothing of either the trance experience with John
Gray, or her fall to the floor.
It was a steaming hot July night as we descended the
four flights of stairs to Third Avenue, but I felt elated at
the thought of having John Gray roam no more where he
was certainly not wanted.
» 56
The Ardmore Boulevard Ghosts
ARDMORE BOULEVARD lies in a highly respected and
rather beautiful section of Los Angeles. It is a broad street,
richly adorned by flowers, and substantial homes line it on
both sides for a distance of several miles north and south.
The people who live here are not prone to ghost sto-
ries, and if something uncanny happens to them, they pre-
fer that their names be kept secret.
Since that was the only condition under which I
could have access to the house in question, I reluctantly
agreed, although the names and addresses of all concerned
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
in this case are known to me and to the American Society
for Psychic Research, represented, in the investigation I
made, in the person of its California head, Mrs. George
Kern.
It all started unbeknown to me when I was a panelist
on a television program emanating from the Linden The-
atre in Los Angeles in December of 1963.
Shortly after, I received a letter from a lady whom we
shall identify as Helen L. She wrote:
I consider myself lucky that I tuned in on the show
you appeared on. You see, I live in a haunted house,
and I do need help desperately.
I have heard a terrible struggle and fight in the mid-
dle of the night when I have gotten up to go to the
bathroom! The other night I was reading in bed and
smoking a cigarette. It was about 9:30, and I was corn-
324
pletely engrossed in my book. Suddenly, I would say
about a couple of feet to my right, a champagne cork
popped loud and clear and then 1 heard it [champagne]
being poured into a glass! I saw nothing, yet heard it all,
and the horror of it is that it all took place right beside
me.
I telephoned Helen L. as soon as I received a second
letter from her.
There was no immediate possibility of going to Los
Angeles to help her, but I wanted to establish personal
contact and perhaps get a better idea of her personality in
the process.
Miss L. struck me as a person of good educational
background; her voice was well modulated and not at all
hysterical. She sounded rather embarrassed by the whole
thing and begged me to keep her name and exact address
confidential. I explained that unfortunately there was no
foundation to pay for an expedition to Los Angeles post-
haste, nor was there as yet a television series to finance
such a trip as part of its legitimate research.
Consequently, I had to provide the funds myself, and
an author’s funds are never enough.
I would go as soon as there was an opportunity to do
so — an engagement to speak or to appear on the home
screen which would take me to the coast. Meanwhile,
would she write me whenever anything new was happening
in the house. Also, could she give me a chronological
account of the strange goings on in her house, blow by
blow. On January 23, the lady obliged. Her letter seemed a
bit more composed this time; evidently the promise of my
coming out to see her had helped calm her nerves.
Just as I had asked her, she started at the beginning:
My mother bought our home around thirty-eight
years ago. It had just been completed when we moved
in. My mother had been widowed a few years previously
and she brought my two sisters and myself from the
Middle West to California because we were always
sickly due to the fierce winters that we left behind.
About a couple of years after we moved in, we unfor-
tunately lost almost everything. My mother then rented
our house furnished and we lived elsewhere. She rented
the house on a lease basis to five different tenants over
an eight or nine year period.
There was an oil man who had a young wife and
baby. My mother can only describe him as a great brute
of a man with a surly disposition.
Our next-door neighbors called my mother while
these people were living here and said that there had
been a terrible fight at our house the night before and
four other men were involved. They said that they could
hear furniture being broken, and that they had almost
called the police.
As to furniture being broken — it was all too true — as
my mother discovered when they moved out.
In the back of the house are two bedrooms and a
small room that we use as a den. These three rooms all
have French doors and then screened doors that open
onto a good-sized patio.
Things didn’t start to happen right away after we
moved back. It was quiet for a while, but then it started.
The first thing I remember was when I was about
nineteen or twenty years old. Everyone had gone to bed,
my sister had gone out, and I was writing a letter in my
bedroom. Suddenly my locked French doors started to
rattle and shake as if someone were desperately trying to
get in. It just so happened that we had had our outside
patio floor painted that very afternoon. I couldn’t wait
until I got out there the next morning to look for foot-
prints in the paint. There weren’t any. There wasn’t
even a dent.
I touched my finger to the freshly painted patio floor
and a little of it adhered to my fingers.
We would also keep hearing a light switch being
pushed every now and then, and no one in the room!
Sometimes my mother would ask me in the morning
why I had been rapping on her bedroom door at night. I
have never rapped on her door and she knows it now
because that’s another thing that goes on every now and
then. Three raps on your bedroom door, usually late at
night. I was married during World War II, and after
the war my husband and I lived here for three years. I
had a most unhappy married life and eventually we sep-
arated and I secured a divorce.
One night, while I was still married, my mother and
sister were visiting relatives in the Middle West.
I was all alone, as my husband had gone out for a
while. I had locked all the doors that lead to the back of
the house as I always did when I was alone. It was only
around 9 P.M. Suddenly I heard someone slowly turning
the knob of the door that leads from the laundry to the
den. Then it would stop and a few minutes later "it”
would try again, turning and turning that knob!
My husband came home less than an hour later and
we both went through the house together. Every win-
dow was bolted, every door was locked.
Then later, there was the man I kept steady company
with for a long time. We met about eleven years ago
and I remember so well after we had been out and he’d
walk me up to my front door at night we would both
hear these footsteps inside the house making a great deal
of noise running to the front door as if to meet us!
Then, sometimes for weeks at a time, every night
tapping on my furniture would start while I’d be in bed
reading. "It” would go around and tap on all of my fur-
niture, usually two or three taps at a time. I used to get
so fed up with it all I’d yell out "Get out and leave me
alone!” That didn’t do any good because "it” would
always come back.
When I used to sleep with my lights out up to five
years ago, three times I was nearly smothered to death.
I always sleep on my left side — but for some strange
reason I would slowly wake up lying flat on my stomach
trying desperately to breathe.
Something seemed to have me in a vise wherein I
absolutely could not move any part of my body, and
would keep pressing my face into the pillow! I would try
desperately to scream and fight it off, but I was
absolutely powerless. Just when I knew I couldn’t stand
The Ardmore Boulevard Ghosts
325
it any longer and was suffocating to death — I would be
released, slowly!
But each time this happened — "it” would suffocate
me a little longer. I felt that I would never live through
it again, and hence have slept with my lights on ever
since.
The same thing happened to my mother once when
she had that room prior to my having it. She never told
me about her own experience, however, until I told her
of mine.
The champagne cork popping and the liquid being
poured (it even bubbled) right beside me, without being
seen, happened three times last year at approximately
six -week intervals.
That too was in my bedroom; it happened once in
my mother’s bedroom also.
The loud shrill whistling in my right ear occurred
last March or April when I came home one evening
around 10 P.M. It was so loud it was more like a blast.
It started as a whistle into my right ear just as soon as I
opened the front door and stepped into the darkness of
the house. I screamed and ran to the kitchen and when I
turned the light on it stopped. The whistling sounded
like the beginning of a military march, but there were
just a few notes.
Occasionally we hear a whistling outside our house at
night — but it is a different tune and sounds more as if it
is calling to us.
My mother has heard articles on her dressing table
being moved around while she was in bed at night. This
happened twice last year.
Noises in our kitchen wake me up at night. They
sound as if something were moving around, kettles
being handled, and cupboards being opened.
One night about three years ago, I got up around
midnight to go to the bathroom. While I was in the
bathroom, I heard loudly and clearly a terrible fight
going on in the living room. It was a wordless and des-
perate struggle!
How I got the courage to open the door to the living
room I’ll never know, but I did. It was completely dark
-I saw nothing and the fighting stopped the instant I
opened the door!
Some months later, my mother, sister, and I were
awakened at night by a terrible fight going on right out-
side of our bedroom’s French doors. It sounded as if
every stick of our patio furniture were being broken by
people who were fighting desperately but wordlessly. It
lasted all of several minutes.
We didn’t go outside, but the next morning we did.
None of our furniture on the patio had been touched,
everything was in its place and looked as pretty as it
always had. Yet we had all been awakened by the terri-
ble noise — and what sounded like the complete destruc-
tion of everything on our patio.
This blasted ghost even walks around outside in the
back yard and on our driveway and sidewalks.
Several times when we have had relatives staying
with us for a few days, my mother and my sister slept
in our double garage on some of our patio chaise
longues. They have always been awakened at night by
heavy footsteps walking up to the garage door and then
they hear nothing else. There are never any footsteps
heard that indicate "it” is walking away! Let me also
mention it would be almost impossible for a human
intruder to get into our back yard. Everything is
enclosed by high fences and a steel gate across the
driveway.
Several years ago when I had fallen asleep on the
couch in the den while looking at television, I awakened
around 11 P.M. and turned the television off. Then I
stretched and was just walking to my bedroom when I
heard a voice enunciating most distinctly, and saying
loudly and clearly, but slowly — "Oh woe — woe — woe —
you’ve got to go — go — go!”
Last month I heard footsteps every night in the den,
even after I had left that room only five minutes before.
I decided to seek verification of the experience with
the footsteps from inside an empty house. The young man
Helen had mentioned, William H., is a chemist and rather
on the practical side.
"On quite a few instances upon returning to Helen’s
home and entering the house I heard what sounded to me
noises of footsteps approaching to greet us as we entered
the living room. I investigated to assure myself as well as
Helen that there was no one there. I cannot explain it, but
I definitely heard the noises."
I had encouraged Helen L. to report to me any fur-
ther happenings of an uncanny nature, and I did not have
to wait long. On February 3, 1964, she wrote me an urgent
note:
On January 28th I woke up about 1 1 :30 P.M. to go to
the bathroom for a glass of water. As I turned on the
light I pushed the bathroom door open, and I heard a
loud, screeching, rusty sound. It sounded like some
heavy oaken door that one might hear in a horror movie!
I examined the bolts at the top and the bottom of the
door and there was nothing wrong; the door was as light
to the touch and easy to open as it always had been.
Incidentally, while the door was making those terrible
noises, it woke my mother up. She had heard it, too.
On Friday night, January 31,1 was in the small room
that we call the den, in the back of the house.
I suddenly heard footsteps outside, walking very dis-
tinctly on the sidewalks right by the den windows and
then suddenly they just ceased as they always do — out-
side!
They are definitely a man’s footsteps, and I would
say the footsteps of a man that knows exactly where he’s
going! It’s always the same measured pace, and then
they suddenly stop!
I asked Miss L. whether anyone had ever died in the
house, whether by violence, or through ordinary ways. "As
far as we know, nobody ever died," she replied.
I promised to make arrangements soon to visit the
house with a medium. Miss L. meanwhile wanted me to
know all about her mother and sister:
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
326
My sister here at home is retarded due to an injury
at birth. Also, my mother is 80 years of age, an arthritic
with crippled hands and feet and suffers from the added
complication of heart disease.
Last night, February 2, 1 was reading in bed. It was
around 10:30 P.M. Suddenly it sounded as if a body
were thrown against my bedroom door.
Since this was the first I had heard of the sister’s
retarded condition, I naturally questioned her role in creat-
ing the strange phenomena. Knowing full well that a
retarded person is often exactly like a youngster prior to
puberty as far as the poltergeist phenomena are concerned,
it occurred to me that the woman might be supplying the
force required to perform some of the uncanny actions in
the haunted house.
I tactfully suggested this possibility to Helen L., but
she rejected any such possibility:
Her power of concentration is impaired and her ner-
vous system more or less disorganized. You must also
bear in mind that every door in this house that leads to
another room is locked. There is only one door that we
don't lock and that is the door that leads from the
kitchen to the laundry.
She couldn’t possibly produce the phenomena that
even other friends of mine have witnessed when my sis-
ter has been over 3,000 miles away visiting relatives in
Minnesota.
One thing I haven’t told you is that I seem to have
inherited a tendency of my mother’s. We both dream
dreams that come true — and have all of our lives. Many
of them don't concern me at all or even people that are
close to me, but they always come true.
One night I dreamt I saw this ghost who has been
haunting our house. I was in bed and he was sitting on
my cedar chest just looking at me. He seemed to be
dressed in some early Grecian style — had rather curly
hair — a frightfully mischievous expression and the most
peculiar eyes. They were slanted up at the corners but
he was not Oriental. His eyes were rather dark and very
bright but his face looked bloated — an unhealthy look-
ing pasty white skin — and it was too fat. He was a
pretty big young man. He looked anything but intelli-
gent, in fact the expression on his face was quite idiotic!
Now — can you make anything out of this?
The picture began to get clearer. For one thing,
Helen L. had not understood my references to her retarded
sister. I never suggested conscious fraud, of course. The
possibility that her energies were used by the ghost began
to fade, however, when Helen told me that the manifesta-
tions continued unabated in her absence from Los Angeles.
Poltergeists don’t work long distance.
Then, too, the incidents of earlier clairvoyance and
premonitory dreams in Helen’s life made it clear to me at
this point that she herself must be the medium, or at least
one of the mediums, supplying the force needed for the
manifestations.
The psychic photo of the girl who died at a wild
party in the house on Ardmore Boulevard, Los
Angeles
Her strange dream, in which she saw the alleged
ghost, had me puzzled. Could he be an actor?
As I began to make preparations for my impending
visit to California, I was wondering about other witnesses
who might have heard the uncanny footsteps and other
noises. Helen L. had told me that a number of her friends
had experienced these things, but were reluctant to talk:
There was only one time in my life that I was glad
that this wretched ghost around here made himself
known. I had a close lady friend for a number of years
with whom I used to work. After I had known her a few
years I took her into my confidence and told her that
our house was haunted. She laughed and said of course
there was no such thing as a ghost, and that I must be
the victim of my own imagination. I didn’t argue the
point because I knew it was useless.
About one month later she called me on the phone
on a Sunday afternoon and asked me if she could stop
by and visit. She came by around 4 P.M., and I fixed a
cup of coffee which I brought to my bedroom. She was
sitting in my bedroom chair jabbering away — and I was
sitting on my bed drinking my coffee. It was still day-
light. Suddenly, this ghost started walking and thumping
from the living room right up to my bedroom door and
stopped. Margaret looked up at me brightly and said,
“Why, Helen, I thought you said you were all alone —
who on earth could that be?” I said, "Margaret, I am all
alone here — no living person is in this house except you
and me, and what you hear is what you call my
imagination!”
The Ardmore Boulevard Ghosts
327
She couldn’t get out of this house fast enough,
wouldn’t even go out through the living room, but
rushed out of my French doors that lead to the patio
and that’s the last I saw of her.
On February 23, Helen L. wrote again. There had
been additional disturbances in the house, and she was able
to observe them a little more calmly, perhaps because I had
assured her that soon I would try to get rid of the nuisance
once and for all.
Since I last wrote to you two or three weeks ago — for
almost one solid week I would hear someone moving
around in the den which adjoins my bedroom; some-
times within only 5 or 1 0 minutes after I would leave
the den, lock the door, climb into bed and read — I
would keep hearing these furtive movements. This time
the walking would be soft — and "it" would keep bump-
ing into the furniture; of late I am awakened quite fre-
quently by someone that has thrown himself forcibly
against the den door leading to my bedroom. This has
happened several times at exactly 11:30 P.M., but has
also happened as early as 8:30 P.M. The only way I can
describe it is that someone is pretty damned mad at me
for closing and locking that door and is registering a
violent reaction in protest.
It actually sounds as if the door is about to be broken
down. Then "it” has begun to rap loudly on the bed-
room walls, two loud raps.
A week before I was due to arrive in Los Angeles, I
had another note from Helen. On April 9, she wrote:
Last Saturday night I got home around midnight and
went to bed with my book as usual. I was just about
ready to doze off when a "bull-whip” cracked right over
my head! The next night someone hit the bedboard of
my bed real hard while I was sitting there in bed trying
to read.
I’ve told you about the heavy man’s footsteps out-
side, what I neglected to tell you is that my mother and
sister are both awakened every once in a while between
3 and 4 A.M. by a woman’s fast clicking shoes hurrying
up our driveway and stopping at the gate that crosses
the driveway towards the rear of the house! The last
time was less than two weeks ago.
I wonder what the neighbors think when they hear
her!
I arrived in Los Angeles on April 16 and immedi-
ately called Helen L. on the phone. We arranged for a
quick initial visit the following day. Meanwhile I would
make inquiries for a good medium. Once I had found the
right person, I would return with her and the exorcism
could begin.
The quick visit after my lecture, delivered to the Los
Angeles branch of the American Society for Psychic
Research, was of value inasmuch as I got to know Helen L.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
a little better and could check on some of her reports once
again. The house on Ardmore Boulevard was as comfort-
able and pleasant-looking as its owner had described it, and
I would never have guessed that it had a sinister history.
That’s the way it is sometimes with haunted houses;
they just don't look the part!
Dick Simonton, an executive deeply interested in
extra-sensory perception studies, accompanied me to the
house. He, too, was impressed by Miss L.’s apparent level-
headedness under trying conditions.
Fortunately, I did not have to look far for a suitable
medium or, at least, clairvoyant. Several months before my
California trip, I had received a letter from a Mrs. Maxine
Bell, who had seen me on a local television show:
I am a sincere medium willing to offer my talents for
your research and experiments. For the past 20 years I
have been doing much work for individuals with definite
problems. Not once have I run into a poltergeist type,
for my work is more spiritually oriented. Deep trance is
not even necessary for me to work as I am extremely
sensitive.
I am a woman in her late 40’s who has had the gift
of perception since 1938 and I have worked on the most
serious cases of possession and some haunted-house
cases as well. I would be most happy to serve you in
any way.
I called Mrs. Bell and asked her to meet us the fol-
lowing day in front of the house. The time was 3 P.M. and
it was one of those lovely California afternoons that are
hard to reconcile with a ghost.
Obviously, Mrs. Bell had no chance to dig into the
past of the house or even get to know the present owner. I
told her to meet us at the corner but volunteered neither
name nor details.
Soon she had seated herself in the living room across
from Helen L., myself, Mrs. George Kern of the American
Society for Psychic Research, and an associate of hers, Mr.
G., who was psychic to a certain extent.
The house impressed him strongly. "I felt chilly on
entering this house,” he said. "There are two people here —
I mean ghosts — one is a man in his middle years, and a
young female who died by suffocation.”
I immediately thought of Helen L.’s report of how
she was almost suffocated a number of times by unseen
hands!
"These two seek each other,” Mr. G., an engineer by
profession, continued. “The young person is about ten or
twelve years old, feminine or a male with feminine charac-
teristics. This child is lost and asking for help. There is
wildness, she wants to do ‘things,’ she says, ‘I want. ...”’
Mr. G. was now breathing heavily, as if he were assuming
the personality of the young ghost.
“This child may be a little older,” he finally said,
"maybe as much as fifteen years. She is very nervous. . .
crying because of unexpressed emotions. . .this child lived
328
in this house but had sad times here, too much discipline. I
think both people died about the same time. I’d say at least
fifteen to twenty years ago.”
I thanked the engineer and turned to Mrs. Bell, who
had quietly watched the “reading” of the house.
"I never interfere with another medium’s impres-
sions,” she finally said, “but if he’s finished, I’d like to add
mine.”
I nodded for her to go ahead.
“A Philip Stengel died here in 1934,” she began. I
looked at Helen L. The name did not register. But then
her mother did not recall all of their tenants. There were
quite a few.
“Ten years ago a person was murdered here,” Mrs.
Bell continued. “No — in 1948. There were violent argu-
ments. Two men, one of them named Howard. Arguments
in the driveway outside. The neighbors heard it, too. Two
parties came here, there was that violent argument, and one
was killed. Wounded in the abdomen. The body was lifted
into a vehicle. One of them is staying here in this house,
but there is also another person in the house. I feel sudden
violence and money involved. A lady fled. Lots of money
was at stake. Two people were here, the woman, however,
had the house. The quarrel was due to a misunderstanding
about money. ”
I was amazed. Unless Mrs. Bell had read Helen L.’s
letters to me or spoken to her before coming here, she
could not have known many of these details. The descrip-
tion of the quarrel and the attitude of the neighbors were
exactly as described to me by Helen L.
I looked at the owner of the house who sat somewhat
stunned by what she had heard.
“Well,” she finally said to me, “there are two differ-
ent kinds of footsteps — the ones in the back of the house
sound like those of a man, while the ones in front are cer-
tainly more like a child’s steps, very fast. The steps we
hear around three or four in the morning are also woman’s,
I think. I’m sure the whistler we’ve heard is a man.”
What were the facts around that quarrel?
Helen L. had looked into the matter further since my
arrival.
“There was a fight,” she said quietly. “An oilman
lived here, he was married to a much younger woman, and
they had a baby. He went away and a friend came to the
house. There was a wild fight here.”
“What about those rather quaint words you heard?” I
questioned Miss L.
“You mean, ‘Woe, woe, woe, you’ve got to go, go,
go!’ — why, they were spoken with a definite British
accent.”
“Or a theatrical phony British accent?”
“Perhaps.”
We moved on to the bedroom where so much com-
motion had been observed. Mrs. Bell stood opposite the
bed and the rest of us formed a circle around her. I asked
the entity to leave, in a ritual known as a rescue circle, a
verbal exorcism, which usually works. There are excep-
tions, of course.
I then took some photographs with my Super Ikonta
B camera, a camera which is double-exposure proof
because of a special arrangement of the transport and shut-
ter systems. I used Agfa Record film and no artificial light.
There was enough light coming in from the French win-
dows. To my amazement, two of the pictures showed fig-
ures that were not visible to the naked eye, at least not to
mine. One of the two clearly shows a female figure, rather
young and slender, standing near the window in what looks
like a diaphanous gown. Evidently the ghost wanted us to
know she was watching us. I have since enlarged this pic-
ture and shown it on television.
There is no doubt about the figure, and I didn’t put
it there, either.
We returned to the living room and took our leave. I
felt sure the evil entity had been dislodged or at least
shaken up. Sometimes an additional visit is necessary to
conclude the deed, but I could not stay any longer.
I had hardly touched New York soil, when a letter
from Helen L. arrived:
I haven’t written you sooner because I wanted to be
sure that “it" has left, and I feel that “it” hasn’t left
entirely. I am suffering from a dreadful fatigue of mind
and body and soul — and I’d like to cry and cry and
never stop! On the Saturday night you were here, I
woke up about 1 1 :30 P.M. and walked into the kitchen,
when I heard heavy footsteps walking in the dining
room to the swinging kitchen door. Needless to say, I
got out of there fast.
On May 17, Helen L. finally wrote to me some of
the corroboration I asked her for. I wanted to know if any
more of the material obtained by Maxine Bell could be
checked out, and if so, with what results:
When Miss Bell was here, she said there was kindly
gray-haired man standing before her who had died sud-
denly in my bedroom, years ago, of a heart attack. He
hadn’t expected to die, and had so much unfinished
business. In talking to my mother later she feels that it
was a man she had as a tenant here who was married for
the second time, to a much younger woman. She said he
had been ill with a heart condition and he was an
extremely busy man with more than one business,
including a railroad he owned. He had a baby daughter
by his second wife and was quite cheerful and happy —
and confident that he was over the heart attack he had
previously suffered.
Nevertheless he did die suddenly and my mother
always felt that he did die in this house, although his
wife denied it. Even so, my mother released her from
the lease. He was a gray-haired, very distinguished -look-
ing man.
The Ardmore Boulevard Ghosts
329
Now about the murder that Miss Bell mentioned and
the terrible fight that took place that our neighbors
reported to my mother.
Miss Bell was right when she said that the fight
started toward the back of the house on the driveway. In
fact, our neighbor came out and asked what was going
on and the man he asked, whom he didn’t know (proba-
bly a guest of our tenant’s at that time) said, “Oh, noth-
ing," and gave him his card which had an address on
this street. Nevertheless the fight started again, and it
was terrible — furniture being broken, etc. The neighbors
didn’t call the police because they didn’t wish to become
involved. My mother said that this particular tenant was
a big brutish-looking man, married also to a young
woman, and they too had a baby daughter.
The wife and baby were not here, according to our
neighbors. They were away visiting relatives over the
weekend.
My mother also told me that after they moved she
did find blood spots on our floors.
For a while, I heard nothing further from the
haunted address on Ardmore. Then a letter arrived, dated
July 4. It was no fireworks message, but it contained the
melancholy news that Helen L. was being plagued again by
footsteps, thuds, movements, and other poltergeist manifes-
tations.
I explained that I thought her own mediumistic pow-
ers made the manifestations possible and her fear of them
might very well bring back what had been driven out. Such
is the nature of anxiety that it can open the door to the
uncanny where the strong in heart can keep it closed for-
ever.
I also hinted that her own emotional state was
extremely conducive to paranormal occurrences. Frustra-
tions, even if unconscious, can create the conditions under
which such manifestations flourish.
But Helen L. could not accept this.
“They’ll always come back, no matter who lives
here,” she said, and looked forward to the day when she
would sell the house.
What was needed was such a little thing — the firm
conviction that “they” could be driven out, never to return.
Instead, through apprehension as to whether the uncanny
had really left, Helen L. had turned the closed door into a
revolving door for herself.
* 57
The Ghost Who Refused to Leave
One OF THE most spectacular cases I reported in Ghosts
I’ve Met concerned the hauntings at a house on Ardmore
Boulevard, Los Angeles.
The house itself, barely thirty years old, was being
plagued by the noises of a wild party going on at night,
during which apparently someone was killed, by footsteps
where nobody was seen walking and by other uncanny
noises, including voices resounding in the dark, telling the
current owners to get out of their house!
I had been to this house several times and brought
Maxine Bell, a local psychic, on one occasion. That visit
proved memorable not only because of material obtained
by Miss Bell, in semi-trance, which proved accurate to a
large degree, but because of my own photographic work.
Left alone in the most haunted part of the house, 1
took at random a number of black and white pictures of a
particular bedroom which of course was empty, at least to
my eyes.
On one of the pictures, taken under existing daylight
conditions and from a firm surface, the figure of a young
girl dressed in a kind of negligee appears standing near the
window. As my camera is double exposure proof and both
film and developing beyond reproach, there is no other
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
330
rational explanation for this picture. Since that time, I have
succeeded in taking other psychic photographs, but the
“girl at the window” will always rank as one of my most
astounding ones.
The whistling noises, the popping of a champagne
bottle in the dark of night followed by laughter, the doors
opening by themselves, and all the other psychic phenom-
ena that had been endured by the owner of the house,
Helen L., for a long time would not yield to my usual
approach: trance session and order to the ghost to go away.
There were complications in that Miss L. herself had
mediumistic talents, although unsought and undeveloped,
and there was present in the household a retarded sister,
often the source of energies with which poltergeist phe-
nomena are made possible.
Nevertheless, when we left the house on Ardmore
Boulevard I had high hopes for a more peaceful atmos-
phere in the future. For one thing, I explained matters to
Miss L., and for another, I suggested that the garden be
searched for the body of that murder victim. We had
already established that a fight had actually occurred some
years ago in the house, observed by neighbors. It was
entirely possible that the body of one of the victims was
still on the grounds.
In July 1964 the noises resumed, and thuds of falling
bodies, footfalls and other noises started up again in the
unfortunate house. Quite rightly Helen L. asked me to
continue the case. But it was not until the spring of 1965
that I could devote my energies toward this matter again.
All I had accomplished in the interim was a certain
lessening of the phenomena, but not their elimination.
On March 14, 1965, Helen L. communicated with
me in a matter of great urgency. For the first time, the
ghost had been seen! At 3 A.M. on March 13, her mother
had been awakened by strange noises, and looking up from
the bed, she saw the figure of a man beside the bed. The
noise sounded to her as if someone were tearing up bed-
sheets. Frightened, the old lady pulled the covers over her
head and went back to sleep. Helen L. also heard heavy
footsteps all over the house that same night. Needless to
say, they had no visitors from the flesh-and-blood world.
“Are you going to be here in April? Help!!” Helen L.
wrote. I answered I would indeed come and bring Sybil
Leek with me to have another and, hopefully, final go at
this ghost. But it would have to be in June, not April.
During the first week of May, Helen awoke on Sunday
morning to hear a man’s voice shushing her inches away
from her pillow. She could hardly wait for our arrival after
that. Finally, on June 28, I arrived at the little house with
Sybil to see what she might pick up.
“I know there is a presence here,” Sybil said imme-
diately as we seated ourselves in the little office that is
situated in back of the bedroom where most of the distur-
bances had occurred. I turned the light out to give Sybil a
better chance to concentrate, or rather, to relax, and imme-
diately she felt the intruder.
“It is mostly in the bedroom,” she continued. “There
are two people; the man dominates in the bedroom area,
and there is also a woman, a young girl.”
I decided Sybil should attempt trance at this point,
and invited the ghost to make himself known. After a few
moments, Sybil slipped into a state bordering on trance,
but continued to be fully conscious.
“Morton,” she mumbled now, “there is something
terribly intense. . .have a desire to break something . . . Mor-
ton is the last name.”
I repeated my invitation for him to come forward and
tell his story.
“The girl goes away,” Sybil intoned, “and he says he
comes back to find her. And she isn’t here. He was going
to celebrate. He must find her. Wedding party, celebra-
tion. . .for the girl. She wasn’t happy here; she had to go
away. This man is a foreigner.”
“You’re right." The booming voice of Helen L.
spoke up in the dark across the room. Evidently Sybil had
described someone she recognized.
“Jane Morton,” Sybil said now, flatly, “something to
do with building, perhaps he had something to do with
building this house. . .he’s an older man. Jane. . .is
young. . .I’m trying to find out where Jane is. . .that’s what
he wants to know. . .1 will tell him it didn’t matter about
the party. . .she would have gone anyway. . .she hated the
old man... this man fell. . .head’s bad... fell against the
stable.
“Did he die here?” I pressed.
“1837,” Sybil said, somewhat incongruously, “1837.
Came back. . .went out again, came back with people, was
drunk, hurt his head, left hand side. ...”
Despite my urging, the entity refused to speak
through Sybil in trance. I continued to question her
nevertheless.
The ghost’s name was Howell Morton, Sybil
reported, although I was not sure of the spelling of the first
name, which might have been Hawaii rather than Howell.
“He came here to do some building, someone was
accidentally killed and buried in the garden. . .”
“Who buried this person?”
“Boyd Johnson. . .Raymond McClure. . .Dell. . .Per -
silla. . . ” The voice was faltering now and the names not
too clear.
“Is the girl dead too?”
“Girl’s alive. ...”
“Is there anyone dead in this house outside of
Morton?”
"Morton died here.”
"Who was the figure I photographed here?”
“Jane. . .he wants to draw her back here. . .but I
think she ’s alive ... yet there are things of hers buried ... ”
Sybil seemed confused at this point.
“Meri... Meredith....” she said, or she could have
said. "Married her.” It just was not clear enough to be
sure. Morton and some of his friends were doing the dis-
turbing in the house, Sybil explained. He died at the party.
“There was violence outside,” Sybil added and Helen
L. nodded emphatically. There was indeed.
“Drunk. . .4 o’clock.. .he died accidentally. ..”
Where is he buried in the garden, Helen L. wanted
to know, anxiously.
“Straight down by the next building,” Sybil replied.
“It wasn't built completely when he died.”
Later we all went into the garden and identified the
building as the garage in back of the house.
But Helen was not yet ready to start digging. What
would the neighbors think if we found a body? Or, for that
matter, what would they think if we didn’t? There we left
it, for her to think over whether to dig or not to dig — that
was the question.
I returned to New York in the hope that I would not
hear anything further from Helen L. But I was mistaken.
On July 5 I heard again from the lady on Ardmore
Boulevard.
Her other sister, Alma, who lives in Hollywood but
has stayed at the house on Ardmore on occasion, called the
morning after our visit. It was then that she volunteered
information she had been holding back from Helen L. for
two years for fear of further upsetting her, in view of
events at the house. But she had had a dream-like impres-
sion at the house in which she “saw” a man in his middle
The Ghost Who Refused to Leave
331
years, who had lived in a lean-to shack attached to the
garage.
She knew this man was dead and got the impression
that he was a most stubborn person, difficult to dislodge or
reason with. What made this dream impression of interest
to us, Miss L. thought, was the fact that her sister could
not have known of Sybil Leek’s insistence that a man lay
buried at that very spot next to the garage! No shack ever
stood there to the best of Helen L.’s knowledge, but of
course it may have stood there before the present house
was built.
Also, Helen reminded me that on those occasions
when her mother and sister slept in the garage, when they
had company in the main house, both had heard heavy
footsteps coming up to the garage and stopping dead upon
reaching the wall. Helen L.’s mother had for years insisted
that there was “a body buried there in the garden” but
nobody had ever tried to find it.
Nothing more happened until May 8, 1966, when
Sybil Leek and I again went to the house because Helen L.
had implored us to finish the case for her. The distur-
bances had been continuing on and off.
With us this time was Eugene Lundholm, librarian
and psychic researcher. Trance came quickly. Perhaps Sybil
was in a more relaxed state than during our last visit, but
whatever the reason, things seemed to be more congenial
this time around.
“I’m falling,” her voice whispered, barely audible,
“I’m hungry.
Was someone reliving moments of anguish?
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“Can’t breathe....”
“What is your name?”
“Ha... Harold...”
He had great difficulties with his breathing and I
suggested he relax.
“Kill her. . . ” he now panted, “kill her, kill the
woman...”
“Did you kill her?”
“no!”
"I’ve come to help you. I’m your friend.”
"Kill her before she goes away. ...”
“Why?”
"No good here. . .where’s he taken her? Where is
she?”
The voice became more intelligible now.
“What is her name?”
“Where is she... I’ll kill her.”
“Who's with her?”
“Porter.”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
"NO!”
“Who are you?”
“Harold Howard.”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“Is this your house?”
“My house.”
“Did you build it?”
“No.”
"Did you buy it?”
Evidently my questioning got on his nerves, for he
shouted, “Who are you?” I explained, but it didn’t help.
“Too many people here. . . I throw them out. . .take
those people out of here! ”
Strangely enough, the voice did not sound like Sybil’s
at all; it had lost all trace of a British flavor and was full of
anger. Evidently the ghost was speaking of the revellers he
had found at his house and wanted them out.
“His friends. . .take them away. . .she brought
them...”
“While you were away?” He was somewhat calmer
now.
“Yes,” he confirmed.
“Where were you?”
“Working.”
“What do you do?”
“Miner.”
"Where do you work?”
"Purdy Town.” He may have said Purgory Town, or
something like it.
“What happened when you came home?”
Again he became upset about the people in his house
and I asked that he name some of them.
"Margaret. . .” he said, more excited now. “Mine. . .
twenty-five. . .1 came home. . .they were here., .too many
people .. . party here .... ”
“Did you hurt anyone?”
“I’m going to kill her,” he insisted. Evidently he had
not done so.
"Why?”
“Because of him.” Jealousy, the great ghost-maker.
“Who is he?”
"Porter.”
“Who is he?”
“He took my place. Eric Porter.”
"What year is this?”
It was high time we got a “fix” on the period we
were in.
“Forty-eight.”
“What happened to you. . .afterwards?”
“People went away .. .Porter. . .outside. . .1 want to
go away now. . .”
It became clear to me that the girl must have been
killed but that a shock condition at the time of the crime
had prevented this man from realizing what he had done,
thus forcing him to continue his quest for the girl. I told
him as much and found him amazed at the idea of his
deed.
“Why did he follow me. . .he followed me. . .then I
hit him in the guts ..."
“What did you do with him then?”
332
"Put him away.”
He became cagey after that, evidently thinking I was
some sort of policeman interrogating him.
"I watch him,” he finally said. “I look after him. . .in
the garden. I won’t let him in the house.”
I asked him further about himself, but he seemed
confused.
“Where am I?”
He asked me to leave the other man in the garden, in
the ground. He would never go away because he had to
watch this other man.
“Margaret comes back,” he said now. Was there a
foursome or were we dealing with more than one level of
consciousness?
“Keep him away from her,” the ghost admonished
me.
“I will,” I promised and meant it.
I then told him about his death and that of the oth-
ers, hoping I could finally rid the house of them all.
"She’ll come back,” his one-track mind made him
say. “I’ll wait till she is in bed and then I’ll kill her.”
I explained again that killing the other man wouldn’t
do any good since he was already dead.
"My head’s bad,” the ghost complained.
“You cannot stay at this house,” I insisted firmly
now.
"Not leaving,” he shot back just as firmly. "My
house!”
I continued my efforts, explaining also about the pas-
sage of time.
“Forty-eight...” he insisted, “I fight... I fight...”
“You’ve been forgiven,” I said and began the words
that amount to a kind of exorcism. "You are no longer
guilty. You may go.”
“Carry him,” he mumbled and his voice weakened
somewhat. “Where is she? Who’ll clean up?”
Then he slipped away.
I awakened Sybil. She felt fine and recalled nothing.
But I recalled plenty.
For one thing, it occurred to me that the ghost had
spoken of the year ’48, but not indicated whether it was
1948 or 1848, and there was something in the general tone
of the voice that made me wonder if perhaps we were not
in the wrong century. Certainly no miner worked in Los
Angeles in 1948, but plenty did in 1848. Eugene Lund-
holm checked the records for me.
In the forties mines sprang up all over the territory,
In 1842 Francisco Lopez had discovered gold near the San
Fernando Mission, and in 1848 a much larger gold deposit
was found near Sacramento.
In 1848 also was the famous gold strike at Sutter’s
Mill. But already in the 1840s mining existed in Southern
California, although not much came of it.
After we went back to New York, Helen L. reached
me again the last week of July 1966.
Her mother refused to leave the house, regardless of
the disturbances. Thus a sale at this time as out of the
question, Miss L. explained.
Something or someone was throwing rocks against the
outside of the house and on the roof of their patio — but no
living person was seen doing it. This, of course, is par for
the poltergeist course. Just another attention -getter. Loud
crashes on the patio roof and nobody there to cause them.
Even the neighbors now heard the noises. Things were get-
ting worse. I wrote back, offering to have another look at
the haunted house provided she was willing to dig. No
sense leaving the corpus delicti there.
But on September 18 Miss L. had some more to tell
me. Rocks falling on the driveway behind the house
brought out the neighbors in force, with flashlights, looking
for the "culprits.” Who could not be found. Nor could the
rocks, for that matter. They were invisible rocks, it would
seem.
This took place on numerous occasions between 6:1 5
and 7:30 P.M. and only at that time. To top it off, a half
ripe lemon flew off their lemon tree at Miss L. with such
force that it cracked wide open when it landed on the grass
beside her. It could not have fallen by itself and there was
no one in the tree to throw it.
I promised to get rid of the lemon-throwing ghost if I
could, when we came to Los Angeles again in October. But
when I did, Miss L.’s mother was ill and the visit had to
be called off.
I have not heard anything further about this stubborn
ghost. But the area was populated in 1848 and it could be
that another house or camp stood on this site before the
present house was erected. There is a brook not far away.
So far, neither Mr. Morton nor Mr. Howard has been
located and Jane and Margaret are only ghostly facts. A lot
of people passed through the house when Miss L.’s family
did not own it, and of course we know nothing whatever
about the house that preceded it.
One more note came to me which helped dispel any
notion that Helen L. was the only one bothered by the
unseen in the house on Ardmore.
It was signed by Margaret H. Jones and addressed To
Whom It May Concern. It concerned the ghost.
“Some years ago, when I was a guest in Miss L.’s
home at Ardmore Boulevard, in Los Angeles, I heard
what seemed to be very heavy footsteps in a room which I
knew to be empty. Miss L. was with me at the time and I
told her that I heard this sound. The footsteps seemed to
advance and to recede, and this kept up for several min-
utes, and though we investigated we saw no one. They
ceased with the same abruptness with which they began.”
1 fondly hoped the manifestations would behave in a
similar manner. Go away quietly.
The Ghost Who Refused to Leave
333
But on October 6, 1967, Helen L. telephoned me in
New York. She had spent a sleepless night — part of a
night, that is.
Up to 4 A.M. she had been sleeping peacefully. At
that hour she was awakened by her cat. Putting the animal
down, she noticed a strange light on her patio, which is
located outside her bedroom windows. She hurriedly threw
on a robe and went outside.
In the flower bed on her left, toward the rear of the
garden, she noticed something white. Despite her dislike of
the phenomena which had for so long disturbed her home,
Helen L. advanced toward the flower bed.
Now she could clearly make out the figure of a
woman, all in white. The figure was not very tall and could
have been that of a young girl. It seemed to watch her
intently, and looked somewhat like the conventional white
bedsheet type of fictional ghost.
At this point Miss L.’s courage left her and she ran
back to her room.
The next morning, her eyes red with exhaustion, she
discussed her experience with her aged mother. Until now
she had been reluctant to draw her mother into these mat-
ters, but the impression had been so overpowering that she
just had to tell someone.
To her surprise, her mother was not very upset.
Instead, she added her own account of the “White Lady”
to the record. The night before, the same figure had appar-
ently appeared to the mother in a dream, telling her to
pack, for she would soon be taking her away!
When Helen L. had concluded her report, I calmed
her as best I could and reminded her that some dreams are
merely expressions of unconscious fears. I promised to pay
the house still another visit, although I am frankly weary of
the prospect: I know full well that you can’t persuade a
ghost to go away when there may be a body, once the
property of said ghost, buried in a flower bed in the
garden.
After all, a ghost’s got rights, too!
m 58
The Haunted Motorcycle Workshop
Leighton Buzzard sounded like a species of objection-
able bird to us, when we first heard it pronounced. But it
turned out to be a rather pleasant-looking English country
town of no particular significance or size, except that it was
the site of a poltergeist that had been reported in the local
press only a short time before our arrival in England.
The Leighton Buzzard Observer carried a report on
the strange goings on at Sid Mularney’s workshop.
When Leighton motorcycle dealer, Mr. Sid Mular-
ney, decided to extend his workshop by removing a par-
tition, he was taking on more than he anticipated. For
he is now certain that he has offended a poltergeist.
Neighbors are blaming "Mularney’s Ghost” for weird
noises that keep them awake at night, and Mr. Mular-
ney, who claims actually to have witnessed the polter-
geist’s pranks, is certain that the building in Lake- street,
Leighton, is haunted.
It was about a fortnight ago when he decided to take
down the partition in the workshop which houses racing
motorcycles used by the world -champion rider, Mike
Hailwood.
The following morning, said Mr. Mularney, he went
to the door, opened it, and found three bikes on the
floor. The machines, which are used by local rider Dave
Williams, had their fairings smashed.
A few days later Mr. Mularney was working on a
racing gear box, and when he realized he couldn’t finish
it unless he worked late, he decided to stay on. And it
wasn’t until three o’clock that he finished.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
As he was wiping his hands, weird things started to
happen.
"I felt something rush by me. I looked round and
spanners flew off hooks on the wall and a tarpaulin, cov-
ering a bike, soared into the air,” he declared.
"You would have to see it to believe it. I was scared
stiff. I grabbed a hammer, got out of the room as fast as
I could and made straight for home. My wife was asleep
and I woke her up to tell her about it.”
Since then other peculiar things have been taking
place, and neighbors have been complaining of weird
noises in the night.
Mrs. Cynthia Ellis, proprietress of the Coach and
Horses Restaurant, next door in Lake-street, said she
had been woken during the night several times "by
strange bangings and clatterings.”
"I looked out of the window, but there was never
anything there.”
She said her young son, Stephen, was the first to
wake up and hear noises.
"We thought it was just a child’s imagination, but
we soon changed our minds,” she said.
"The atmosphere round here has become very tense
during the past fortnight. It’s all very odd,” said Mrs.
Ellis.
Since his strange experience Mr. Mularney has dis-
covered odd happenings in the workshop. One morning
he found a huge box of nuts and bolts "too heavy for
me to lift,” scattered all over the floor. Since then he has
discovered petrol tanks which have been moved about
and even large bolts missing, which, he claims, he could
never mislay.
I contacted the editor of the Observer, Mr. McReath,
who confirmed all this information and gave me his private
estimation of Mr. Mularney’s character and truthfulness,
which were A-l . I then arranged with Mr. Mularney to be
334
at his place at noon the next day to look into the matter
personally.
Located on a busy main street, the motorcycle work-
shop occupies the front half of a large yard. Much of it is
rebuilt, using some very old timbers and bricks. Mr.
Mularney, a large, jovial man with a bit of an Irish brogue,
greeted us warmly and showed us around the rather
crowded workshop. There were three rooms, leading from
one into the other like a railroad flat, and all of this space
was chockfull of motorcycles and tools.
“What exactly happened, Mr. Mularney?’’ I opened
the conversation.
“When we finish off in the evening, my partner and I
clean our hands and put all the tools back onto the bench.
Just then, for some unknown reasons, the spanners
(wrenches) jumped off the hooks on the bench and landed
on the bench in front of me.”
"You mean, the wrenches flew off the hooks by
themselves?”
“Yes.”
"You saw this with your own eyes?”
“Oh, yes, definitely.”
"There was enough light in the shop?”
“Yes, the shop was lit.”
“What did you think it was?”
“Well, at the moment I didn’t take much notice of it
but, later, there was a noise in the rear of the workshop,
something came across the floor, and caught my foot, and
my toe, and my eyes, and so I began to look around; on
the other side of the shop we had some metal sprockets
which were standing there. They started to spin around on
a pivot bolt. Later, a huge piece of rubber foam came off
the wall and flew into the middle of the room.”
“By its own volition?”
“Yes.”
"Did you think it was something unusual?”
"I did then, yes. Then we had a racing motorcycle
covered by a waterproof sheet, and this rose completely
up—”
"You mean, in the air?”
“Yes, it stayed up. By that time I was ready to leave
the shop.”
“Did you think something supernatural was taking
place then?”
“I did. I sat in the van for a moment to think about
it, then went home and woke my wife up. I explained to
her what I had seen, and she thought I’d been drinking.”
“Did anything else happen after that?”
"Yes, we had the Swedish motorcycle champion leave
his motorcycle here for repairs. He left some pieces on the
bench and went to have tea. When he went back, they had
completely disappeared and could never be found again.
There was no one in the shop at the time who could have
taken them, and we had locked up tight.
"I had the same experience myself,” Sid Mularney
added. “We were taking a cycle apart, two of us working
The haunted motorcycle workshop
here. One compartment, big enough to see, just
disappeared.”
“You have, of course, looked into the possibility of
pranksters?”
"Oh, yes, we have. But there’s only two of us who
use the shop. About five weeks ago, the two of us took
another motorcycle to pieces. We put some of the nuts and
bolts into a waterproof pan to wash them. We locked up
for the night, but when we returned in the morning, the
whole lot was scattered all over the room.”
A number of amateur “ghost chasers” had offered
Mr. Mularney their services, but he turned them all down
since the shop housed some pretty valuable motorcycles
and they did not want to have things disappear by natural
means on top of their supernatural troubles.
I realized by now that a mischievous spirit, a polter-
geist, was at work, to disrupt the goings on and call atten-
tion to his presence, which is the classical pattern for such
disturbances.
“Tell me, what was on this spot before the repair
shop was built?”
“Years ago it used to be an old-fashioned basket
works, and there used to be about fourteen men working
here. After that, the shed stood empty completely for five
or six years. When we came here to open the shop, it was
full of old baskets and things. We rebuilt it and made it
into this workshop.”
The Haunted Motorcycle Workshop
335
“I understand the phenomena started only after you
knocked down a wall?”
“Yes, we knocked down that wall on a Saturday
evening. We came back Sunday morning and three motor-
cycles were in the corner, as if somebody had thrown them
there. As if in anger.”
"Did something dramatic ever take place here before
you took it over, Mr. Mularney?” I asked.
"Somebody hanged himself here years ago when it
was the basket works. That’s all we know.”
I went back into the third of the three rooms and
examined the spot where the wall had been removed. The
wooden beams still left showed signs of great age, certainly
far beyond the current century.
Quite possibly, in removing the partition wall, Sid
Mularney had interfered with the memory picture of a
ghost who did not wish to leave the spot. The three of us
stood quiet for a moment, then I addressed myself to the
poltergeist, asking that he discontinue annoying the present
owners of the place. I left my card with Mr. Mularney and
instructed him to telephone me the moment there was any
further disturbance.
All was quiet in the weeks that have followed, so I
can only assume that the poltergeist has accepted the
redesigning of the place. Then, too, he might have become
offended by the kind of clientele that rides motorcycles
nowadays. Basket weaving is a gentle art, and “mods” and
“rockers” are best avoided by gentle folk. Even ghosts.
59
Encountering the Ghostly Monks
When King Henry VIII broke with Rome as the after-
math of not getting a divorce, but also for a number of
more weighty reasons, English monastic life came to an
abrupt halt. Abbeys and monasteries were “secularized,”
that is, turned into worldly houses, and the monks thrown
out. Now and again an abbot with a bad reputation for
greed was publicly executed. The first half of the sixteenth
century was full of tragedies and many an innocent monk,
caught up in the new turmoil of religious matters, was
swept to his doom.
The conflict of the abolished monk or nun and the
new owners of their former abode runs through all of Eng-
land, and there are a number of ghosts that have their ori-
gin in this situation.
The “act of dissolution” which created a whole new
set of homeless Catholic clerics also created an entirely new
type of haunting. Our intent was to follow up on a few of
the more notorious ghosts resulting from the religious
schism.
I should be happy to report that it was a typically
glorious English fall day when we set out for Southampton
very early in the morning. It was not. It rained cats and
dogs, also typically English. I was to make an appearance
on Southern TV at noon, and we wanted a chance to visit
the famed old Cathedral at Winchester, halfway down to
Southampton. My reason for this visit was the many per-
sistent reports of people having witnessed ghostly proces-
sions of monks in the church, where no monks have trod
since the sixteenth century. If one stood at a certain spot in
the nave of the huge cathedral, one might see the transpar-
ent monks pass by. They would never take notice of you;
they weren’t that kind of ghost. Rather, they seemed like
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
336
etheric impressions of a bygone age, and those who saw
them re-enact their ceremonial processions, especially bur-
ial services for their own, were psychic people able to
pierce the veil. In addition, a rather remarkable report had
come to me of some photographs taken at Winchester. The
Newark Evening News of September 9, 1958, relates the
incident:
Amateur photographer T. L. Taylor thought he was
photographing empty choir stalls inside Winchester
Cathedral, but the pictures came out with people sitting
in the stalls.
Taylor took two pictures inside the cathedral nearly a
year ago. The first shows the choir stalls empty. The
second, taken an instant later, shows 1 3 figures in the
stalls, most of them dressed in medieval costume. Tay-
lor swears he saw no one there.
Taylor's wife, their 16-year-old daughter Valerie, and
a girl friend of Valerie’s said they were with him when
he took the pictures. They saw nothing in the stalls. "It
gives me the creeps,” Valerie said.
Taylor, a 42-year-old electrical engineer whose hobby
is photography, is convinced that the films were not
double exposed. He said his camera has a device to pre-
vent double exposures and the company which made the
film confirmed the ghosts were not caused through
faulty film.
As I already reported in Ghost Hunter, I take psychic
photography very seriously. Not only John Myers, but oth-
ers have demonstrated its authenticity under strictest test
conditions, excluding all kinds of possible forgery or decep-
tion. The camera, after all, has no human foibles and emo-
tions. What it sees, it sees. If ghostly impressions on the
ether are emotionally triggered electric impulses in nature,
it seems conceivable that a sensitive film inside the camera
may record it.
My own camera is a Zeiss-Ikon Super Ikonta B
model, a fifteen-year-old camera which has a device making
double exposures impossible. I use Agfa Record film, size
120, and no artificial light whatever except what I find in
the places I photograph. I don’t use flash or floodlights,
and have my films developed by commercial houses. I
wouldn’t know how to develop them myself, if I had to.
When we arrived at Winchester, it was really pour-
ing. My wife and I quickly jumped from the car and raced
into the church. It was 1 1 o’clock in the morning and the
church was practically empty, except for two or three visi-
tors in the far end of the nave. Light came in through the
high windows around the altar, but there was no artificial
light whatever, no electricity, only the dim light from the
windows and the faraway entrance gate. The high wooden
chairs of the choir face each other on both sides of the
nave, and there are three rows on each side. Prayer books
rest on the desks in front of each seat. The entire area is
surrounded by finely carved Gothic woodwork, with open
arches, through which one can see the remainder of the
nave. There wasn’t a living soul in those chairs.
The solitude of the place, the rain outside, and the
atmosphere of a distant past combined to make us feel
really remote and far from worldly matters. Neither of us
was the least bit scared, for Ghost Hunters don’t scare.
I set up my camera on one of the chair railings,
pointed it in the direction of the opposite row of choir
chairs, and exposed for about two seconds, all the while
keeping the camera steady on its wooden support. 1
repeated this process half a dozen times from various
angles. We then left the cathedral and returned to the wait-
ing car. The entire experiment took not more than fifteen
minutes.
When the films came back from the laboratory the
following day, I checked them over carefully. Four of the
six taken showed nothing unusual, but two did. One of
them quite clearly showed a transparent group or rather
procession of hooded monks, seen from the rear, evidently
walking somewhat below the present level of the church
floor. I checked and found out that the floor used to be
below its present level, so the ghostly monks would be
walking on the floor level they knew, not ours.
I don’t claim to be a medium, nor is my camera
supernatural. Nevertheless, the ghostly monks of Winches-
ter allowed themselves to be photographed by me!
* * *
We left Southampton after my television show, and
motored towards Salisbury. South of that old city, at
Downton, Benson Herbert maintains his “paraphysical lab-
oratory” where he tests psychic abilities of various subjects
with the help of ingenious apparatus. One of his "opera-
tors," a comely young lady by the name of Anne Slow-
grove, also dabbles in witchcraft and is a sort of
younger-set witch in the area. Her abilities include precog-
nition and apparently she is able to influence the flickering
of a light or the sound of a clock by will power, slowing
them down or speeding them up at will. A devoted man,
Benson Herbert was introduced to me by Sybil Leek,
medium and “White Witch” of the New Forest. We wit-
nessed one of his experiments, after which we followed his
car out of the almost inaccessible countryside towards our
next objective, Moyles Court, Ringwood.
The ghostly goings-on at Moyles Court had come to
my attention both through Sybil Leek, and through an arti-
cle in the September issue of Fate magazine.
The original house goes back to the eleventh century
and there is a wing certainly dating back to the Tudor
period; the main house is mostly sixteenth century, and is a
fine example of a large country manor of the kind not
infrequently seen in the New Forest in the south of
England.
Lilian Chapman, the author of the Fate article, vis-
ited the place in 1962, before it was sold to the school
which now occupies it. The Chapmans found the house in
a sad state of disrepair and were wondering if it could be
restored, and at what cost.
Mrs. Chapman, wandering about the place, eventu-
ally found herself seated on the window sill near the land-
ing leading to the second floor, while the rest of the party
continued upstairs. As she sat there alone, relaxing, she felt
herself overcome with a sense of fear and sadness:
As I looked toward the doors which led to the Min-
strels Gallery, I was amazed to see, coming through
them, a shadowy figure in a drab yellow cloak. There
seemed more cloak than figure. The small cape piece
nearly covered a pair of hands which were clasped in
anguish or prayer. The hands clasped and unclasped as
the apparition came towards me. I felt no fear, only an
intense sorrow. And I swear I heard a gentle sigh as the
figure passed me and drifted to the end of the landing.
From there it returned to go down the stairs, seeming to
disappear through a window facing the chapel.
I, too, have sat on that spot, quietly, relaxed. And I
have felt a chill and known a heaviness of heart for which
there was no logical reason.
The Chapmans did not buy the house, but the
Manor House School did at the subsequent auction sale.
Unknown to Mrs. Chapman at the time, Dame Lisle, one-
time owner of the manor house, was tried and executed at
nearby Winchester by the notorious “hanging judge” Jef-
freys in 1685. The sole crime committed by the aged lady
was that she had given shelter overnight to two fugitives
from the battle of Sedgemoor. The real reason, of course,
was her Puritan faith. As described by Mrs. Chapman in
detail, it was indeed the apparition of the unfortunate lady
she had witnessed.
I contacted the headmistress of the school, Miss V.
D. Hunter, for permission to visit, which she granted with
the understanding that no "publicity” should come to the
school in England. I agreed not to tell any English news of
our visit.
Encountering the Ghostly Monks
337
Where the monks of Beaulieu are still
being heard
When we arrived at Moyles Court, it was already five
o’clock, but Miss Hunter had left on an urgent errand.
Instead, a Mrs. Finch, one of the teachers, received us.
“What is the background of the haunting here?" I
inquired.
"Dame Lisle hid her two friends in the cellar here,”
she said, “where there was an escape tunnel to the road.
There were spies out watching for these people, they dis-
covered where they were, and she was caught and tried
before Judge Jeffreys. She was beheaded, and ever since
then her ghost was said to be wandering about in this
house.”
“Has anyone ever seen the ghost?”
"We have met several people who had lived here
years ago, and had reared their families here, and we know
of one person who definitely has seen the ghost at the gates
of the house — and I have no reason to disbelieve her. This
was about twenty-five years ago, but more recently there
has been somebody who came into the house just before
we took it over when it was covered in cobwebs and in a
very bad state. She sat in the passage here and said that she
had seen the ghost walking along it.”
"How was the ghost described?"
“She has always been described as wearing a saffron
robe.”
"Does the ghost ever disturb anyone at the house?”
“No, none. On the contrary, we have always heard
that she was a sweet person and that there is nothing what-
ever to be afraid of. We’ve had television people here, but
we don’t want the children to feel apprehensive and as a
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
matter of fact, the older children rather look forward to
meeting the ghostly lady.”
I thanked Mrs. Finch, and we were on our way once
more, as the sun started to settle. We were hoping to make
it to Beaulieu before it was entirely dark. As we drove
through the nearly empty New Forest — empty of people,
but full of wild horses and other animals — we could readily
understand why the present-day witches of England choose
this natural preserve as their focal point. It is an eerie,
beautifully quiet area far removed from the gasoline-soiled
world of the big cities.
We rolled into Beaulieu around 6 o’clock, and our
hosts, the Gore-Brownes, were already a bit worried about
us.
My contact with Beaulieu began a long time before
we actually arrived there. Elizabeth Byrd, author of Immor-
tal Queen and Flowers of the Forest, introduced us to the
Gore-Brownes, who had been her hosts when she spent
some time in England. Miss Byrd is keenly aware of the
psychic elements around us, and when she heard we were
going to visit Beaulieu — it consists of the manor house
itself owned by Lord Montague and known as the Palace
House; "The Vineyards,” a smaller house owned by the
Gore-Brownes and, of course, the ruins of the once magnif-
icent Abbey and gardens — she implored me to have a look
from a certain room at “The Vineyards.”
“When you go to Beaulieu please ask Margaret to
take you up to ‘The Red Room’ — my room — and leave
you alone there a while. It is not the room but the view
from the window that is strange. If even / feel it, so should
you have a very strong impression of static time. I have
looked from that window at various seasons of the year at
various times of day and always have sensed a total
338
The ruins of the monastery walls
hush. . .as though life had somehow stopped. The trees are
as fixed as a stage -set, the bushes painted. Nothing seems
quite real. As you know, I am a late riser, but I was always
up at dawn at Beaulieu when that view was nearly incredi-
ble to me — not just fog, something more, which I can only
call permanent and timeless and marvelously peaceful. I
would not have been surprised (or afraid) to see monks
tending the vineyards. It would have seemed perfectly nat-
ural. If one could ever enter a slit in time it would be at
Beaulieu.”
The vivid description of the view given us by Eliza-
beth Byrd was only too accurate. Although it was already
dusk when we arrived, I could still make out the scenery
and the ruins of the Abbey silhouetted against the land-
scape. My wife was rather tired from the long journey, so I
left her to warm herself at the comfortable fireplace, while
Colonel Gore-Browne took me down to the Abbey, to meet
a friend, Captain B., who had been a longtime resident of
Beaulieu. The Palace House, comparatively new, was not
the major center of hauntings.
A modern Motor Museum had been built next to it
by Lord Montague, and has become a major tourist attrac-
tion. I have no objections to that, but I do find it a bit
peculiar to have a washroom built into an ancient chapel,
with a large sign on the roof indicating its usage!
The Abbey itself had not been commercialized, but
lay tranquil on the spot of land between “The Vineyards”
and an inlet of water leading down to the channel called
“the Splent,” which separates the Hampshire coast from
the Isle of Wight. Here we stood, while the Captain looked
for his keys so we could enter the Abbey grounds.
“What exactly happened here in the way of a haunt-
ing, Captain?” I asked, as we entered the churchyard sur-
rounding the ruined Abbey walls.
“A young lady who lived in Beaulieu was walking
across this little path toward what we call ‘the parson’s
wicked gate,’ when she saw a brown-robed figure which
she thought was a visitor. She had been walking along with
her eyes on the ground and she raised them when she got
near to where she thought the man would be so as not to
run into him — but he just wasn’t there!”
We were now standing in the ruined “garth” or gar-
den of the Abbey. Around us were the arched walls with
their niches; back of us was the main wall of what is now
the Beaulieu church, but which was once the monks’ din-
ing hall or refectory.
“Has anyone seen anything here?” I inquired.
"Well, there were two ladies who lived in the little
flat in the domus conversorum. One of them, a retired
trained nurse of very high standing, told me that one Sun-
day morning she came out onto the little platform outside
her flat and she looked, and in the fifth recess there she
saw a monk sitting reading a scroll.”
“What did she do?”
“She watched him for a minute or two, then unfortu-
nately she heard her kettle boiling over and she had to go
in. When she came out again, of course, he was gone.”
“Did it ever occur to her that he was anything but
flesh and blood?"
“Oh, yes, she knew that he couldn’t have been flesh
and blood.”
“Because there are no monks at Beaulieu.”
“Yes.”
“Was she frightened?”
“Not in the least.”
“Are there any other instances of ghosts in this area?”
Encountering the Ghostly Monks
339
The Captain cleared his throat. "Well, old Mr. Poles,
who was Vicar here from 1886 to 1939, used to talk of
meeting and seeing the monks in the church, which was
the lay brothers’ refectory and which is now behind us. He
also used to hear them as a daily occurrence.”
We walked back to the church and entered its dark
recesses. The interior is of modern design hardly consistent
with its ancient precursor, but it is in good taste and the
mystic feeling of presences persists.
This was the place where the Vicar had met the
ghostly monks.
“He not only heard them singing,” the Captain said,
"but he also saw them. They were present.”
"Has anyone else seen the ghostly apparitions in this
church?”
“A few years ago,” the Captain replied in his calm,
deliberate voice, as if he were explaining the workings of a
new gun to a recruit, “I was waiting for the funeral proces-
sion of a man who used to work here, and two ladies came
into the church. We got to talking a little, and one of them
said, ‘When I came to this church about thirty years ago,
with my friend, she saw it as it was.’
“I didn't quite understand what she meant and I
said, ‘Oh, I know, the church was completely altered in
1840.’
"'Oh, no,’ she said, ‘I mean — we both saw it — as it
was, when the monks had it.'
“I questioned her about this.
“‘We came in,’ she said, ‘and we saw the church laid
out apparently as a dining room. We were rather surprised,
but we really did not think anything very much of it, and
then we went out. But when we got home, we talked it
over, and we came to the conclusion that there was some-
thing rather extraordinary, because we hadn’t seen it as a
parish church at all. Then we made inquiries and, of
course, we realized that we had seen into the past.”’
The ladies had evidently been catapulted back in
time to watch the monks of Beaulieu at supper, four hun-
dred years ago!
1 walked out into the middle of the nave and in a
hushed voice invited the monks to show themselves. There
was only utter silence in the darkened church, for it was
now past the hour when even a speck of light remains in
the sky.
As I slowly walked back up the aisle and into the
present, I thought I heard an organ play softly somewhere
overhead. But it may have been my imagination. Who is to
tell? In that kind of atmosphere and having just talked
about it, one must not discount suggestion.
Others have heard the ghostly monks in the garden,
burying their own. Burial services are very important to a
monk, and King Henry had deprived them of the privilege
of being laid to rest in the proper manner. Where could
the dead monks go? The Abbey was the only place they
knew on earth, and so they clung to it, in sheer fear of
what lay beyond the veil.
Quite possibly, too, the ghostly brothers cannot
accept the strange fact that their sacred burial ground, their
cemetery, has never been found! There is a churchyard
around the Abbey, but it belonged and still belongs to the
people of Beaulieu. The monks had their own plot and no
one knows where it is. I have a feeling that there will be
ghostly monks walking at Beaulieu until someone stumbles
onto that ancient burial ground, and reconsecrates it
properly.
The massive manor house, or Palace House, also
incorporates much of the abbot’s palace within its struc-
ture. Monks have been seen there time and again. When I
appeared on the Art Linkletter program in January of
1964, 1 was contacted by a Mrs. Nancy Sullivan, of the
Bronx, New York, who was once employed as a cook at
Palace House.
“Palace House used to have a moat all around,” she
explained, “and a spiral staircase running down from the
top to the bottom. It was claimed Mary Queen of Scots
escaped down that staircase, and a man was waiting in the
moat in a boat, making good her escape. Some say her
ghost still runs down those stairs!
“The help had their rooms on the top floor; there
were five girls then, and every night we heard someone
walking down those stairs, although we knew that the
doors were safely locked, top and bottom. We were scared
stiff, so much so, we all moved into one room.”
Whether it was Mary Stuart getting away from
Beaulieu, or perhaps an older ghost, is hard to tell. What is
interesting is that the steps were heard where no one was
seen to walk.
Television cameras have overrun Beaulieu in quest of
the supernatural. When all has quieted down, I intend to
go back and bring a good trance medium with me. Perhaps
then we can find out directly what it is the monks want.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
340
» 60
The Somerset Scent (Pennsylvania)
SOMERSET IS ONE OF THOSE nondescript small towns that
abound in rural Pennsylvania and that boast nothing more
exciting than a few thousand homes, a few churches, a club
or two and a lot of hardworking people whose lives pass
under pretty ordinary and often drab circumstances. Those
who leave may go on to better things in the big cities of
the East, and those who stay have the comparative security
of being among their own and living out their lives peace-
fully. But then there are those who leave not because they
want to but because they are driven, driven by forces
greater than themselves that they cannot resist.
The Manners are middle-aged people with two chil-
dren, a fourteen-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter.
The husband ran a television and radio shop which gave
them an average income, neither below middle-class stan-
dards for a small town, nor much above it. Although
Catholic, they did not consider themselves particularly reli-
gious. Mrs. Manner’s people originally came from Austria,
so there was enough European background in the family to
give their lives a slight continental tinge, but other than
that, they were and are typical Pennsylvania people without
the slightest interest in, or knowledge of, such sophisticated
matters as psychic research.
Of course, the occult was never unknown to Mrs.
Manner. She was born with a veil over her eyes, which to
many means the second sight. Her ability to see things
before they happened was not "precognition” to her, but
merely a special talent she took in her stride. One night she
had a vivid dream about her son, then miles away in the
army. She vividly saw him walking down a hall in a
bathrobe, with blood running down his leg. Shortly after
she awakened the next day, she was notified that her son
had been attacked by a rattlesnake and, when found, was
near death. One night she awoke to see an image of her
sister standing beside her bed. There was nothing fearful
about the apparition, but she was dressed all in black.
The next day that sister died.
But these instances did not frighten Mrs. Manner;
they were glimpses into eternity and nothing more.
As the years went by, the Manners accumulated
enough funds to look for a more comfortable home than
the one they were occupying, and as luck — or fate — would
have it, one day in 1966 they were offered a fine, old house
in one of the better parts of town. The house seemed in
excellent condition; it had the appearance of a Victorian
home with all the lovely touches of that bygone era about
it. It had stood empty for two years, and since it belonged
to an estate, the executors seemed anxious to finally sell the
house. The Manners made no special inquiries about their
projected new home simply because everything seemed so
right and pleasant. The former owners had been wealthy
people, they were informed, and had lavished much money
and love on the house.
When the price was quoted to them, the Manners
looked at each other in disbelief. It was far below what
they had expected for such a splendid house. “We’ll take
it,” they said, almost in unison, and soon the house was
theirs.
"Why do you suppose we got it for such a ridicu-
lously low price?” Mr. Manner mused, but his wife could
only shrug. To her, that was not at all important. She
never believed one should look a gift horse in the mouth.
It was late summer when they finally moved into
their newly acquired home. Hardly had they been installed
when Mrs. Manner knew there was something not right
with the place.
From the very first, she had felt uncomfortable in it,
but being a sensible person, she had put it down to being
in a new and unaccustomed place. But as this feeling per-
sisted she realized that she was being watched by some
unseen force all the time, day and night, and her nerves
began to tense under the strain.
The very first night she spent in the house, she was
aroused at exactly 2 o’clock in the morning, seemingly for
no reason. Her hair stood up on her arms and chills shook
her body. Again, she put this down to having worked so
hard getting the new home into shape.
But the “witching hour” of 2 A.M. kept awakening
her with the same uncanny feeling that something was
wrong, and instinctively she knew it was not her, or some-
one in her family, who was in trouble, but the new house.
With doubled vigor, she put all her energies into pol-
ishing furniture and getting the rooms into proper condi-
tion. That way, she was very tired and hoped to sleep
through the night. But no matter how physically exhausted
she was, at 2 o’clock the uncanny feeling woke her.
The first week somehow passed despite this eerie
feeling, and Monday rolled around again. In the bright
light of the late summer day, the house somehow seemed
friendlier and her fears of the night had vanished.
She was preparing breakfast in the kitchen for her
children that Monday morning. As she was buttering a
piece of toast for her little girl, she happened to glance up
toward the doorway. There, immaculately dressed, stood a
man. The stranger, she noticed, wore shiny black shoes,
navy blue pants, and a white shirt. She even made out his
tie, saw it was striped, and then went on to observe the
man’s face. The picture was so clear she could make out
the way the man’s snowy white hair was parted.
Her immediate reaction was that he had somehow
entered the house and she was about to say hello, when it
occurred to her that she had not heard the opening of a
door or any other sound — no footfalls, no steps.
The Somerset Scent (Pennsylvania)
341
“Look,” she said to her son, whose back was turned
to the apparition, but by the time her children turned
around, the man was gone like a puff of smoke.
Mrs. Manner was not too frightened by what she had
witnessed, although she realized her visitor had not been of
the flesh and blood variety. When she told her husband
about it that evening, he laughed.
Ghost, indeed!
The matter would have rested there had it not been
for the fact that the very next day something else hap-
pened. Mrs. Manner was on her way into the kitchen from
the backyard of the house, when she suddenly saw a
woman go past her refrigerator. This time the materializa-
tion was not as perfect. Only half of the body was visible,
but she noticed her shoes, dress up to the knees, and that
the figure seemed in a hurry.
This still did not frighten her, but she began to won-
der. All those eerie feelings seemed to add up now. What
had they gotten themselves into by buying this house? No
wonder it was so cheap. It was haunted!
Mrs. Manner was a practical person, the uncanny
experiences notwithstanding, or perhaps because of them.
They had paid good money for the house and no specters
were going to dislodge them!
But the fight had just begun. A strange kind of web
began to envelop her frequently, as if some unseen force
were trying to wrap her into a wet, cold blanket. When she
touched the “web,” there was nothing to be seen or felt,
and yet, the clammy, cold force was still with her. A
strange scent of flowers manifested itself out of nowhere and
followed her from room to room. Soon her husband
smelled it too, and his laughing stopped. He, too, became
concerned: their children must not be frightened by what-
ever it was that was present in the house.
It soon was impossible to keep doors locked. No mat-
ter how often they would lock a door in the house, it was
found wide open soon afterwards, the locks turned by
unseen hands. One center of particular activities was the
old china closet, and the scent of flowers was especially
strong in its vicinity.
“What are we going to do about this?” Mrs. Manner
asked her husband one night. They decided to find out
more about the house, as a starter. They had hesitated to
mention anything about their plight out of fear of being
ridiculed or thought unbalanced. In a small town, people
don’t like to talk about ghosts.
The first person Mrs. Manner turned to was a neigh-
bor who had lived down the street for many years. When
she noticed that the neighbor did not pull back at the men-
tion of weird goings-on in the house, but, to the contrary,
seemed genuinely interested, Mrs. Manner poured out her
heart and described what she had seen.
In particular, she took great pains to describe the two
apparitions. The neighbor nodded gravely.
CHAPTER SIX: This House Is Haunted
342
"It’s them, all right,” she said, and started to fill Mrs.
Manner in on the history of their house. This was the first
time Mrs. Manner had heard of it and the description of
the man she had seen tallied completely with the appear-
ance of the man who had owned the house before.
“He died here,” the neighbor explained. “They really
loved their home, he and his wife. The old lady never
wanted to leave or sell it.” *
“But what do you make of the strange scent of flow-
ers?” Mrs. Manner asked.
“The old lady loved flowers, had fresh ones in the
house every day.”
Relieved to know what it was all about, but hardly
happy at the prospect of sharing her house with ghosts,
Mrs. Manner then went to see the chief of police in the
hope of finding some way of getting rid of her unwanted
“guests.”
The chief scratched his head.
"Ghosts?” he said, not at all jokingly. "You’ve got
me there. That’s not my territory.”
But he promised to send an extra patrol around in
case it was just old-fashioned burglars.
Mrs. Manner thanked him and left. She knew other-
wise and realized the police would not be able to help her.
She decided they had to learn to live with their
ghosts, especially as the latter had been in the house before
them. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad after all, she mused,
now that they knew who it was that would not leave.
Perhaps one could even become friendly, sort of one
big, happy family, half people, half ghosts? But she imme-
diately rejected the notion. What about the children? So
far, they had not seen them, but they knew of the doors
that wouldn’t stay shut and the other uncanny phenomena.
Fortunately, Mrs. Manner did not understand the
nature of poltergeists. Had she realized that the very pres-
ence of her teen-age son was in part responsible for the
physical nature of the happenings, she would no doubt
have sent him away. But the phenomena continued
unabated, day and night.
One night at dinner, with everyone accounted for, an
enormous crash shook the house. It felt as if a ton of glass
had fallen onto the kitchen floor. When they rushed into
the kitchen, they found everything in order, nothing
misplaced.
At this point, Mrs. Manner fell back on her early
religious world.
“Maybe we should call the minister?” she suggested,
and no sooner said than done. The following day, the min-
ister came to their house. When he had heard their story,
he nodded quietly and said a silent prayer for the souls of
the disturbed ones.
He had a special reason to do so, it developed. They
had been among his parishioners when alive. In fact, he
had been to their home for dinner many times, and the
house was familiar to him despite the changes the present
owners had made.
If anyone could, surely their own minister should be
able to send those ghosts away.
Not by a long shot.
Either the couple did not put much stock into their
minister’s powers, or the pull of the house was stronger,
but the phenomena continued. In fact, after the minister
had tried to exorcise the ghosts, things got worse.
Many a night, the Manners ran out into the street
when lights kept going on and off by themselves. Fortu-
nately, the children slept through all this, but how long
would they remain unaffected?
At times, the atmosphere was so thick Mrs. Manner
could not get near the breakfast nook in the kitchen to
clear the table. Enveloped by the strong vibrations, she felt
herself tremble and on two occasions fainted and was thus
found by her family.
They were seriously considering moving now, and let
the original “owners” have the house again. They realized
now that the house had never been truly “empty” for those
two years the real estate man had said it was not in use.
It was 2 A.M. when they finally went up to bed.
Things felt worse than ever before. Mrs. Manner
clearly sensed three presences with her now and started to
cry.
“I’m leaving this house,” she exclaimed. “You can
have it back!” Her husband had gone ahead of her up the
stairs to get the bedding from the linen closet. She began to
follow him and slowly went up the stairs. After she had
climbed about halfway up, something forced her to turn
around and look back.
What she saw has remained with her ever since,
deeply impressed into her mind with the acid of stark fear.
Down below her on the stairway, was a big, burly
man, trying to pull himself up the stairs.
His eyes were red with torture as he tried to talk to
her.
Evidently he had been hurt, for his trousers and shirt
were covered with mud. Or was it dried blood?
He was trying to hang on to the banister and held his
hands out towards her.
“Oh, God, it can’t be true,” she thought and went up
a few more steps. Then she dared look down again.
The man was still holding out his hand in a desper-
ate move to get her attention. When she failed to respond,
he threw it down in a gesture of impatience and
frustration.
With a piercing scream she ran up the stairs to her
husband, weeping out of control.
The house had been firmly locked and no one could
have gained entrance. Not that they thought the appari-
tions were flesh and blood people. The next morning, no
trace of the nocturnal phenomenon could be found on the
stairs. It was as if it had never happened.
But that morning, the Manners decided to pack and
get out fast. “I want no more houses,” Mrs. Manner said
firmly, and so they bought a trailer. Meanwhile, they lived
in an apartment.
But their furniture and all their belongings were still
in the house, and it was necessary to go back a few more
times to get them. They thought that since they had signed
over the deed, it would be all right for them to go back.
After all, it was no longer their house.
As Mrs. Manner cautiously ascended the stairs, she
was still trembling with fear. Any moment now, the specter
might confront her again. But all seemed calm. Suddenly,
the scent of flowers was with her again and she knew the
ghosts were still in residence.
As if to answer her doubts, the doors to the china
closet flew open at that moment.
Although she wanted nothing further to do with the
old house, Mrs. Manner made some more inquiries. The
terrible picture of the tortured man on the stairs did not
leave her mind. Who was he, and what could she have
done for him?
Then she heard that the estate wasn’t really settled,
the children were still fighting over it. Was that the reason
the parents could not leave the house in peace? Was the
man on the stairs someone who needed help, someone who
had been hurt in the house?
“Forget it,” the husband said, and they stored most
of their furniture. The new house trailer would have no
bad vibrations and they could travel wherever they wanted,
if necessary.
After they had moved into the trailer, they heard
rumors that the new owners of their house had encountered
problems also. But they did not care to hear about them
and studiously stayed away from the house. That way, they
felt, the ghosts would avoid them also, now that they were
back in what used to be their beloved home!
But a few days later, Mrs. Manner noticed a strange
scent of flowers wafting through her brand-new trailer.
Since she had not bought any flowers, nor opened a per-
fume bottle, it puzzled her. Then, with a sudden impact
that was almost crushing, she knew where and when she
had smelled this scent before. It was the personal scent of
the ghostly woman in the old house! Had she followed her
here into the trailer?
When she discussed this new development with her
husband that night, they decided to fumigate the trailer, air
it and get rid of the scent, if they could. Somehow they
thought they might be mistaken and it was just coinci-
dence. But the scent remained, clear and strong, and the
feeling of a presence that came with it soon convinced
them that they had not yet seen the last of the Somerset
ghosts.
They sold the new trailer and bought another house,
a fifty-seven-year-old, nice, rambling home in a nearby
Pennsylvania town called Stoystown, far enough from Som-
The Somerset Scent (Pennsylvania)
343
erset to give them the hope that the unseen ones would not
be able to follow them there.
Everything was fine after they had moved their furni-
ture in and for the first time in many a month, the Man-
ners could relax. About two months after they had moved
to Stoystown, the scent of flowers returned. Now it was
accompanied by another smell, that resembling burned
matches.
The Manners were terrified. Was there no escape
from the uncanny? A few days later, Mrs. Manner
observed a smoky form rise up in the house. Nobody had
been smoking. The form roughly resembled the vague out-
lines of a human being.
Her husband, fortunately, experienced the smells
also, so she was not alone in her plight. But the children,
who had barely shaken off their terror, were now faced
with renewed fears. They could not keep running, running
away from what?
They tried every means at their command. Holy
water, incense, a minister’s prayer, their own prayers,
curses and commands to the unseen: but the scent
remained.
Gradually, they learned to live with their psychic
problems. For a mother possessed of definite mediumistic
powers from youth and a young adult in the household are
easy prey to those among the restless dead who desire a
continued life of earthly activities. With the physical pow-
ers drawn from these living people, they play and continue
to exist in a world of which they are no longer a part.
As the young man grew older, the available power
dwindled and the scent was noticed less frequently. But the
tortured man on the stairs of the house in Somerset will
have to wait for a more willing medium to be set free.
m 6i
The House of Evil (New York)
PARKER Keegan IS A practical man not much given to
daydreaming or speculation. That is as it should be. For
Parker makes his living, if you can call it that, driving a
truck with high explosives, tanks containing acetylene, oxy-
gen, nitrogen, and other flammable substances for a weld-
ing company in upstate New York.
So you see, he has to have his mind on his work all
the time, if he wants to get old.
His wife Rebecca is a more emotional type. That,
too, is as it should be. She is an artist, free-lancing and
now and again making sales. There is some Indian blood in
her and she has had an occasional bout with the supernat-
ural. But these were mainly small things, telepathy or
dream experiences and nothing that really worried her.
Neither she nor her husband had any notions that such
things as haunted houses really existed, except, of course,
in Victorian novels.
Now the Keegans already had one child and Rebecca
was expecting her second, so they decided to look for a
larger place. As if by the finger of fate, an opportunity
came their way just about then. Her teen-age cousin Jane
telephoned Rebecca at her parents’ home to tell them of a
house they might possibly rent. It developed she did this
not entirely out of the goodness of her heart, but also
because she didn’t like being alone nights in the big place
she and her husband lived in. He worked most of the night
in another city.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“There are two halves to this house,” Jane explained,
and she made it so enticing that Parker and Rebecca
decided then and there to drive over and have a look at it.
Even though they arrived there after dark, they saw
immediately that the house was attractive, at least from the
outside. Built in pre-Civil War days, it had stood the test
of time well. As is often the case with old houses, the ser-
vant quarters are in a separate unit and parallel, but do not
intrude upon, the main section of the house. So it was here,
and it was the former servant quarters that Jane and Harry
occupied. As the visitors had not spoken to the landlord
about their interest, they entered the unused portion of the
building from their cousin’s apartment. This was once the
main house and contained eight rooms, just what they
needed.
The ground floor consisted of a large front room with
two windows facing the road and two facing the other way.
Next to it was an old-fashioned dining room, and branch-
ing off from it, a narrow kitchen and a small laundry room.
In the dim light they could make out a marvelous staircase
with a lovely, oiled banister. It was at this point that the
two apartments which made up the house connected, and
one could be entered into from the other. Underneath the
front stairway was a closet and the door leading to the
other side of the house, but they found another, enclosed,
stairway leading from the bedroom at the top of the front
stairs into the dining room. Exactly below this enclosed
staircase were the cellar stairs leading into the basement.
There were three cellars, one under the servant quarters,
one underneath the front room, and one below the dining
room.
As Rebecca set foot into the cellar under the dining
room, which had apparently served as a fruit cellar, she
grew panicky for a moment. She immediately dismissed her
344
anxiety with a proper explanation: they had seen the
thriller “Psycho” the night before and this cellar reminded
her of one of the gruesome incidents in that movie. But
later she was to learn that the feeling of panic persisted
whenever she came down into this particular part of the
basement, even long after she had forgotten the plot of that
movie.
For the present, they inspected the rest of the house.
The upstairs portion contained two large bedrooms and
two smaller ones. Only the larger rooms were heated.
There was an attic but nobody ever investigated it during
their entire stay in the house.
They decided the house was just what they wanted
and the next morning they contacted the owner.
George Jones turned out to be a very proper, some-
what tight-lipped man. He inquired what they did for a
living and then added, “Are you religious people?”
Rebecca thought this an odd question, but since she
had told him she was an artist, she assumed he considered
artists somewhat unreliable and wanted to make sure he
had responsible and “God-fearing” tenants. Only much
later did it occur to her that Jones might have had other
reasons.
It was a cold, miserable day in December 1964 when
the Keegans moved into their new home. They were happy
to get into a home full of atmosphere, for Rebecca was an
avid amateur archaeologist who read everything on antiques
she could get her hands on. At the same time they were
doing a good deed for her cousin, keeping her company on
those long nights when her husband was away at work. It
all seemed just right and Rebecca did not even mind the
difficulties the moving brought them. For one thing, they
could not afford professional moving men, but had turned
to friends for help. The friends in turn had borrowed a
truck that had to be back in the garage by nightfall, so
there was a lot of shoving and pushing and bad tempers all
around. On top of that, the stinging cold and snow made
things even more uncomfortable, and Rebecca could do lit-
tle to help matters, being pregnant with their second child
at the time.
Late that first night, they finally climbed the stairs to
the large bedroom. They were both exhausted from the
day’s work and as soon as they fell into bed, they drifted
off into deep sleep.
But even though they were very tired, Rebecca could
not help noticing some strange noises, crackling sounds
emanating seemingly from her cousin’s side of the house.
She put them down to steam pipes and turned to the wall.
When the noises returned night after night, Rebecca
began to wonder about them. Parker also worked nights
now and she and Jane sat up together until after the late
show on television was over, around 1 :30 A.M. All that
time, night after night, they could hear the steam pipes
banging away. Nobody slept well in the house and Jane
became jumpier and jumpier as time went on. Her mood
would change to a certain sullenness Rebecca had not
noticed before, but she dismissed it as being due to the
winter weather, and of no particular significance.
Then one night, as she was thinking about some of
the events of the recent past while lying awake in bed,
Rebecca heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. They
were the steps of a heavy man, and since she had not heard
the characteristic clicking of the front door lock, she knew
it could not be her husband.
Alarmed, and thinking of burglars, she got out of bed
and called out to her cousin. She then went to the top of
the stairs and was joined by Jane coming through the con-
necting door, and standing at the foot of the stairs. What
the two women saw from opposite ends of the staircase was
far from ordinary. Someone was walking up the stairs and
the stairs were bending with each step as if a heavy person
were actually stepping upon them!
Only there was no one to be seen. They did not wait
until the footsteps of the invisible man reached the top of
the stairs. Rebecca dove back into her bedroom banging
the door shut after her. Just before she did, she could still
hear her young cousin downstairs screaming, before she,
too, ran back into the assumed safety of her bedroom.
The experience on the stairs made Jane even moodier
than before and it was not long afterward that she took her
little girl and left her husband. There had been no quarrel,
no apparent reason for her sudden action. He was a hand-
some young man who had treated her well, and Jane loved
him. Yet, there it was — she could not stand the house any
longer and did what her panicky mind told her to do.
Rebecca was now left alone nights with the noisy
wraith on the stairs and she scarcely welcomed it. Soon
after the incident, Jane's abandoned husband sold his
belongings and moved away, leaving the former servant
quarters empty once again.
It was then that Rebecca kept hearing, in addition to
the heavy footsteps, what seemed to be someone crying in
the empty side of the house. She convinced herself that it
wasn’t just a case of nerves when the noises continued at
frequent intervals while she was fully awake. Her time was
almost at hand, and as often happens with approaching
motherhood, she grew more and more apprehensive. It did
not help her condition any when she heard a loud banging
of the cupboards in the dining room at a time when she
was all alone in the house. Someone was opening and clos-
ing the doors to the cupboard in rapid succession soon
after she had retired for the night. Of course she did not
run downstairs to investigate. Who would?
Fortunately, Parker came home a little earlier that
night, because when he arrived he found Rebecca in a state
of near hysteria. To calm her fears as much as to find out
for himself, he immediately went downstairs to investigate.
There was no one there and no noise. Getting into bed
with the assurance of a man who does not believe in the
supernatural, he was about to tell his wife that she must
The House of Evil (New York)
345
have dreamed it all, when he, too, clearly heard the cup-
board doors open and close downstairs.
He jumped out of bed and raced down the stairs. As
he took the steps two at a time, he could clearly hear the
doors banging away louder and louder in the dining room.
It must be stated to Parker’s eternal credit, that not once
did he show fear or worry about any possible dangers to
himself: he merely wanted to know what this was all about.
The noise reached a crescendo of fury, it seemed to
him, when he stood before the dining room door. Quickly
he opened the door and stepped into the dark expanse of
the chilly dining room.
Instantly, the noise stopped as if cut off with a knife.
Shaking his head and beginning to doubt his own
sanity, or at least, power of observation, Parker got into
bed once more and prepared to go to sleep. Rebecca looked
at him anxiously, but he did not say anything. Before she
could question him, the ominous noise started up again
downstairs.
Once more, as if driven by the furies, Parker jumped
out of bed and raced down the stairs. Again the noise
stopped the moment he opened the dining room door.
He slowly went up the stairs again and crawled into
bed. Pulling the cover over his ears, he cursed the ghosts
downstairs, but decided that his badly needed sleep was
more important than the answer to the puzzle.
Shortly after, their son was born. When they
returned from the hospital, they were greeted by a new
couple, the Winters, who had meanwhile moved into the
other half of the house. Although friendly on the surface,
they were actually stern and unbending and as they were
also much older than the Keegans, the two families did not
mingle much. Mrs. Winters was a tough and somewhat
sassy old woman and did not look as if anything could
frighten her. Her husband worked as a night watchman,
and there were no children. It was not long before Mrs.
Winters knocked at Rebecca’s door in fear.
"Someone is trying to break in,” she whispered, and
asked to be let in. Rebecca knew better but did not say
anything to frighten the old woman even further.
It seemed as if winter would never yield to spring,
and if you have ever lived in the cold valleys of upstate
New York, you know how depressing life can be under
such circumstances.
To brighten things a little, the Keegans acquired a
female German shepherd dog for the children, and also for
use as a watchdog.
All this time Rebecca was sure she was never alone in
the house. There was someone watching her, night and
day. Her husband no longer scoffed at her fears, but could
do little about them. The strange noises in the walls con-
tinued on and off and it got so that Rebecca no longer felt
fear even when she saw the doorknob of a perfectly empty
room turn slowly by its own volition. By now she knew the
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
house was haunted, but as yet she did not realize the
nature of the uncanny inhabitants.
One day she left the baby securely strapped in his
seat while she ran to catch her little girl who was climbing
the front stairs and was in immediate danger of falling off.
Just at that precise moment, the strap broke and the baby
fell to the floor, fracturing his skull.
All during their stay at the house, someone was
always having accidents or becoming unaccountably ill.
Their debts increased as their medical expenses grew
higher, so it was decided that Rebecca should go to work
and earn some money. In addition, Parker started working
extra shifts. But far from helping things, this only served to
incite the landlord to raise their rent, on the theory that
they were earning more. To make things even more diffi-
cult for them, Rebecca could not find a proper baby-sitter
to stay with the children while she was at work. Nobody
would stay very long in the house, once they got to
know it.
She turned to her mother for help, and her mother,
after a short stay, refused to spend any more time in the
house, but offered to take the children to her own home.
There was no explanation, but to Rebecca it seemed omi-
nous and obvious. Finally, her teenage sister consented to
become a baby-sitter for them. She could use the money
for school, but soon her enthusiasm waned. She began to
complain of a closed-in feeling she experienced in the old
house and of course she, too, heard all the strange noises.
Each day, Mary became more and more depressed and ill,
whereas she had been a happy-go-lucky girl before.
"There are prowlers about,” she kept saying, and one
day she came running to Rebecca in abject fear. On a
moonless night she happened to be glancing out a living
room window when she saw what appeared to be a face.
Rebecca managed to calm her by suggesting she had seen
some sort of shadow, but the incessant barking of the dog,
for no apparent reason, made matters worse. Added to this
were incidents in which objects would simply fly out of
their hands in broad daylight. The end of the rope was
reached one day when they were all in the front room. It
was afternoon and Mary was holding a cup in her hand,
about to fill it with tea. That instant it flew out of her
hands and smashed itself at Parker's feet. Without saying
another word, the young girl went up the stairs to her
room. Shortly after, her things all packed, she came down
again to say goodbye.
Once again they were without help, when Rebecca’s
sister-in-law Susan saved the day for them. A simple and
quite unimaginative person, she had put no stock into all
the tales of goings-on she had heard and was quite willing
to prove her point.
Within a day after her arrival, she changed her tune.
“Someone is watching me,” she complained, and
refused to stay alone in the house. She, too, complained of
things flying off the shelves seemingly by their own voli-
346
i
tion and of cupboard doors opening and closing as if some-
one were looking into the drawers for something or other.
The footsteps up the stairs continued and Susan
heard them many times. She took the dog into the house
with her but that was of little use: the dog was more afraid
than all of the people together.
Incredible though it seemed to the Keegans, two
years had passed since they had come to the House of Evil.
That they still had their sanity was amazing, and that they
had not moved out, even more of a miracle. But they sim-
ply could not afford to, and things were difficult enough in
the physical world to allow the unseen forces to add to
their problems. So they stuck it out.
It was the night before Christmas of 1966, and all
through the house a feeling of ominous evil poisoned the
atmosphere. They were watching television in order to
relax a little. Rebecca suddenly saw a presence out of the
comer of her eye, a person of some kind standing near the
window in back of the sofa where her sister-in-law was sit-
ting. Without raising her voice unduly or taking her eyes
off the spot, she said, “Susan, get the rifle!” They had a
rifle standing ready in the corner of the room.
Only then did Susan take a sharp look at the face
peering into the window. It was a man’s face, either Indian
or Negro, and so unspeakably evil it took her breath away.
Scowling at them with hatred, the face remained there for
a moment, while Susan grabbed the gun. But when she
pointed it towards the window, the face had disappeared.
Immediately, they rushed outside. The ground was
frozen hard, so footprints would not have shown, had there
been any. But they could not see anyone nor hear anyone
running away.
The dog, chained at a spot where an intruder would
be visible to her, evidently did not feel anything. She did
not bark. Was she in some strange way hypnotized?
Soon after Christmas, Susan had to leave and the
Keegans no longer could afford a baby-sitter. Rebecca had
quit her job, and things were rough financially again.
To help matters, they invited a young couple with a
small child to move in with them and help share expenses.
The husband did not believe in the supernatural and the
wife, on being told of their “problems,” showed herself
open-minded, even interested, although skeptical.
What had appeared to be a sensible arrangement
soon turned out a disaster and additional burden to an
already overburdened family. The Farmers weren’t going
to contribute to the household, but spend what money they
earned on liquor and racing. The tension between the Kee-
gans and the Farmers mounted steadily. But the monetary
problems were not the sole cause. The Farmers, too,
noticed the noises and the unbearable, heavy atmosphere of
the house and instinctively blamed the Keegans for these
things. Then there was a quilt with an early American
eagle and ship motif printed on it. Soon the wife noticed
that someone had turned the quilt around after she had put
it away safely for the night. In the morning, the motif
would face the opposite way. They could not blame the
Keegans for that, since the quilt had been stored out of
anyone’s reach, and they dimly realized that the house was
indeed haunted.
As the tension grew, the two couples would scarcely
speak to each other even though they naturally shared the
same quarters. Rebecca began to realize that no matter how
gay a person might have been on the outside, once such a
person moved into the House of Evil, there would be
changes of personality and character. Although far from
superstitious, she began to believe that the house itself was
dangerous and that prolonged life in it could only destroy
her and her loved ones.
Early in April Rebecca and Parker were in the bed-
room upstairs one night, when they saw a form cross from
where their telephone was, over their bed, and then down
the stairs. As it crossed past the telephone, the phone rang.
An instant later, as the form reached the bottom of the
stairs, the downstairs telephone also rang.
This brought the Farmers out screaming and
demanding to know what was going on?
For once, there was unison in the house as the four
adults gathered together soberly downstairs to discuss what
they just witnessed and compare impressions.
They agreed there was a blue-white light around the
form, a light so intense it hurt the eyes. They all had felt
an icy chill as the form passed them. Only Parker bravely
insisted it might have been lightning. But nobody had
heard any thunder.
For the Farmers, this was the ghost that broke their
patience’s back. They moved out immediately.
Left once again to themselves, Rebecca and her hus-
band decided it was time for them to look elsewhere, too.
Tired from the long struggle with the uncanny, they
moved soon afterwards.
As soon as they had settled in a new house, life took
on a different aspect: where ominous presences had damp-
ened their spirits, there was now gaiety and a zest for life
they had not known for four years. Nobody has been sick
in the family since and they have no problems getting and
keeping baby-sitters.
The House of Evil still stands on lonely Route 14,
and there are people living in it now. But whenever Parker
has occasion to pass Route 14 in his car, he steps on the
gas and drives just a little bit faster. No sense taking
chances!
The House of Evil (New York)
347
» 62
The Specter in the Hallway
(Long Island)
Port Washington is a busy little town on Long Island,
about forty-five minutes from New York City. A lot of
people who live there commute daily to their jobs down-
it town or midtown, and the flavor of the town is perhaps
less rustic than other places further out on Long Island.
Still, there are a few back roads and quiet lanes that are as
quiet and removed from the pace of Main Street as any
small town might boast. Such a street is Carlton, and a
house in about the middle of the block not far from the
waterfront fits the description of a country home to a tee.
It is a two -story wooden structure about fifty years old,
well-preserved and obviously redecorated from time to
time. The house sits back from the street on a plot of land,
and all in all, one could easily overlook it if one were not
directly searching for it. There is nothing spectacular about
this house on Carlton, and to this day the neighbors think
of it only as a nice, old house usually owned by nice,
respectable people whose lives are no different from theirs
and whose problems are never of the kind that make
headlines.
But the house behind the nice, old trees has not
always been so pleasant looking. When Mr. and Mrs. F.
first saw it, it was nothing more than a dilapidated shell of
its former splendor, yet it was imbued with a certain nobil-
ity that translated itself, in their minds, into the hope of
being capable of restoration, provided someone lavished
enough care and money on the place. Mr. F. was not
wealthy, but he had a going business and could afford a
good-sized house.
Mrs. F.’s own father had been involved in the build-
ing of the house on Carlton though she did not realize it at
the time she first saw it. He had been in the building trade
in this town, and Mrs. F. had grown up here. It seemed
the natural thing to her to settle in a town she was familiar
with, now that their two girls were of school age, and she
had to think of the future. The house was for sale and as
they walked through it they realized that it had been
neglected for some time. The real estate man was properly
vague about previous owners, and would say only that it
had been built by respectable people fifty-three years ago,
and they could have it very reasonably. Real estate agents
are not historians, they are not even concerned with the
present, but only the future: tomorrow’s sale and commis-
sion. If the F.s did not want to buy the old house, sooner
or later someone else would, or perhaps the house could be
torn down and another one built here. The land was almost
more valuable than the house itself. Suburbia was stretch-
ing further and further and Port Washington was a most
convenient location.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
But the F.s did buy the house in 1961 and even
though the place was a shambles, they managed to move in
right away and live in it while they were restoring and
redecorating it. There were twelve rooms in all, on two
floors. A broad staircase with two landings led up to the
second story. The second landing led directly into a hall-
way. To the left was the master bedroom, to the right a
second bedroom they turned over to their two girls, aged
thirteen and eight. The first few days were busy ones
indeed, as the family tried to settle down in unfamiliar sur-
roundings. Mr. F. worked in the city, and the girls were in
school mornings, so Mrs. F. was alone in the house a good
part of the day. The master bedroom in particular was an
eyesore, dark and forbidding as it was, and wholly depress-
ing to her.
She decided to start work immediately on the bed-
room, and had it painted white. That caused some prob-
lems in the mornings when one wanted to sleep late, for
they had morning sun, and the white walls made the room
even brighter. But this occasional inconvenience was more
than offset by the general cheerfulness the change in color
gave the room. Mrs. F. felt optimistic about the house and
was sure it would make a splendid home for them.
One day soon after their arrival, she was hanging
curtains in the bedroom. Suddenly she felt a hostile glare in
back of her and turned to see who had entered the room.
There was no one to be seen. And yet, she was sure
another person was next to her in the room, a person
whose hatred she could literally feel!
Immediately, Mrs. F. put down the curtains and left
the house. For a few hours, she went shopping in town. As
it became time to return home, she dismissed the whole
incident as imagination. She had no interest in the occult
even though over the years she had shown a marked degree
of ESP powers. Whenever someone close to her, or even a
mere acquaintance, was involved in a tragedy, she knew it
beforehand. Often she would anticipate what someone was
about to say to her, but she had learned to play down this
peculiar talent lest people in the community might think
her an oddball. If anything, she hated being “different,” or
causing her husband dismay for leanings that did not sit
well with his employers or the people they socialized with.
Shortly after this incident, she was in bed asleep
when she awoke the incessant ringing of the telephone.
The telephone was downstairs, so she got up and started
on her way down the stairs to answer it. Who would call
them at that hour? Theirs was an unlisted number.
She was fully awake as she reached the stairs. The
phone was still demanding her attention. As she put one
foot onto the top step, she felt herself pushed by unseen
hands and fell down to the first landing. As soon as she
fell, the telephone stopped ringing. As a consequence of
this “accident,” she was crippled for several months. Her
husband ascribed the fall to her drowsiness, but she knew
better. She had felt a hard push in the back: she had not
slipped on the stairs. They patiently went over the entire
348
list of those who had their unlisted phone number. None of
them had called.
* * *
From this moment on, her optimistic outlook about
the house changed. She longed for the time she could be
outside the house, have the choice of running away from it
when she felt like it. But her legs were still bruised and the
time passed slowly.
Then one evening, while her husband was away, she
sat quietly in the living room downstairs, reading a book.
For some unexplainable reason, she suddenly felt that
someone was watching her. She lifted her eyes from the
book, turned, and glanced up at the stairway. There, at the
very spot where she had fallen, stood a man. His face was
in the shadows, but he was tall and wearing dark clothes.
She stared at the figure with amazement for several
moments. When she was fully aware of it, the apparition
vanished, as if it had only wanted to let her know of its
presence.
Too horrified to move from the chair, Mrs. F. just
sat there until her husband returned. She knew the man on
the stairs wanted her to come up to him, and she could not
bring herself to do it. Neither could she tell her husband
what had happened.
Much later, when she confided in him, she found out
that he did not think her mad, and his compassion only
increased their deep affection for each other.
The larger incidents were accompanied by a continu-
ing plethora of odd sounds, creaking noises on the stairs or
in the master bedroom. Most of the latter noises she had
heard downstairs in the living room, which is located
directly underneath the master bedroom. Old houses make
odd noises, she rationalized to herself, and probably the
house was just settling. But to make sure, she decided to
call in some termite specialists. They came and removed
paneling from some of the basement walls in that part of
the house and gave the place a thorough examination. As
she watched, they inspected the beams and the foundation
of the house. They found nothing. The house was neither
settling nor shifting, the experts explained, thus removing
the pat explanation Mrs. F. had given to herself for the
odd noises. She wished she had never called in the termite
experts, for now that she knew there were no natural causes
for the disturbances, what was she to do?
So far neither her husband nor her children had
noticed anything odd, or if they had, they had not said
anything to her. Mrs. F. dreaded the thought of discussing
such matters with her children. One night she busied her-
self in the living room after dinner. Her husband was out
and the two girls were presumably in their own room
upstairs. Suddenly there was a loud thumping and knock-
ing overhead in the master bedroom.
"The girls are out of their beds,” she thought, and
called up to them to go back to bed immediately. There
was no reply. When she went upstairs to check, she found
both girls fast asleep in their room. She went back to con-
tinue her chores in the living room. Immediately, the
noises started up again overhead. Despite her fears that he
was up there waiting for her, Mrs. F. went up again. There
are seven doors opening onto that hallway and yet she
knew immediately which door he was lurking behind: her
bedroom’s. She turned around and grabbed the banister of
the stairs firmly. This time he wasn’t going to push her
down again. Slowly, she descended the stairs. She knew in
her heart the specter would not follow her down. His
domain was the upstairs part of the house. She soon real-
ized that the uncanny house guest had his limitations as far
as movements were concerned and it gave her unsuspected
strength: she knew he could not follow her outside, or even
into the living room; there she was safe from him. Often,
when she was outside in the yard, she could feel him peer-
ing out at her, watching, always watching with slow-
burning eyes. When she went out to market and closed the
door behind her, a wave of hatred hit her from inside the
empty house. He resented being left alone. Had the ghostly
presence developed an attachment toward her?
Psychic feelings had been a subject studiously
avoided by Mrs. F. in her conversations, but when she
mentioned her problem accidentally to her mother, she was
surprised to find not a questioning gaze but an understand-
ing acknowledgment.
"I too have always felt there is someone in the house,”
her mother admitted, “but I think it's friendly.”
Ms. F. shook her head. She knew better. Her mother
then suggested that a portrait of Jesus be placed in the
entrance foyer to ward off “evil influences.” Mrs. F. was
not religious, but under the circumstances, she was willing
to try anything. So a portrait of Christ was duly placed in
the foyer at the landing. It apparently made a difference,
for the presence of the man in black faded away from the
spot from that day. However, he was as strongly present as
ever in the bedroom.
One night, the F.’s intimate relationship was literally
interrupted by the ghostly presence, and it took them years
to get over the shock. They could never be sure that they
were truly “alone,” and even if they moved to another
room, Mrs. F. feared the jealous specter would follow them
there.
During the day, she continuously felt a call to go up
to the bedroom, but she never went when she was alone in
the house. That was “his” domain and she had hers in the
downstairs area of the house.
One evening, while her husband was taking a shower,
she felt encouraged enough to venture alone into the bed-
room. A thought ran through her mind, “Why, he isn’t
here after all!” Scarcely had she finished thinking this,
when she clearly heard a voice shout into her ear: “I am
here!” And as if to underscore his presence, a necktie rose
off its clasp and placed itself on her shoulder!
The Specter in the Hallway (Longjsland)
349
Mrs. F. tried to behave as if that happened every day
of her life. As if speaking to herself she said, aloud, "Oh,
stupid tie, falling like that!” But she knew she was not
fooling him, that he knew he had terribly frightened her
with this performance.
The same evening, she and her husband had a quiet
discussion about the house. They both loved it and they
had spent considerably money and much time in fixing it
|( up. It was most inconvenient to move after four years. But
what were they to do? Share it forever with a ghost?
She found that her husband had felt odd in the house
for a long time also, and had thought of selling it. While
he failed to see how a ghost could possibly harm them —
having had plenty of chances to do so and not having done
so, apart from the “accident” on the stairs — he did not
wish to subject his family to any form of terror.
They placed an ad in the New York Times and listed
their telephone for the first time. At least, Mrs. F. thought,
if the phone rang now, it would be someone calling about
the house, not a ghost trying to rouse her from deep sleep.
But houses do not always sell overnight, especially
old ones. They wanted to sell, but they didn’t want to lose
money. Still, having made the decision to move eventually
made things easier for Mrs. F. She was even able to muster
some curiosity about their unbidden guest and made
inquiries among neighbors, especially some old-timers who
knew the area well. Nobody, however, could shed any light
on the situation. Of course, Mrs. F. did not come right out
and speak of her experiences in the house, but she did ask
if any unusual events had ever occurred in it or what the
history of the house had been. Still, the result was not
encouraging and they realized they would leave the house
without ever knowing who it was that had caused them to
do so!
Then Mrs. F. discovered that she was, after all, a
natural medium. She would simply sit back in her chair
and rest and gradually her senses would become clouded
and another person would speak to her directly. It felt as if
that person was very clqse to her and she could take the
message the way a telegraph operator takes down a
telegram, word for word, and the more relaxed she was and
the less fear she showed, the more clear the words were to
her.
She fought this at first, but when she realized that it
meant only more discomfort, she relaxed. Then, too, she
knew the specter would not harm her — their relationship
had somehow changed since the time he had pushed her
down those stairs. She felt no fear of him, only compassion,
and sensed he needed help badly and that she was willing
to extend it to him.
While they were waiting for a buyer for the house,
she would often lapse into semiconsciousness and com-
mune with her tormentor, who had now become a kind of
friend. Gradually she pieced together his story and began
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
to understand his reasons for doing what he was doing to
get her attention. As she listened to the ghost, his anger
gave way to an eagerness to be heard and understood.
A young man of about seventeen and of small build,
he had light hair, high cheekbones, and deep-set eyes. At
that tender age he was lost at sea as a member of the
Canadian Navy. A French Canadian, he desperately
wanted her to deliver a message to someone, but she was
unable to clearly get either the message or the name of the
individual. Perhaps the very emotionalism of such an
attempt caused its failure. But she did get the name of his
ship, something that sounded to her like Tacoma. When-
ever Mrs. F. awoke from her trance state, that word stood
strongly in her mind. Finally she wrote to the United
States Navy Department. Unfortunately, there had been
four ships by that name! But her intuition told her to con-
tact the Canadian Navy also. The boy had been lost during
World War II, while on duty, and while she did not have
his name, perhaps the name of the ship could be traced.
No, the Canadians did not have a Tacoma, but they did
have a mine sweeper named Transcona, and instantly she
felt that was the right ship. It had been in war service from
1942 to 1945.
As her inquiries went on, she felt the atmosphere in
the house change. It was no longer heavy with frustration,
but the presence was still there. Twice during that month
he was seen by the children. The thirteen-year-old girl
wanted to know who was “the big boy walking back and
forth in the hallway all night" and Mrs. F. told her she
had dreamed it all, for there was no one in the hall that
night.
Either unable or unwilling to question this explana-
tion, the girl thought no further about it. The younger girl,
however, reported another incident a few days later. She
knew nothing of her older sister’s experience. As she was
bathing, a young man had opened the door and then
turned and walked into her sister’s room! Mrs. F. was hard
put to explain that away, but eventually she managed to
calm the little girl.
* * *
But despite Mrs. F.’s willingness to let him commu-
nicate with her in trance, the young man was unable to
give either his name or that of the person whom he tried to
reach. His own emotions were still pitched high from the
sudden death he had suffered and he did not know how to
cope with the situation.
In October of that year, after a wait of half a year,
they sold the house. The new owner was a police officer in
retirement with little sympathy for ghosts. Both he and his
wife are devout Catholics and any suggestion at investigat-
ing the disturbances to free the unfortunate soul was sim-
ply not answered. The F.s had moved out but stayed in
town, so they could not help hearing some of the local gos-
sip concerning the house.
350
If the police officer was bothered by the ghostly
sailor, he certainly did not speak of it to anyone. But word
of mouth was that the new owners were disappointed with
their new home: it wasn’t as happy a place to them as they
had anticipated when they bought it. Lots of little things
were going wrong seemingly for no apparent reasons. For
example, no matter how often the bedroom door was
opened, it would "close itself.”
Mrs. F. smiled wryly, for she remembered that the
ghostly sailor always liked that door open. She too, had
closed it to have privacy, only to find it opened by unseen
hands. Finally, she understood that it wasn't curiosity or
evil thoughts on his part, but simple loneliness, the desire
not to be shut out from the world, and she left it open, the
way he wanted it.
How long would it take the lieutenant to understand
the lad? She mused and wondered if perhaps he could leave
the house of his own free will, now that he had told her at
least part of his story. Shortly after, the F.s moved to
Florida. They wondered if the power for the manifestations
had come from their young daughters, who were at the
time of “poltergeist" age. If so, the police lieutenant will
have the same problem: he has six children of his own.
» 63
The Bayberry Perfume Ghost
(Philadelphia)
If there IS ANYTHING more staid than a North Philadel-
phia banker I wouldn’t know it. But even bankers are
human and sometimes psychic. In William Davy’s case
there had been little or no occasion to consider such a mat-
ter except for one long-forgotten incident when he was
eight years of age. At that time he lived with his parents in
Manchester, England. On one particular morning, little
William insisted that he saw a white shadow in the shape
of a man passing in front of the clock. The clock, it so
happened, was just striking the hour of 8:30 A.M. His
mother, reminded by the sound of the clock, hurriedly sent
the boy off to school, telling him to stop his foolishness
about white shadows.
By the time the boy returned home, word had
reached the house that his favorite grandfather, who lived
halfway across England in Devon, had passed away. The
time of his death was 8:30 A.M. Eventually, Mr. Davy
moved to Philadelphia where he is an officer in a local
bank, much respected in the community and not the least
bit interested in psychic matters. His aged father, William
Sr., came to live with him and his family in the home they
bought in 1955. The house is a splendid example ofVicto-
rian architecture, built on three levels on a plot surrounded
by tall trees in what is now part of North Philadelphia, but
what was at the time the house was built a separate com-
munity, and originally just farmland.
The ground floor has a large kitchen to one side, a
large living room, with fireplace, separated from a dining
room by a sliding double door. Upstairs are bedrooms on
two floors, with the third floor the one-time servant quar-
ters, as was customary in Victorian houses. The Davy fam-
ily did some remodelling downstairs, but essentially the
house is as it was when it was first built, sometime in the
late 1880s, according to a local lawyer named Huston, who
is an expert on such things. At any rate, in 1890 it already
stood on the spot where it is today.
William Sr. was a true English gentleman given to
historical research, and a lover of ghost stories, with which
he liked to regale his family on many occasions. But what
started as a purely literary exercise soon turned into grim
reality. Shortly after his arrival, William Sr. complained of
hearing unusual noises in the house. He had a room on the
third floor and was constantly hearing strange noises and
floor boards creaking as if someone were walking on them.
His son laughed at this and ascribed it to his father’s
vivid imagination, especially after his many fictional ghost
stories had set the mood for the sort of thing. But the older
Davy insisted to his last day that he was being troubled by
an unseen entity. After he passed away in February 1963,
Mr. and Mrs. Davy thought no more of the matter. The
house was a peaceful home to them and they enjoyed life.
* * *
Several months later, Mr. Davy was sitting by him-
self in the living room, reading. He was tired, and the time
was 10 P.M. He decided to call it a day, and got up to go
to bed. As he walked toward the hallway between the liv-
ing room and the staircase, he literally stepped into a cloud
of very pungent perfume which he instantly identified as a
very strong bayberry smell. For a moment he stood in utter
amazement, then slowly continued into the hall and up the
stairs. The perfume still surrounded him, as if someone
invisible, wearing this heavy perfume, were walking along-
side him!
Upon reaching the first landing he went into the bed-
room. At that point, the perfume suddenly left him, just as
suddenly as it had come.
“Mary,” he asked his wife, “did you by any chance
spill some perfume?” She shook her head emphatically. She
did not even own any such scent, and there had been no
one else in the house that day or evening.
The Bayberry Perfume Ghost (Philadelphia)
351
Puzzled but not particularly upset, Mr. Davy let the
matter drop and he would have forgotten it entirely had
not another event taken him by surprise.
Several months later he was again sitting in the living
room, the time being around 10 P.M. He put down his
book, and went toward the hallway. Again, he walked into
a heavy cloud of the same perfume! Again it followed him
up the stairs. As he climbed he felt something — or
someone brush against his right leg. It made a swishing
sound but he could not see anything that could have
caused it. When he got to the landing, he stopped and
asked Mary to come out to him.
His wife had suffered a fractured skull when she was
young and as a consequence had lost about 70% of her
sense of smell.
When Mary joined him at the landing, he asked her
if she smelled anything peculiar. "Oh my word,” she said,
immediately, "what a heavy perfume!” They were standing
there looking at each other in a puzzled state. “What on
earth is it?” Mary finally asked. He could only shrug his
shoulders.
At that precise moment, they clearly heard footsteps
going up the stairs from where they were standing, to the
third floor!
Since neither of them saw any person causing the
footsteps, they were completely unnerved, and refused to
investigate. They did not follow the footsteps up to the
third floor. They knew only too well that there wasn’t any
living soul up there at the moment.
One evening Mary was reading in bed, on the second
floor, when she found herself surrounded by the same bay-
berry perfume. It stayed for several seconds, then died
away. Since she was quite alone in the house and had been
all evening, this was not very reassuring. But the Davys are
not the kind of people that panic easily, if at all, so she
shrugged it off as something she simply could not explain.
On another occasion, Mr. Davy saw a patch of dull, white
light move through the living room. From the size of the
small cloud it resembled in height either a large child or a
small adult, more likely a woman than a man. This was at
3 A.M. when he had come downstairs because he could not
sleep that night.
In April 1966 the Davys had gone to Williamsburg,
Virginia for a visit. On their return, Mr. Davy decided to
take the luggage directly upstairs to their bedroom. That
instant he ran smack into the cloud of bayberry perfume. It
was if some unseen presence wanted to welcome them
back!
One of Mary’s favorite rings, which she had left in
her room, disappeared only to be discovered later in the
garden. How it got there was as much of a mystery then as
it is now, but no one of flesh and blood moved that ring.
Naturally, the Davys did not discuss their unseen visitor
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
with anyone. When you’re a Philadelphia banker you don’t
talk about ghosts.
In September of the same year, they had a visit from
their niece and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Clarence
Nowak. Mr. Nowak is a U.S. government employee, by
profession a chemical engineer. Their own house was being
readied and while they were waiting to move in, they spent
two weeks with their uncle and aunt. The niece was stay-
ing on the second floor, while Mr. Nowak had been
assigned the room on the third floor that had been the cen-
ter of the ghostly activities in the past. After they had
retired, Mr. Nowak started to read a book. When he got
tired of this, he put the book down, put the lights out and
got ready to doze off.
At that precise moment, he clearly heard footsteps
coming up and he was so sure it was Mary coming up to
say goodnight that he sat up and waited. But nobody came
into his room and the footsteps continued!
Since he is a man of practical outlook, this puzzled
him and he got out of bed and looked around. The corri-
dor was quite empty, yet the footsteps continued right in
front of him. Moreover, they seemed to enter the room
itself and the sound of steps filled the atmosphere of the
room as if someone were indeed walking in it. Unable to
resolve the problem, he went to sleep.
The next night, the same thing happened. For two
weeks, Mr. Nowak went to sleep with the footsteps
resounding promptly at 10 P.M. But he had decided to
ignore the whole thing and went to sleep, steps or no steps.
“It seemed, when I was in bed,” he explained to his
aunt, somewhat sheepishly, “the footsteps were coming up
the stairs, and when I was lying there it seemed as if they
were actually in the room, but I could not distinguish the
actual location. When I first heard them I thought they
were Mary’s, so I guess they must have been the footsteps
of a woman.”
Mr. Nowak is not given to any interest in psychic
phenomena, but on several occasions his wife, also named
Mary, as is her aunt, did have a rapport bordering on tele-
pathic communication with him. These were minor things,
true, but they were far beyond the possibilities of mere
chance. Thus it is very likely that the chemist’s natural
tendency towards ESP played a role in his ability to hear
the steps, as it certainly did in the case of the banker, Mr.
Davy, whose own childhood had shown at least one
marked incident of this sort.
But if the ghostly presence favored anyone with her
manifestations, it would seem that she preferred men.
Mary Nowak slept soundly through the two weeks, with
nary a disturbance or incident.
Clifford Richardson, another nephew of the Davys,
came from Oklahoma to visit the Nowaks one time, and in
the course of the visit he decided to stay a night at the
Davys. Mr. Richardson is the owner of an insurance
agency and not the least bit interested in the occult. On his
return to the Nowaks the following day, he seemed unusu-
352
ally pensive and withdrawn. Finally, over coffee, he opened
up.
"Look, Mary,” he said, “your husband Bucky has
stayed over at Uncle Ned’s house for a while. Did he sleep
well?”
“What do you mean?” Mary asked, pretending not to
know.
“Did he ever hear any sounds?”
Mary knew what he meant and admitted that her
husband had indeed “heard sounds.”
“Thank God,” the insurance man sighed. “I thought
I was going out of my mind when I heard those footsteps.”
He, too, had slept in the third floor bedroom.
What was the terrible secret the little bedroom held
for all these years?
The room itself is now plainly but adequately fur-
nished as a guest room. It is small and narrow and
undoubtedly was originally a maid’s room. There is a small
window leading to the tree-studded street below. It must
have been a somewhat remote room originally where a per-
son might not be heard, should he/she cry for help for any
reason.
The Davys began to look into the background of
their house. The surrounding area had been known as
Wright’s Farm, and a certain Mrs. Wright had built
houses on the property towards the late 1880s. The house
was owned by four sets of occupants prior to their buying
it and despite attempts to contact some of those who were
still alive, they failed to do so. They did not discuss their
"problem” with anyone, not even Mary’s aged mother who
was now staying with them. No sense frightening the frail
old lady. Then again the Davys weren’t really frightened,
just curious. Mary, in addition to being a housewife, was
also a student of group dynamics and education at nearby
Temple University, and the phenomena interested her
mildly from a researcher’s point of view. As for William
Davy, it was all more of a lark than something to be taken
seriously, and certainly not the sort of thing one worries
about.
* * *
When their inquiries about the history of the house
failed to turn up startling or sensational details, they
accepted the presence as something left over from the Vic-
torian age and the mystique of it all added an extra dimen-
sion, as it were, to their fine old home.
Then one day, in carefully looking over the little
room on the third floor, Mr. Davy made an interesting dis-
covery. At waist height, the door to the room showed
heavy dents, as if someone had tried to batter it down! No
doubt about it, the damage showed clear evidence of
attempted forcing of the door.
Had someone violated a servant up there against her
wishes? Was the door to the bedroom battered down by
one of the people in the house, the son, perhaps, who in
that age was sacrosanct from ordinary prosecution for such
a “minor” misdeed as having an affair with the maid?
The strong smell of bayberry seemed to indicate a
member of the servant class, for even then, as now, an
overabundance of strong perfume is not a sign of good
breeding.
* * *
There have been no incidents lately but this does not
mean the ghost is gone. For a Victorian servant girl to be
able to roam the downstairs at will is indeed a pleasure not
easily abandoned — not even for the promised freedom of
the other side!
» 64
The Headless Grandfather (Georgia)
GROVER C. was one OF those colorful old-timers you
hardly see anymore these days, not even in the deep South.
It wasn’t that Grover had any particular background in
anything special, far from it; he was an untutored man who
owed his success solely to his own willpower and an insa-
tiable curiosity that led him places his education — or lack
of it — would have prevented him from ever reaching.
* * *
He saw the light of day just before the turn of the
century in rural North Carolina. At the age of nineteen he
married for the first time, but his wife Fannie and the child
she bore him both died from what was then called
"childbed fever,” or lack of proper medical treatment. He
had not yet chosen any particular career for himself, but
was just “looking around” and did odd jobs here and there.
A year later he was married again, to a lady from Georgia
who is still living. After their first girl was born, they
moved to Columbus, Georgia, and Mr. C. worked in a
local mill for a while. This didn’t satisfy his drive, how-
ever, and shortly afterward he and his brother Robert
opened a grocery store. The store did right well until “the
Hoover panic,” as they called it, and then they managed to
sell out and buy a farm in Harris County.
Life was pretty placid, but after an accident in which
he lost his daughter, Mr. C. moved back to Columbus and
tried his hand at the grocery business once more. About
this time, the restless gentleman met a lady from Alabama,
as a result of which he became the father of an “extracur-
ricular” little girl, in addition to his own family, which
The Headless Grandfather (Georgia)
353
eventually consisted of a wife and nine children, two of
whom are dead, the others still living.
When his second-born child died of an infectious
disease, Mr. C. had his long-delayed breakdown, and for
several years, he was unable to cope with his life. During
those rough years of slow, gradual recuperation, his daugh-
ter Agnes ran the store for him and supported the family.
As his health improved and he began to return to a
happier and more constructive outlook on life, he devel-
oped an interest in real estate. With what money he could
spare, he bought and sold property, and before long, he did
so well he could dispense with the grocery store.
Soon he added a construction business to his real
estate dealings and was considered a fairly well-to-do citi-
zen in his hometown. This status of course attracted a vari-
ety of unattached women and even some who were
attached, or semi-detached, as the case may have been, and
Mr. C. had himself a good time. Knowledge of his interest
in other ladies could not fail to get to his wife and eventu-
ally he was given a choice by his wife: it was either her or
them.
He picked them, or, more specifically, a lady next
door, and for thirteen years he was reasonably faithful to
her. Eventually she disliked living with a man she was no
married to, especially when he happened to be married to
someone else, even though he had bought her a cute little
house of her own in Columbus. Mr. C. was not particu-
larly happy about this state of affairs either, for he devel-
oped a penchant for drinking during those years. After
they separated, the lady next door left town and got
married.
Far from returning to the bosom of his family, now
that the “other woman” had given him the gate, Grover
looked elsewhere and what he found apparently pleased
him. By now he was in his late sixties, but his vigorous
personality wasn’t about to be slowed down by so silly a
reason as advancing age!
* * *
About 1962 he met a practical nurse by the name of
Madeline, who turned out to be the opposite of what the
doctor had ordered. After a particularly heavy argument,
she kicked him in the nose. When it did not stop bleeding,
she became alarmed and took him to the hospital. The
family went to see him there even though his wife had not
exactly forgiven him. But at this point it mattered little.
Mr. C. also complained of pain in his side and the children
firmly believed that the practical nurse had also kicked him
in that area. Since he died shortly afterward, it was a moot
question whether or not she had done so because Mrs. C’s
abilities no longer corresponded to her amorous expecta-
tions. The old gent certainly did not discuss it with his
family. He was seventy when he died and Madeline was a
mere sixty. Death was somewhat unexpected despite the
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
354
fact Mr. C. had suffered from various ailments. During the
days he had been alone in his room at the hospital. At first,
he shared the room with another older man, but several
days later a young man was sent in to be with him. The
young man’s complaint was that he had a lollipop stick
stuck in his throat. There probably aren’t too many young
men with such a predicament in medical annals, and even
fewer in Columbus, Georgia. The family found this mighty
peculiar, even more so since the young man was a close
relative of Madeline, the very practical nurse.
They complained to the hospital authorities and the
young man was moved. It is not known whether the lol-
lipop stick was ever removed from his throat, but chances
are it was or we would have heard more of it. Young men
with lollipop sticks in their throats either die from them or
become sideshow attractions in the circus; the records show
neither so it must be assumed that the lollipop stick got
unstuck somehow somewhere along the line. At any rate,
Mr. C. was now guarded by one of his children each night,
the children taking turns.
They are firmly convinced that the practical nurse
slipped her erstwhile benefactor some poison and that per-
haps the boy with the lollipop stick stuck in his throat
might have done her bidding and administered it to the old
gent. This is a pretty sticky argument, of course, and hard
to prove, especially as no autopsy was ever performed on
Mr. C. But it is conceivable that Madeline made a discov-
ery about her friend that could have induced her to speed
his failure to recover and do so by any means at her com-
mand. She knew her way around the hospital and had
ready access to his room. She also had equally ready access
to his office and thereby hangs a strange tale.
* * *
On one of the infrequent occasions when Mr. C.
slept at home, his estranged wife was making up the bed.
This was five months before his demise. As she lifted the
mattress, she discovered underneath it a heavy envelope,
about six by ten inches in size, crammed full with papers.
She looked at it and found written on it in Mr. C.’s large
lettering, the words:
"This is not to be opened until I am dead. I mean
good and dead, Daddy.”
She showed the envelope to her daughter, Agnes, but
put it back since she did not wish to enter into any kind of
controversy with her husband. Evidently the envelope must
have been taken by him to his office sometime later, for
when she again made his bed two weeks before his passing,
when he was still walking around, she found it gone. But
there was a second, smaller envelope there, this one not
particularly marked or inscribed. She left it there. A short
time later Mr. C. was taken to the hospital. When Mrs. C.
made the bed she found that the small envelope had also
disappeared.
While the C.’s house in Columbus was not exactly a
public place, neither was it an impregnable fortress, and
anyone wishing to do so could have walked in at various
times and quickly removed the envelope. As far as the
office was concerned, that was even easier to enter and the
family had no doubt whatever that Madeline took both
envelopes for reasons best known to herself, although they
could not actually prove any of it. At no time did the old
gent say an unkind word about his Madeline, at least not
to his children, preferring perhaps to take his troubles with
him into the great beyond.
* * *
After his death, which came rather suddenly, the
family found a proper will, but as Mr. C. had generously
built homes for most of his children during his lifetime, in
the 1950s, there was only a modest amount of cash in the
bank accounts, and no great inheritance for anyone.
The will named Mrs. C. as executor, and as there
was nothing to contest, it was duly probated. But the fam-
ily did search the office and the late Mr. C.’s effects at the
house for these two envelopes that were still missing. Only
the wife and daughter Agnes knew of them, even though
"nobody and everybody” had access to the house. The ser-
vants would not have taken them, and the safe was empty.
As the old gent had occasionally slept in his office on a
couch, the family looked high and low in his office but
with negative results. The only thing that turned up in
addition to the will itself was the neatly typed manuscript
of a book of Biblical quotations. Mr. C. had been a serious
Bible scholar, despite his uneducated status, and the quotes
arranged by subject matter and source represented many
thousands of hours of work. When his daughter Marie had
seen him working on this project in 1962, she had sug-
gested he have the scribbled notes typed up and she had
prevailed upon her Aunt Catherine to undertake the job,
which the latter did. Somewhat forlornly, Marie picked up
the manuscript and wondered whether someone might not
buy it and put a little cash into the estate that way.
The mystery of the disappearing envelopes was never
solved. Even greater than the puzzle of their disappearance
was the question about their content: what was in them
that was so important that the old gent had to hide them
under the mattress? So important that someone took them
secretly and kept them from being turned over to the fam-
ily, as they should have been?
Although there is no evidence whatever for this con-
tention, Marie thinks there might have been some valu-
ables left to Grover C.’s love child, the one he had with
the lady from Alabama early in his romantic life.
At any rate, after several months of fruitless searches,
the family let the matter rest and turned to other things.
Grover C. would have gone on to his just reward, espe-
cially in the minds of his family, if it weren’t for the matter
of some peculiar, unfinished business.
About a year after Grover’s death, Lewis C., one of
the sons of the deceased, as they say in the police records,
was busy building a brick flower planter in his home in
Columbus. This was one of the houses his father had
erected for his children, and Mr. C., the son, had been liv-
ing in it happily without the slightest disturbance. Lewis
was thirty years old and the mystery of his father’s disap-
pearing envelopes did not concern him very much at this
point. Here he was, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, on a
brisk March day in 1967, working on his planter. Giving
him a hand with it, and handing him one brick after
another, was a professional bricklayer by the name of Fred,
with whom he had worked before. They were in the living
room and Lewis was facing the back door, Fred the front
door.
“A brick, please” said Lewis, without turning around.
No brick came. He asked again. Still no brick. He
then looked up at his helper and saw him frozen to the
spot, gazing at the front door.
“What’s the matter, Fred?” he inquired. He had
never seen Fred so frightened.
Finally, as if awakening from a bad dream, Fred
spoke.
“Fve just seen Mr. C.,” he said, "big as life.”
"But Mr. C. has been dead for a year,” the son
replied.
Fred had worked for Grover for many years and he
knew him well.
“What did he look like?” the son inquired.
"White. . .light,” Fred replied and then went on to
describe the figure in white pants he had seen at the door.
Although it was only the bottom half of a man, he had
instantly recognized his late employer. Grover was bow-
legged and the white pants facing him surely were as bow-
legged as old Grover had been. There was no doubt about
whose lower half it was that had appeared and then gone
up in a puff again.
Lewis shook his head and went on with his work. But
a short time later he began to appreciate what Fred had
experienced. In the middle of the night he found himself
suddenly awake by reason of something in the atmosphere
— undefinable, but still very real.
The lights in his bedroom were off, but he could see
down the hallway. And what he saw was a man wearing a
white shirt, dark pants. . .and. . .with no head. The head-
less gentleman was tiptoeing down the hallway toward him.
Lewis could only stare at the apparition which he
instantly recognized as his late father, head or no head.
When the ghost saw that Lewis recognized him, he took
three leaps backward and disappeared into thin air.
Unfortunately, Catherine, Lewis’ wife did not believe
a word of it. For several months the subject of father’s
headless ghost could not be mentioned in conversation.
Then in December 1968 Lewis and Catherine were asleep
one night, when at about 2:30 A.M. they were both roused
by the sound of heavy footsteps walking down the hall
from the bedrooms toward the living room. As they sat up
The Headless Grandfather (Georgia)
355
and listened with nary a heartbeat, they could clearly hear
how the steps first hit the bare floor and then the carpet,
sounding more muffled as they did. Finally, they
resounded louder again as they reached the kitchen floor.
Lewis jumped out of bed, ready to fight what he was sure
must be an intruder. Although he looked the house over
from top to bottom he found no trace of a burglar, and all
the doors were locked.
* * *
In retrospect they decided it was probably Grover
paying them a visit. But why? True, he had built them the
house. True, they had some of his effects, especially his old
pajamas. But what would he want with his old pajamas
where he now was? Surely he could not be upset by the fact
that his son was wearing them. They decided then that
Grover was most likely trying to get their attention because
of those envelopes that were still missing or some other
unfinished business, but they didn’t like it, for who would
like one’s headless father popping in the middle of the
night?
* * *
But apparently Grover did not restrict his nocturnal
visits to his son Lewis’ place. His granddaughter Marie,
who lives in Atlanta, had come to visit at her grandfather’s
house in the spring of 1968. The house had no city water
but used water from its own well system. It was therefore
necessary to carry water into the house from outside. On
one such occasion, when she had just done this and was
returning with an empty basin, Marie stepped into what
looked like a puddle of water. She started to mop up the
puddle only to find that the spot was actually totally dry.
Moreover, the puddle was ice cold, while the water basin
she had just carried was still hot. She found this most
unusual but did not tell anyone about it. Within a matter
of hours eight-year-old Randy reported seeing a man in a
dark suit in the bathroom, when the bathroom was obvi-
ously empty.
Apparently the old gent liked children, for little Joel
was playing the piano in his Atlanta home in February of
1969, when he heard the sound of shuffling feel approach.
Then there was the tinkling of glasses and all this time no
one was visible. Grover had always liked a shot and a little
music.
Soon Marie began to smell carnations in her house
when no one was wearing them or using any perfume. This
lingered for a moment and then disappeared, as if someone
wearing this scent was just passing through the house.
In 1967, her Aunt Mary came to visit her in Atlanta
and the conversation turned to the mysterious scent. “I’m
glad you mentioned this,” the aunt exclaimed, and reported
a similar problem: both she and her husband would smell
the same scent repeatedly in their own house, sometimes so
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
strongly they had to leave the house and go out for some
fresh air. But the scent followed them, and on one occasion
“sat” with them in their car on the way to church on Sun-
day morning!
They weren't too sure whether it was more like car-
nations or just a funeral smell, but it surely was a smell
that had no rational explanation. Then in 1968, Mary
informed her niece that a new perfume had suddenly been
added to their list of phenomena: this one was a spicy
scent, like a man’s after-shave lotion.
Not long after this report, Marie smelled the same
sharp, men’s perfume in her own house in Atlanta, in her
den. This was particularly upsetting, because they had shut
off that room for the winter and no perfume or anyone
wearing it had been in it for months.
In 1969, she had occasion to visit her grandfather’s
house in Columbus once again. She found herself wander-
ing into her late grandfather’s old bedroom. She stopped at
his dresser and opened the drawer. There she found her
spicy scent: a bottle of Avon hair lotion he had used. None
of her husband's eau de cologne bottles had a similar smell.
This was it. But how had it traveled all the way to
Atlanta? Unless, of course, Grover was wearing it.
Marie is a thirty-year-old housewife, has worked for
years as a secretary to various business firms, and is mar-
ried to a postal clerk.
She was upset by her grandfather’s insistence on con-
tinuing to visit his kinfolk and not staying in the cemetery
as respectable folk are supposed to do, at least according to
the traditional view of the dead.
Evidently Grover was far from finished with this life,
and judging from the lively existence he had led prior to
his unexpected departure from this vale of tears, he had a
lot of energy left over.
That, combined with a genuine grievance over unfin-
ished business — especially the missing two envelopes —
must have been the cause for his peripatetic visits. Marie
decided not to wait for the next one, and went to see a card
reader in Columbus. The card reader could tell her only
that she had a restless grandfather who wished her well.
Unfortunately, even if the cause for Grover’s contin-
ued presence could be ascertained, there was no way in
which the missing envelopes could be legally recovered.
Marie tried, in vain, to get a local psychic to make
contact with her grandfather. Finally, she turned her atten-
tion to the manuscript of Bible quotes. Perhaps it was the
book he wanted to see published.
Whatever it was, she must have done the right thing,
or perhaps all that talk about the headless grandfather had
pleased the old gent’s ego enough to pry him loose from
the earth plane. At any rate, no further appearances have
been reported and it may well be that he has forgotten
about those envelopes by now, what with the attractions of
his new world absorbing his interest.
Unless, of course, he is merely resting and gathering
strength!
356
* 65
The Old Merchant’s House Ghost
(New York City)
When New York was still young and growing, that
which is now a neighborhood given over to derelicts and
slums was an elegant, quiet area of homes and gardens, and
the world was right and peaceful in the young republic
circa 1820.
Gradually, however, the "in” people, as we call them
nowadays, moved further uptown, for such is the nature of
the city confined to a small island that it can only move
up, never down or out. Greenwich Village was still pretty
far uptown, although the city had already spread beyond
its limits and the center of New York was somewhere
around the city hall district, nowadays considered way
downtown.
Real state developers envisioned the east side of Fifth
Avenue as the place to put up elegant homes for the well-
to-do. One of the more fashionable architects of that time
was John McComb, who had plans for a kind of terrace of
houses extending from Lafayette Street to the Bowery, with
the back windows of the houses opening upon John Jacob
Astor’s property nearby. Now Mr. Astor was considered
somewhat uncouth socially by some of his contemporaries
— on one occasion he mistook a lady’s voluminous sleeve
for a dinner napkin — but nobody had any second thoughts
about his prosperity or position in the commercial world.
Thus, any house looking out upon such a desirable neigh-
borhood would naturally attract a buyer, the builders rea-
soned, and they proved to be right.
Called brownstones because of the dark brick mater-
ial of their facades, the houses were well-appointed and
solid. Only one of them is still left in that area, while
garages, factories and ugly modern structures have replaced
all the others from the distant past.
The house in question was completed in 1 830 and
attracted the eagle eye of a merchant named Seabury Tred-
well, who was looking for a proper home commensurate
with his increasing financial status in the city. He bought it
and moved in with his family.
Mr. Tredwell’s business was hardware, and he was
one of the proud partners in Kissam & Tredwell, with
offices on nearby Dey Street. A portly man of fifty, Mr.
Tredwell was what we would today call a conservative.
One of his direct ancestors had been the first Protestant
Episcopal bishop of New York, and though a merchant,
Tredwell evinced all the outward signs of an emerging
mercantile aristocracy. The house he had just acquired cer-
tainly looked the part: seven levels, consisting of three sto-
ries, an attic and two cellars, large, Federal -style windows
facing Fourth Street, a lovely garden around the house, and
an imposing columned entrance door that one reached after
ascending a flight of six marble stairs flanked by wrought -
iron gate lanterns — altogether the nearest a merchant
prince could come to a real nobleman in his choice of
domicile.
Inside, too, the appointments were lavish and in
keeping with the traditions of the times: a Duncan Phyfe
banister ensconcing a fine staircase leading to the three
upper stories, and originating in an elegant hall worthy of
any caller.
As one stepped into this hall, one would first notice a
huge, high-ceilinged parlor to the left. At the end of this
parlor were mahogany double doors separating the room
from the dining room, equally as large and impressive as
the front room. The Duncan Phyfe table was set with Hav-
iland china and Waterford crystal, underlining the Tred-
well family’s European heritage. Each room had a large
fireplace and long mirrors adding to the cavernous appear-
ance of the two rooms. Large, floor-to-ceiling windows on
each end shed light into the rooms and when the
mahogany doors were opened, the entire area looked like a
ballroom in one of those manor houses Mr. Tredwell’s
forebears lived in in Europe.
The furniture — all of which is still in the house — was
carefully chosen. Prominent in a corner of the parlor was a
large, rectangular piano. Without a piano, no Victorian
drawing room was worth its salt. A music box was placed
upon it for the delight of those unable to tinkle the ivories
yet desirous of musical charms. The box would play
“Home Sweet Home,” and a sweet home it was indeed.
Further back along the corrider one came upon a
small "family room,” and a dark, ugly kitchen, almost L-
shaped and utterly without charm or practical arrange-
ments, as these things are nowadays understood. But in
Victorian New York, this was a proper place to cook.
Maidservants and cooks were not to be made cheerful, after
all, theirs was to cook and serve, and not to enjoy.
On the first floor — or second floor, if you prefer, in
today’s usage — two large bedrooms are separated from each
other by a kind of storage area, or perhaps a dressing room,
full of drawers and cabinets. Off the front bedroom there is
a small bedroom in which a four-poster bed took up almost
all the available space. The bed came over from England
with one of Mrs. Tredwell’s ancestors.
Leading to the third floor, the stairs narrow and one
is well-advised to hold on to the banister lest he fall and
break his neck. The third floor nowadays serves as the
curator’s apartment, for the Old Merchant’s House is kept
up as a private museum and is no longer at the mercy of
the greedy wrecker.
But when Seabury Tredwell lived in the house, the
servants’ rooms were on the third floor. Beyond that, a
low-ceilinged attic provided additional space, and still
another apartment fills part of the basement, also suitable
for servants’ usage.
The Old Merchant’s House Ghost
(New York City)
357
■
Three views of the Old Merchant’s House —
Lower Manhattan
All in all, it was the kind of house that inspired con-
fidence in its owner and Mr. Tredwell proceeded to estab-
lish himself in New York society as a force to be reckoned
with, for that, too, was good for his expanding business.
He was eminently aided in this quest by the fact that
his wife Eliza, whom he had married while still on his way
up, had given him six daughters. Three of the girls made
good marriages and left the parental homestead and appar-
ently made out very well, for not much was heard about
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
them one way or another. Of the remaining three girls,
however, plenty is recorded, and lots more is not, though
it’s undoubtedly true.
The three “bachelor girls” were named Phoebe,
Sarah, and Gertrude. Phoebe’s main interest was the Carl
Fischer piano in the parlor and she and her sister Sarah
would often play together. Gertrude, the last of the Tred-
well children, born in 1840, was different from the rest of
them and kept herself apart. There were also two boys, but
somehow they did not amount to very much, it is said, for
it became necessary at a later date, when of all the children
only they and Gertrude were left, to appoint a cousin,
Judge Seabury, to supervise the management of the estate.
Brother Horace, in particular, was much more interested in
tending the four magnolia trees that dominated the view
from the tearoom.
To this day, nobody knows the real reason for a
secret passage from a trap door near the bedrooms to the
East River, a considerable distance. It has lately been
walled up to prevent rats from coming up through it, but it
is still there, holding onto its strange mystery — that is, to
those who do not know.
Some of the things that transpired behind the thick
walls of the Old Merchant’s House would never have been
brought to light were it not for the sensitive who walked its
corridors a century later and piece-by-piece helped recon-
struct what went on when the house was young. Only then
did the various pieces of the jigsaw puzzle slowly sink into
place, pieces that otherwise might never have found a com-
mon denominator.
When the house finally gave up its murky secrets a
strange calm settled over it, as if the story had wanted to
be told after all those years and free it from the need of
further hiding from the light.
Seabury Tredwell’s stern Victorian ways did not sit
well with all members of his family. The spinster girls in
particular were both afraid of and respectful toward their
father, and found it difficult to live up to his rigid stan-
dards. They wanted to marry but since no suitable person
came along they were just as happy to wait. Underneath
this resignation, however, a rebellious spirit boiled up in
Sarah. Five years older than Gertrude, she could not or
would not wait to find happiness in an age where the word
scarcely had any personal meaning.
Tredwell ruled the family with an iron hand,
demanding and getting blind submission to his orders.
Thus it was with considerable misgivings that Sarah
encouraged a budding friendship with a young man her
father did not know, or know of, whom she had met acci-
dentally at a tearoom. That in itself would have been suffi-
cient reason for her father to disallow such as friendship.
He was a man who considered anyone who referred to
chicken limbs as legs, indecent, a man who ordered the legs
of his chairs and tables covered so they might not incite
male visitors to unsavory ideas!
358
It took a great deal of ingenuity for Sarah to have a
liaison with a strange man and not get caught. But her
mother, perhaps out of rebellion against Tredwell, perhaps
out of compassion for her neglected daughter, looked the
other way, if not encouraged it. And ingenious Sarah also
found another ally in her quest for love. There was a black
servant who had known and cared for her since her birth
and he acted as a go-between for her and the young man.
For a few weeks, Sarah managed to sneak down to meet
her paramour. Accidentally, she had discovered the secret
passageway to the river, and used it well. At the other end
it led to what was then pretty rough ground and an even
rougher neighborhood, but the young man was always
there waiting with a carriage and she felt far safer with him
than in the cold embrace of her father’s fanatical stare.
Although Tredwell boasted to his friends that his house
had "seven hundred locks and seven hundred keys,” there
was one door he had forgotten about.
Why an architect in 1830 would want to include a
secret passage is a mystery on the surface of it, but there
were still riots in New York in those years and the British
invasion of 1812 was perhaps still fresh in some people’s
memories. A secret escape route was no more a luxury in a
patrician American home than a priest hole was in a
Catholic house in England. One never knew how things
might turn. There had been many instances of slave rebel-
lions, and the “underground railroad,” bringing the unfor-
tunate escapees up from the South was in full swing then
in New York.
One meeting with the young man, who shall remain
nameless here, led to another, and before long, nature took
its course. Sarah was definitely pregnant. Could she tell her
father? Certainly not. Should they run off and marry? That
seemed the logical thing to do, but Sarah feared the long
arm of her family. Judge Seabury, her father’s distin-
guished cousin, might very well stop them. Then too, there
was the question of scandal. To bring scandal upon her
family was no way to start a happy marriage.
Distraught, Sarah stopped seeing the young man.
Nights she would walk the hallways of the house, sleepless
from worry, fearful of discovery. Finally, she had to tell
someone, and that someone was her sister Gertrude. Sur-
prisingly, Gertrude did understand and comforted her as
best she could. Now that they shared her secret, things
were a little easier to bear. But unfortunately, things did
not improve. It was not long before her father discovered
her condition and all hell broke loose.
With the terror of the heavy he was, Tredwell got
the story out of his daughter, except for the young man’s
name. This was especially hard to keep back, but Sarah felt
that betraying her lover would not lead to a union with
him. Quite rightfully, she felt her father would have him
killed or jailed. When the old merchant discovered that
there had been a go-between, and what was more, a man in
his employ, the old man was hauled over the coals. Only
the fact that he had been with them for so many years and
The fireplace supposedly incapable of being
photographed...
that his work was useful to the family, prevented Tredwell
from firing him immediately. But he abused the poor man
and threatened him until the sheer shock of his master’s
anger changed his character: where he had been a pleasant
and helpful servant, there was now only a shiftless, nervous
individual, eager to avoid the light and all questions.
This went on for some weeks or months. Then the
time came for the baby to be bom and the master of the
house had another stroke of genius. Fie summoned the
black servant and talked with him at length. Nobody could
hear what was said behind the heavy doors, but when the
servant emerged his face was grim and his eyes glassy.
Nevertheless, the old relationship between master and ser-
vant seemed to have been restored, for Tredwell no longer
abused the man after this meeting.
What happened then we know only from the pieces
of memory resurrected by the keen insight of a psychic: no
court of law would ever uphold the facts as true in the
sense the law requires, unfortunately, even if they are, in
fact, facts. One day there was a whimpering heard from the
trapdoor between the two bedrooms upstairs, where there
is now a chest of drawers and the walled-off passageway
The Old Merchant’s House Ghost
(New York City)
359
The actual dress worn by Gitty, whose ghost has
never left the house
down to the river. Before the other servants in the house
could investigate the strange noises in the night, it was all
over and the house was silent again. Tredwell himself came
from his room and calmed them.
“It is nothing,” he said in stentorian tones, “just the
wind in the chimney.”
Nobody questioned the words of the master, so the
house soon fell silent again.
But below stairs, in the dank, dark corridor leading to
the river, a dark man carried the limp body of a newborn
baby that had just taken its first, and last, breath.
Several days later, there was another confrontation.
The evil doer wanted his pay. He had been promised a
certain sum for the unspeakable deed. The master
shrugged. The man threatened. The master turned his
back. Who would believe a former slave, a run -away slave
wanted down South? Truly, he didn't have to pay such a
person. Evil has its own reward, too, and the man went
back to his little room. But the imprint of the crime stuck
to the small passage near the trapdoor and was picked up a
century later by a psychic. Nobody saw the crime. Nobody
may rightfully claim the arrangement between master and
servant ever took place. But the house knows and in its
silence, speaks louder than mere facts that will stand up in
court.
When Sarah awoke from a stupor, days later, and
found her infant gone, she went stark raving mad. For a
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
time, she had to be restrained. Somehow, word leaked out
into the streets of the city below, but no one ever dared say
anything publicly. Sarah was simply “indisposed” to her
friends. Weeks went by and her pain subsided. Gradually a
certain relief filled the void in her insides. She had lost
everything, but at least her lover was safe from her father’s
clutches. Although she never knew for sure, whenever she
glanced at the manservant, she shrank back: his eyes
avoided hers and her heart froze. Somehow, with the illogi-
cal knowledge of a mother, she knew. Then, too, she
avoided the passage near the trap door. Nothing could get
her to walk through it. But as her health returned, her
determination to leave also received new impetus. She
could not go on living in this house where so much had
happened. One day, she managed to get out of the door. It
was a windy fall night and she was badly dressed for it.
Half- mad with fear of being followed, she roamed the
streets for hours. Darkness and mental condition took their
toll. Eventually she found herself by the water. When she
was found, she was still alive, but expired before she could
be brought back to the house.
Her death — by her own hands — was a blow to the
family. Word was given out that Sarah had died in a car-
riage accident. It sounded much more elegant, and though
no one ever found out what carriage, as she had been in
bed for so long, and just learned to walk about the house
again, it was accepted because of the unspoken code among
the Victorians: one man’s tragedy is never another’s gossip.
Then, too, the question of suicide was a thorny one to
resolve in an age that had not yet freed the human person-
ality even in the flesh: it had to be an accident.
Thus Sarah was laid to rest along with the others of
her family in the Christ Churchyard in Manhasset, Long
Island, properly sanctified as behooves the daughter of an
important citizen whose ancestor was a bishop.
What had happened to Sarah did not pass without
making a deep and lasting impression on the youngest girl,
Gertrude, whom they liked to call Gitty in her younger
years. She tried not to talk about it, of course, but it made
her more serious and less frivolous in her daily contacts.
She was now of the age where love can so easily
come, yet no one had held her hand with the slightest
effect on her blood pressure. True, her father had intro-
duced a number of carefully screened young men, and
some not so young ones, in the hope that she might choose
one from among them. But Gertrude would not marry just
to please her father, yet she would not marry against his
wishes. There had to be someone she could love and whom
her father could also accept, she reasoned, and she was
willing to wait for him.
While she was playing a game with time, spring
came around again and the air beckoned her to come out
into the garden for a walk. While there, she managed to
catch the eye of a young man on his way past the house.
Words were exchanged despite Victorian propriety and she
felt gay and giddy.
360
She decided she would not make the mistake her sis-
ter had made in secretly seeing a young man. Instead, she
encouraged the shy young man, whose name was Louis, to
seek entry into her house openly and with her father’s
knowledge, if not yet blessings. This he did, not without
difficulties, and Seabury Tredwell had him investigated
immediately. He learned that the young man was a penni-
less student of medicine.
“But he’ll make a fine doctor someday,” Gertrude
pleaded with her father.
"Someday,” the old man snorted, “and what is he
going to live on until then? I tell you what. My money.”
Tredwell assumed, and perhaps not without reason,
that everybody in New York knew that his daughters were
heiresses and would have considerable dowries as well.
This idea so established itself in his mind, he suspected
every gentleman caller as being a fortune hunter.
The young man was, of course, he argued, not after
his daughter’s love, but merely her money and that would
never do.
Gertrude was no raving beauty, although possessed of
a certain charm and independence. She was petite, with a
tiny waistline, blue eyes and dark hair, and she greatly
resembled Britain's Princess Margaret when the latter was
in her twenties.
Tredwell refused to accept the young medical student
as a serious suitor. Not only was the young man financially
unacceptable, but worse, he was a Catholic. Tredwell did
not believe in encouraging marriages out of the faith and
even if Louis had offered to change religion, it is doubtful
the father would have changed his mind. In all this he paid
absolutely no heed to his daughter’s feelings or desires, and
with true Victorian rigidity, forbade her to see the young
man further.
There was finally a showdown between father and
daughter. Tredwell, no longer so young, and afflicted with
the pains and aches of advancing age, pleaded with her not
to disappoint him in his last remaining years. He wanted a
good provider for her, and Louis was not the right man.
Despite her feelings, Gertrude finally succumbed to her
father’s pleading, and sent the young man away. When the
doors closed on him for the last time, it was as if the gates
of Gertrude’s heart had also permanently closed on the
outside world: hence she lived only for her father and his
well-being and no young man ever got to see her again.
Seabury Tredwell proved a difficult and thankless
patient as progressive illness forced him to bed perma-
nently. When he finally passed away in 1865, the two
remaining sisters, Gertrude and Phoebe, continued to live
in the house. But it was Gertrude who ran it. They only
went out after dark and only when absolutely necessary to
buy food. The windows were always shuttered and even
small leaks covered with felt or other material to keep out
the light and cold.
As the two sisters cut themselves off from the outside
world, all kinds of legends sprang up about them. But after
A secret trap door leading to a passage
connecting the house to the East River
Phoebe died and left Gertrude all alone in the big house,
even the legends stopped and gradually the house and its
owner sank into the oblivion afforded yesterday’s sensation
by a relentless, ever-changing humanity.
Finally, at age ninety-three, Gertrude passed on. The
year was 1933, and America had bigger headaches than
what to do about New York’s last authentic brownstone.
The two servants who had shared the house with Gertrude
to her death, and who had found her peacefully asleep,
soon left, leaving the house to either wreckers or new own-
ers, or just neglect. There was neither electricity nor tele-
phone in it, but the original furniture and all the fine works
of art Seabury Tredwell had put into the house were still
there. The only heat came from fireplaces with which the
house was filled. The garden had long gone, and only the
house remained, wedged in between a garage and a nonde-
script modern building. Whatever elegance there had been
was now present only inside the house or perhaps in the
aura of its former glories.
The neighborhood was no longer safe, and the house
itself was in urgent need of repairs. Eventually, responsible
city officials realized the place should be made into a
museum, for it presented one of the few houses in America
with everything — from furniture to personal belongings
and clothes — still intact as it was when people lived in it in
the middle of the nineteenth century. There were legal
The Old Merchant’s House Ghost
(New York City)
361
problems of clearing title, but eventually this was done and
the Old Merchant’s House became a museum.
When the first caretaker arrived to live in the house,
it was discovered that thieves had already broken in and
made off with a pair of Sheffield candelabra, a first edition
of Charlotte Bronte, and the Tredwell family Bible. But the
remainder was still intact and a lot of cleaning up had to
be done immediately.
One of the women helping in this work found herself
alone in the house one afternoon. She had been busy carry-
ing some of Miss Gertrude’s clothing downstairs so that it
could be properly displayed in special glass cases. When
she rested from her work for a moment, she looked up and
saw herself being watched intently by a woman on the
stairs. At first glance, she looked just like Princess Mar-
garet of England, but then she noticed the strange old-
fashioned clothes the woman wore and realized she
belonged to another age. The tight fitting bodice had a row
of small buttons and the long, straight skirt reached to the
floor. As the volunteer stared in amazement at the stranger,
wondering who it could be, the girl on the stairs vanished.
At first the lady did not want to talk about her expe-
rience, but when it happened several times, and always
when she was alone in the house, she began to wonder
whether she wasn’t taking leave of her senses. But soon
another volunteer moved into the picture, a lady writer
who had passed the house on her way to the library to do
some research. Intrigued by the stately appearance of the
house, she looked further and before long was in love with
the house.
There was a certain restlessness that permeated the
house after dark, but she blamed it on her imagination and
the strange neighborhood. She did not believe in ghosts nor
was she given to fancies, and the noises didn’t really dis-
turb her.
She decided that there was a lot of work to be done if
the museum were to take its proper place among other
showplaces, and she decided to give the tourists and other
visitors a good run for their money — all fifty cents’ worth
of it.
The next few weeks were spent in trying to make
sense out of the masses of personal effects, dresses, gowns,
shoes, hats, for the Tredwells had left everything behind
them intact — as if they had intended to return to their
earthly possessions one of these days and to resume life as
it was.
Nothing had been given away or destroyed and Mrs.
R., writer that she was, immediately realized how impor-
tant this intact state of the residence was for future
research of that period. She went to work at once and as
she applied herself to the job at hand, she began to get the
feel of the house as if she had herself lived in it for many
years.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
She started her job by taking inventory of the late
Gertrude Tredwell’s wardrobe once again. This time the
job had to be done properly, for the visitors to the museum
were entitled to see a good display of period costumes. As
she picked up Gertrude's vast wardrobe one article at a
time, she had the uncanny feeling of being followed step-
for-step. The house was surrounded by slums and the dan-
ger of real break-ins very great, but this was different: no
flesh and blood intruders followed her around on her
rounds from the third floor down to the basement and back
again for more clothes.
Often a chilly feeling touched her as she walked
through the halls, but she attributed that to the moist
atmosphere in the old house.
One day when she entered the front bedroom that
used to be Gertrude’s from the hall bedroom, she had the
distinct impression of another presence close to her. Some-
thing was brushing by her to reach the other door that
opened into the front bedroom before she did!
When this happened again sometime later, she began
to wonder if the stories about the house being haunted,
that circulated freely in the neighborhood, did not have
some basis of fact. Certainly there was a presence, and the
sound of another person brushing past her was quite
unmistakable.
While she was still deliberating whether or not to
discuss this with any of her friends, an event took place
that brought home even more the suspicion that she was
never quite alone in the house.
It was on a morning several months after her arrival,
that she walked into the kitchen carrying some things to be
put into the display cases ranged along the wall opposite
the fireplace. Out of the side of her eye she caught sight of
what looked like the figure of a small, elegant woman
standing in front of this huge fireplace. While Mrs. R. was
able to observe the brown taffeta gown she was wearing,
her head was turned away, so she could not see her fea-
tures. But there were masses of brown hair. The whole
thing was in very soft focus, rather misty without being
insubstantial. Her hands, however, holding a cup and
saucer, were very beautiful and quite sharply defined
against her dark gown.
Mrs. R. was paralyzed, afraid to turn her head to
look directly at her. Suddenly, however, without any con-
scious volition, she spun around and quickly walked out of
the room into the hall. By the time she got to the stairs she
was covered with cold perspiration and her hands were
shaking so violently she had to put down the things she
was carrying.
Now she knew that Gertrude Tredwell was still
around, but not the way she looked when she died. Rather,
she had turned back her memory clock to that period of
her life when she was gayest and her young man had not
yet been sent away by a cruel and unyielding father.
When the realization came to Mrs. R. as to who her
ghostly friend was, her fears went away. After all, who
362
would have a better right to be in this house than the one
who had sacrificed her love and youth to it and what it
stood for in her father's view. This change of her attitude
must have somehow gotten through to the ghostly lady as
well, by some as yet undefinable telegraph connecting all
things, living and dead.
Sometime thereafter, Mrs. R. was arranging flowers
for the table in the front parlor. The door was open to the
hallway and she was quite alone in the house. Mrs. R. was
so preoccupied with the flower arrangement, she failed to
notice that she was no longer alone.
Finally, a strange sound caught her attention and she
looked up from the table. The sound was that of a taffeta
gown swishing by in rapid movement. As her eyes followed
the sound, she saw a woman going up the stairs. It was the
same, petite figure she had originally seen at the fireplace
sometime before. Again she wore the brown taffeta gown.
As she rounded the stairs and disappeared from view, the
sound of the gown persisted for a moment or two after the
figure herself had gotten out of sight.
This time Mrs. R. did not experience any paralysis or
fear. Instead, a warm feeling of friendship between her and
the ghost sprang up within her, and contentedly, as if
nothing had happened, she continued with her flower
arrangement.
All this time the actual curator of the Old Merchant’s
House was a professional antiquarian named Janet
Hutchinson who shared the appointments with her friend
Emeline Paige, editor of The Villager, a neighborhood
newspaper, and Mrs. Hutchinson’s son, Jefferson, aged
fourteen. In addition, there was a cat named Eloise who
turned out to be a real "fraiddicat” for probably good and
valid reasons.
Although Mrs. Hutchinson did not encounter any-
thing ghostly during her tenure, the lady editor did feel
very uneasy in the back bedroom, where much of the
tragedy had taken place.
* 66
The House on Fifth Street
(New Jersey)
North Fifth Street in Camden, New Jersey, was in a
part of town that is best avoided, especially at night. But
even in the daytime it had the unmistakable imprint of a
depressed — and depressing — area, downtrodden because of
economic blight. The people leaning against shabby doors,
idle and grim-looking, are people out of step with progress,
people who don’t work or can’t work and who hate those
who do. This is what it looks like today, with the busy fac-
tories and the smelly buildings of industrial Camden all
around it, the super-modern expressway cutting a swath
Another person who felt the oppressive atmosphere
of the place, without being able to rationalize it away for
any good reasons, was Elizabeth Byrd, the novelist and her
friend, whom I must call Mrs. B., for she shies away from
the uncanny in public. Mrs. B. visited the house one
evening in 1964. As she stood in what was once Gertrude’s
bedroom, she noticed that the bedspread of Gertrude’s
bed was indented as if someone had just gotten up from it.
Clearly, the rough outline of a body could be made out.
As she stared in disbelief at the bed, she noticed a
strange perfume in the air. Those with her remarked on the
scent, but before anyone could look for its source, it had
evaporated. None of the ladies with Mrs. B. had on any
such perfume and the house had been sterile and quiet for
days.
Since that time, no further reports of any unusual
experiences have come to light. On one occasion in 1965,
photographs of the fireplace near which Mrs. R. had seen
the ghost of Gertrude Tredwell were taken simultaneously
by two noted photographers with equipment previously
tested for proper performance. This was done to look into
the popular legend that this fireplace could not be pho-
tographed and that whenever anyone so attempted, that
person would have a blank film as a result. Perhaps the leg-
end was started by a bad photographer, or it was just that,
a legend, for both gentlemen produced almost identical
images of the renowned fireplace with their cameras. How-
ever, Gertrude Tredwell was not standing in front of it.
This is as it should be. Mrs. R., the untiring spirit
behind the Historical Landmarks Society that keeps the
building going and out of the wreckers’ hands, feels certain
that Gertrude need not make another appearance now that
everything is secure. And to a Victorian lady, that matters !l
a great deal.
through it all as if those on it wouldn’t want to stop even
long enough to have a good look at what is on both sides
of the road.
This grimy part of town wasn’t always a slum area,
however. Back in the 1920s, when Prohibition was king,
some pretty substantial people lived here and the houses
looked spic- and -span then.
Number 522, which has since given up its struggle
against progress by becoming part of a city-wide improve-
ment program, was then a respectable private residence.
Situated in the middle of a short block, it was a gray, con-
servative-looking stone building with three stories and a
backyard. The rooms are railroad flats, that is, they run
The House on Fifth Street (New Jersey)
363
from one to the other and if one were to go to the rear of
the house one would have to enter from the front and walk
through several rooms to get there. It wasn’t the most
inspiring way of building homes, but to the lower, or even
the higher, middle classes of that time, it seemed practical
and perfectly all right.
From the ground floor — with its front parlor followed
by other living rooms and eventually a kitchen leading to
the backyard — rose a turning staircase leading up to two
more flights. This staircase was perhaps the most impres-
sive part of the house and somehow overshadowed the sim-
plicity of the rest of the layout. A nicely carved wooden
banister framed it all the way up and though the house, in
keeping with the custom of the times, was kept quite dark,
the many years of handling the banister had given it a
shine that sparkled even in so subdued an illumination.
Heavy dust lay on stairs and floors and what there was of
furniture was covered with tarpaulins that had grown black
in time. Clearly, the house had seen better days but those
times were over, the people were gone, and only a short
time stood between the moment of rest and the sledge
hammer of tomorrow.
Edna Martin is a bright young woman working for a
local radio station in Camden, and spooks are as far
removed from her way of thinking as anything could possi-
bly be. When her parents moved into what was then a
vacant house, she laughed a little at its forbidding appear-
ance, but being quite young at the time, she was not at all
frightened or impressed. Neither was her mother, who is a
woman given to practical realities. There is a sister, Janet,
and the two girls decided they were going to enjoy the big
old house, and enjoy it they did.
Eventually, Edna began to notice some peculiar
things about their home: the noise of rustling silk, the
swish of a dress nearby when no one who could be causing
these sounds was to be seen. On one occasion, she was
having a quiet evening at home when she heard someone
come up the stairs and enter the middle bedroom.
At that moment, she heard someone sigh as if in
great sadness. Since she was quite sure that no one but her-
self was upstairs, she was puzzled by these things and
entered the middle bedroom immediately. It was more out
of curiosity than any sense of fear that she did so, not
knowing for sure what she might find, if anything.
Before she entered the room, she heard the bed-
springs squeak as if someone had lain down on the bed.
She examined the bedspread — there was no indication of a
visitor. Again, the rustling of clothes made her keenly
aware of another presence in the room with her. Thought-
fully, she went back to her own room.
The parents and their married daughters, with their
husbands and children, eventually shared the big house,
and with so many people about, extraneous noises could
very easily be overlooked or explained away.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
And yet, there were ominous signs that the house
was home to others besides themselves.
Janet woke up one night soon after the incident in
the middle bedroom, and listened with a sharpened sense
of hearing, the kind of super-hearing one sometimes gets in
the still of night. Something very light was walking up the
stairs, and it sounded like the steps of a very light person,
such as a child. The steps came gradually nearer. Now
they were at the top of the stairs and then down the hall,
until they entered the girl’s room. She could hear every
single floor board creak with the weight of an unseen per-
son. Frozen with fright, she dared not to move or speak.
Even if she had wanted them to, her lips would not have
moved. Then, as she thought she could stand it no longer,
the steps came to a sudden halt beside her bed. She clearly
felt the presence of a person near her staring at her!
Somehow, she managed to fall asleep, and nothing
happened after that for a few weeks. She had almost forgot-
ten the incident when she came home late one night from a
date in town.
It was her custom to undress in the middle bedroom,
and put her clothes on the bed, which was not occupied.
She did not wish to wake the others, so she undressed hur-
riedly in the dark. As she threw her clothes upon the bed,
someone in the bed let out a sigh, and turned over, as if
half- awakened from deep sleep. Janet assumed her niece
had come to visit and that she had been given the room. So
she gathered her clothes from the bed and placed them on
the chair instead, thinking nothing further about the
matter.
Next morning, she went downstairs to have breakfast
and at the same time have a chat with her niece, Miki. But
the girl wasn’t around. "Where is Miki, Mother?” she
inquired. Her mother looked at her puzzled.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she shrugged. "She
hasn’t been here for weeks.”
Janet froze in her tracks. Who had turned with a sigh
in the empty bed?
The two girls had a close friend, Joanne, with whom
they shared many things, including the eerie experiences in
the house that somehow increased as the years went on.
One evening Joanne was typing in the front bedroom on
the second floor while Janet lay on the bed on her stomach.
Joanne’s back was turned towards Janet at the time
and the two girls were both spending the evening in their
own way. Suddenly, Janet felt a strange sensation on the
sole of her shoe. It felt as if someone had hit her in that
spot, and hit her hard. The noise was so strong Joanne
turned around and asked what had happened. Janet, who
had jumped up and moved to the window, could only
shrug. Was someone trying to communicate with her in
this strange way?
Then there was the time the three girls were sitting
on the bed and their attention was drawn to the foot of the
bed, somehow. There, wriggling about five inches into the
364
night air, was a greenish ‘‘thing’’ that had materialized out
of nowhere. Letting out a shriek, Janet stared at it. Evi-
dently she was the only one who could see it. As she
looked through horror-stricken eyes, she could vaguely
make out a small head nearby. Memories of the ghostly
footsteps she had taken for a child some time ago came
back to haunt her. Was there not a connection? Then the
"thing” vanished.
The girls did not talk about these things if they could
help it, for by now they knew there was something very
peculiar about the house. But as yet they were not willing
to believe in such things as ghosts of the departed. It all
seemed terribly unreal to them.
When Edna was not yet married, the man she later
married was an airman stationed at a base near Trenton,
New Jersey. After one visit to her in Camden, he happened
to miss the midnight bus back to camp, and there was
nothing to be done but wait up for the next one, which
was at 2:20 A.M. Since Edna had to get up early the next
day, she went upstairs to get ready for bed. She left her
fiancee downstairs where there was a couch he could use,
to rest up before going out to catch his bus. The young
airman settled back with a smoke and relaxed.
Suddenly he heard the front door open. The door is a
very heavy, old-fashioned one, with a lock that is hard to
open unless you have the key. The airman was puzzled
because he himself had seen Edna set the lock a few
moments ago. Before he could try to figure this out, he
heard the vestibule door open and suddenly there was an
icy atmosphere in the room. True, it was winter, but until
then he had not been cold. He immediately assumed a bur-
glar had entered the house and rolled up his sleeves to
receive him properly.
But then he experienced an eerie feeling quite differ-
ent from anything he had ever felt before. His hair stood
up as if electric current were going through it, and yet he
was not the least bit frightened. Then a bell started to ring.
The bell was inside a closed case, standing quietly in the
corner. He suddenly realized that a bell could not clang
unless someone first lifted it. When he came to that con-
clusion and saw no flesh-and-blood invader, he decided
he’d rather wait for his bus outside. He spent the next hour
or so at a drafty corner, waiting for his bus. Somehow it
seemed to him a lot cozier.
That same night, Edna was awakened from light
sleep by the sound of a disturbance downstairs. As her
senses returned she heard someone clanging against the
pipes downstairs. She immediately assumed it was her
fiance playing a trick on her, for he had a talent for practi-
cal jokes. She hurriedly put on her robe and went down-
stairs. Immediately the noise stopped. When she reached
the vestibule, her fiancee was not there.
When she told him about this later and he reported
the incident of the bell, she thought that he was now suffi-
ciently impressed to accept the reality of ghosts in the
house. But the young airman did not take the psychic
occurrences too seriously despite his own encounter. He
thought the whole thing extremely funny and one night he
decided to make the ghosts work overtime. By then he and
Edna were married. That night, he tied a string to the door
of their bedroom, a door leading out into the hall. The
other end of the string he concealed so that he could pull it
and open the door, once they were in bed.
As soon as the lights were out, but sufficient light
coming in through the windows remained, he started to
stare at the door so as to attract his wife's attention to that
spot. While she looked, he pointed at the door and said in
a frightened voice, "Look, it’s opening by itself!”
And so it was. He pulled off the trick so well, Edna
did not notice it and in near-panic sprinkled the door with
holy water all over. This made him laugh and he confessed
his joke.
“Don’t ever do such a thing,” she warned him, when
she realized she had been made a fool of. But he shrugged.
She returned to bed and admonished him never to tempt
the unseen forces lest they "pay him back” in their own
kind.
She had hardly finished, when the door to the middle
room began to open slowly, ever so slowly, by its own voli-
tion. As her husband stared in amazement, and eventually
with mounting terror, the door kept swinging open until it
had reached the back wall, then stopped. For a moment,
neither of them moved. There was nothing else, at least not
for the moment, so they jumped out of bed and the airman
tried the door to see if he could explain “by natural means”
what had just taken place before their eyes. But they both
knew that this particular door had been taken off its hinges
sometime before and had been propped into a closed posi-
tion. In addition, in order to open it at all, it would have
had to be lifted over two rugs on the floor. For several
hours they tried to make this door swing open, one way or
another. It would not move. Edna held the door by the
hinges to keep it from falling forward while her husband
tried to open it. It was impossible. Then they managed to
get it to stay on the hinges, finally, and started to open it. <
It swung out about an inch before the rugs on the floor
stopped it. What superior force had lifted the door over the
rugs and pushed it against the back wall?
Still, he argued, there had to be some logical explana-
tion. They let the matter rest and for a while nothing
unusual happened in the house. Then, Edna and her hus-
band had moved to the Middle West and were no longer
aware of day-to-day goings-on in Camden. When they
came to visit the family in Camden, after some time, they
naturally wondered about the house but preferred not to
bring up the subject of ghosts. Actually, Edna prayed that
nothing should mar their homecoming.
Then it was time to leave again, and Edna's husband,
good-naturedly, reminded her that he had neither seen nor
heard nay ghosts all that time. On that very day, their little
The House on Fifth Street (New Jersey)
365
son took sick, and they had to stay longer because of his
condition.
They set up a cot for him in the living room, where
they were then sleeping. If the boy were in need of help,
they would be close by. During the night, they suddenly
heard the cot collapse. They rushed over and quickly fixed
it. The boy had not even awakened, luckily. As they were
bent over the cot, working on it, they heard someone com-
ing down the stairs.
Edna paid no particular attention to it, but her hus-
band seemed strangely affected.
"Did you hear someone just come down the stairs?”
he finally asked.
"Of course I did,” Edna replied, “that was probably
Miss Robinson.”
Miss Robinson was a boarder living up on the third
floor.
"No, it wasn’t,” her husband said, and shook his
head, “I watched those stairs closely. I saw those steps
bend when someone walked over them — but there was no
Miss Robinson, or for that matter, anyone else.”
“You mean. . .?” Edna said and for the first time her
husband looked less confident. They made a complete
search of the house from top to bottom. No one else was
home at the time but the two of them and the sick child.
Edna, who is now a divorcee, realized that her family
home held a secret, perhaps a dark secret, that somehow
defied a rational explanation. Her logical mind could not
accept any other and yet she could not find any answers to
the eerie phenomena that had evidently never ceased.
If there was a ghostly presence, could she help it get
free? What was she to do? But she knew nothing about
those things. Perhaps her thoughts permeated to the ether
areas where ghostly presences have a shadowy existence, or
perhaps the unhappy wraith simply drew more and more
power from the living in the house to manifest.
Sometime later, Joanne, Edna’s close friend, came to
her for help in the matter of a costume for a barn dance
she had been asked to attend. Perhaps Edna had some suit-
able things for her? Edna had indeed.
"Go down to the basement,” she directed her friend.
"There are some trunks down there filled with materials.
Take what you can use.” Joanne, a teacher, nodded and
went down into the cellar.
Without difficulty, she located the musty trunks. It
was not quite so easy to open them, for they had evidently
not been used for many years. Were those remnants left
behind by earlier tenants of the house? After all, the pre-
sent tenants had taken over a partially furnished house and
so little was known about the people before them. The
house was at least sixty years old, if not older.
As Joanne was pulling torn dresses, some of them
clearly from an earlier era, she was completely taken up
with the task at hand, that of locating a suitable costume
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
for the dance. But she could not help noticing that some-
thing very strange was happening to her hair. It was a
strange sensation, as if her hair suddenly stood on end! She
passed her hand lightly over her forehead and felt that her
hair was indeed stiff and raised up! At the same time she
had a tingling sensation all over her body.
She dropped the dress she had been holding and
waited, for she was sure someone was standing and staring
at her. Any moment now, that person would speak. But as
the seconds ticked away and no one spoke, she began to
wonder. Finally, she could no longer contain herself and
turned slowly around.
Back a few yards was a whirlpool of smoke, whirling
and moving at rapid pace. It had roughly the shape of a
human figure, and as she looked at this “thing” with
mounting terror, she clearly saw that where the face should
be there was a gray mass of smoke, punctuated only by
two large holes — where the eyes would normally be!
As she stared in utter disbelief, the figure came
toward her. She felt the air being drawn from her lungs at
its approach and knew that if she did not move immedi-
ately she would never get out of the cellar.
Somehow she managed to inch her way toward the
stairs and literally crawled on all fours up to the ground
floor. When she reached the fresh air, she managed to
gather her wits sufficiently to tell Edna what she had seen.
But so terrible was the thought of what she had wit-
nessed she preferred not to accept it, as time went by. To
her, to this day, it was merely the shadow of someone
passing by outside the cellar windows. . ..
Meanwhile the footsteps on the stairs continued but
somehow the fury was spent. Gradually, the disturbances
receded or perhaps the people in the house became used to
them and paid them no further heed.
After Edna finally left the house and moved into a
modern, clean flat, the house was left to its own world of
ghosts until the wreckers would come to give it the coup de
grace.
But Edna had not forgotten her years of terror, so
when she heard of a famed psychic able to communicate
with such creatures as she imagined her house was filled
with, she tried to make contact and invite the lady to the
house. She herself would not come, but the door was open.
It was a muggy day in July 1967 that the psychic
lady and a friend and co-worker paid the house a fleeting
visit. Perhaps an hour at the most, then they would have to
go on to other, more urgent things and places. In that
hour, though, they were willing to help the unseen ones
out of their plight, if they cared to be helped.
The psychic had not been inside the musty living
room for more than ten seconds when she saw the woman
on the stairs. a,,
"There is a little boy, also, and the woman has fallen
to her death on the stairs,” she said, quietly, and slowly
walked back and forth, her footsteps echoing strangely in
the empty, yet tense old house.
366
“Go home,” she pleaded with the woman. “You’ve
passed over and you mustn’t stay on here where you’ve
suffered so much.”
“Do you get any names?” asked her companion, ever
the researcher. The psychic nodded and gave a name,
which the gentleman quickly wrote down.
"All she wants is a little sympathy, to be one of the
living," the psychic explained, then turned again to the
staircase which still gleamed in the semi-darkness of the
vestibule. "Go home, woman,” she intoned once more and
there seemed a quiet rustling of skirts as she said it.
Time was up and the last visitors to the house on
Fifth Street finally left.
The next day, the gentleman matched the name his
psychic friend had given him with the name of a former
owner of the house.
But as their taxi drew away in a cloud of gasoline
fumes, they were glad they did not have to look back at the
grimy old house.
For had they done so, they would have noticed that
one of the downstairs curtains, which had been down for a
long time, was now drawn back a little — just enough to let
someone peek out from behind it.
* 67
Morgan Hall (Long Island)
Alice is a twenty- two-year-old blonde, way above
average in looks and intelligence. She lives in Manhattan,
has a decent, law-abiding seaman for a father and an Irish
heritage going back, way back, but mixed in with some
French and various other strains that have blended well in
Alice's face, which is one of continual curiosity and alert-
ness. Alice’s work is routine, as are most of her friends.
She takes this in her stride now, for she has another world
waiting for her where nothing is ever ordinary.
* * *
When she was born, her parents moved into an old
house in Brooklyn that had the reputation of being queer.
Alice was only a few months old when they left again, but
during those months she would not go into her mother’s
bedroom without a fierce struggle, without breaking into
tears immediately — a behavior so markedly different from
her otherwise “good” behavior as a baby that it could not
help but be noticed by her parents. While her father had
no interest in such matters, her mother soon connected the
child’s strange behavior with the other strange things in the
house: the doors that would open by themselves, the foot-
steps, the strange drafts, especially in the bedroom little
Alice hated so much.
When Alice was about twelve years old, and the fam-
ily had moved from the old neighborhood into another
house, she found herself thinking of her grandmother all of
a sudden one day. Her grandparents lived a distance away
upstate and there had been no recent contact with them.
“Grandmother is dead,” Alice said to her mother,
matter- of- factly. Her mother stared at her in disbelief.
Hours later the telephone rang. Grandmother, who had
been in excellent health, had suddenly passed away.
Her mother gave the girl a queer look but she had
known of such gifts and realized her daughter, an only
child, was something special. Within six months, the tele-
phone rang twice more. Each time, Alice looked up and
said:
“Grandfather’s dead.”
“Uncle’s dead.”
And they were.
While her father shook his head over all this "fool-
ishness,” her mother did not scoff at her daughter’s pow-
ers. Especially after Alice had received a dream warning
from her dead grandmother, advising her of an impending
car accident. She was shown the exact location where it
would happen, and told that if her mother were to sit in
front, she would be badly hurt but it Alice were to change
places with her, Alice would not be as badly hurt.
After the dream, without telling her mother her rea-
sons, she insisted on changing places with her on the trip.
Sure enough, the car was hit by another automobile. Had
her mother been where Alice sat, she might not have
reacted quickly enough and been badly hurt. But Alice was
prepared and ducked — and received only a whiplash.
Afterward, she discussed all this with her mother.
Her mother did not scoff, but asked her what grandmother,
who had given them the warning, had looked like in the
vision.
“She had on a house dress and bedroom slippers,”
Alice replied. Her mother nodded. Although the grand-
mother had lost both legs due to diabetes, she had been
buried with her favorite bedroom slippers in the coffin.
Alice had never seen nor known this.
When she was seventeen years of age, Alice had a
strong urge to become a nun. She felt the world outside
had little to offer her and began to consider entering a con-
vent. Perhaps this inclination was planted in her mind
when she was a camp counselor for a Catholic school on
Long Island. She liked the serenity of the place and the
apparently quiet, contemplative life of the sisters.
Morgan Hall (Long Island)
367
* * *
On her very first visit to the convent, however, she
felt uneasy, Morgan Hall is a magnificently appointed
mansion in Glen Cove, Long Island, that had only been
converted to religious purposes some years ago. Prior to
that it was the Morgan estate with all that the name of that
wealthy family implies. Nothing about it was either ugly or
frightening in the least, and yet Alice felt immediately ter-
rified when entering its high-ceilinged corridors.
As a prospective postulant, it was necessary for her to
visit the place several times prior to being accepted, and on
each occasion her uneasiness mounted.
But she ascribed these feelings to her lack of familiar-
ity with the new place. One night, her uncle and grandfa-
ther appeared to her in a dream and told her not to worry,
that everything would be all right with her. She took this
as an encouragement to pursue her religious plans and
shortly after formally entered the convent.
She moved in just a few days before her eighteenth
birthday, looking forward to a life totally different from
that of her friends and schoolmates. The room she was
assigned to adjoined one of the cloisters, but at first she
was alone in it as her future roommate was to arrive a week
late. Thus she spent her very first days at Morgan Hall
alone in the room. The very first night, after she had
retired, she heard someone walking up and down outside
the door. She thought this strange at that hour of the night,
knowing full well that convents like their people to retire
early. Finally her curiosity overcame her natural shyness of
being in a new place, and she peaked out of her door into
the corridor. The footsteps were still audible. But there was
no one walking about outside. Quickly, she closed the door
and went to bed.
The next morning, she discussed the matter with six
other postulants in rooms nearby. They, too, had heard the
footsteps that night. In fact, they had heard them on many
other nights as well when there was positively no one walk-
ing about outside.
As she got used to convent routine, Alice realized
how impossible it would be for one of them — or even one of
the novices, who had been there a little longer than they
— to walk around the place at the hour of the night when
she heard the steps. Rigid convent rules included a bell,
which rang at 10 P.M. Everybody had to be in their rooms
and in bed at that time, except for dire emergencies. One
just didn't walk about the corridors at midnight or later for
the sheer fun of it at Morgan Hall, if she did not wish to
be expelled. All lights go out at ten also and nothing
moves.
At first, Alice thought the novices were playing tricks
on the new arrivals by walking around downstairs to create
the footsteps, perhaps to frighten the postulants in the way
college freshmen are often hazed by their elder colleagues.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
But she soon realized that this was not so, that the novices
were no more allowed out after ten than they were.
Her psychic past did not allow Alice to let matters
rest there and her curiosity forced her to make further
inquiries as best she could under the circumstances. After
all, you don’t run to the Mother Superior and ask, Who
walks the corridors at night, Ma’am?
It was then she learned that the house had been J. P.
Morgan’s mansion originally and later had been used by
the Russian Embassy for their staff people. She recalled the
battles the Russians had fought with the Glen Cove town-
ship over taxes and how they finally vacated the premises
in less than perfect condition. As a sort of anticlimax, the
Catholic nuns had moved in and turned the Hall into a
convent and school.
A conversation with the convent librarian wasn’t par-
ticularly fruitful, either. Yes, Mr. Morgan built the house
in 1910. No, he didn’t die here, he died in Spain. Why did
she want to know?
Alice wondered about Mr. Morgan’s daughter.
Alice Morgan had lived in this house and died here
of typhoid fever in the early years of her life.
But try as she might, she never got the librarian to
tell her anything helpful. Naturally, Alice did not wish to
bring up the real reason for her curiosity. But it seemed as
if the librarian sensed something about it, for she curtly
turned her head sideways when speaking of the Morgans as
if she did not wish to answer.
Frustrated in her inquiry, Alice left and went back to
her chores. One night in October 1965, Alice was walking
in the hall of the postulancy, that part of the building
reserved for the new girls who were serving their appren-
ticeship prior to being admitted to the convent and to tak-
ing their final vows.
It was a cool night, and Alice had walked fairly
briskly to the extreme end of the hall and then stopped for
a moment to rest. As she turned around and faced toward
the opposite end of the hall, whence she had just come, she
noticed a girl standing there who had not been there
before. She wore a long, black dress similar to the dresses
the postulants wore and Alice took her to be her girl
friend.
She noticed the figure enter the room at the end of
the hall. This room was not a bedroom but used by the
postulants for study purposes.
"It’s Vera,” Alice thought, and decided to join her
and see what she was up to in that room.
Quickly, she walked towards the room and entered it.
The lights were off and Alice thought this peculiar. Was
her friend perhaps playing games with her? The room at
this hour was quite dark.
So she turned on the lights, and looked around.
There was no one in the room now, and there was no way
anyone could have left the room without her noticing it,
Alice reasoned. She examined the windows and found them
tightly closed. Not that she expected her friend to exit the
368
room by that way, but she wanted to be sure the person —
whoever she might have been — could not have left that
way. This was on the third floor and anyone trying to leave
by the windows would have had to jump, or have a ladder
outside.
Suddenly it hit Alice that she had not heard anything
at all. All the time she had seen the figure walk into the
room, there had been no footsteps, no noise of a door
opening, nothing at all. Morgan Hall’s doors open with a
considerable amount of squeaking and none of that was
audible when she had seen the figure before.
Alice quickly left and hurried to her own room to fig-
ure this out quietly.
On recollection, she visualized the figure again and it
occurred to her at once that there was something very odd
about the girl. For one thing, the long gown the postulants
wear moves when they walk. But the figure she had seen
was stiff and seemed to glide along the floor rather than
actually walk on it. The corridor was properly lit and she
had seen the figure quite clearly. What she had not seen
were her ankles and socks, something she would have
observed had it been one of her friends.
Although the door was not closed, the room was
actually a corner room that could be entered in only one
way, from the front door. Alice was sure she had not seen
the figure emerge from it again. There was no place to hide
in the room, had this been her girlfriend playing a joke on
her. Alice had quickly examined the closet, desk, and beds
— and no one was hiding anywhere in that room.
Eventually, she gathered up enough courage to seek
out her friend Vera and discuss the matter with her. She
found that there was a “joke” going around the convent
that Alice Morgan’s ghost was roaming the corridors, but
that the whole matter was to be treated strictly as a gag.
Yet she also discovered that there was one part of the hall
that was off limits to anyone alone. In what the girls called
the catacombs, at ground level, was the laundry room. The
third section, way back, was never to be entered by any of
them at night, and in the daytime only if in pairs. Yet, the
area was well lit. Alice could not get any information for
the reasons for this strange and forbidding order. In a con-
vent, speaking to anyone but one’s own group is extremely
difficult without “proper permission” and this was not a
fitting subject to discuss.
The novices, whom she approached next, suddenly
became serious and told her to forget it: there were things
going on in the building that could not be explained. She
was not to pay attention, and pray hard instead.
Alice wondered about this attitude, and perhaps it
was then that her first doubts concerning her ecclesiastical
future began to enter her mind.
Shortly after, it was still October 1965, she lay awake
in bed at night, thinking of her future at the convent. The
clock had just chimed eleven and she was still wide awake.
Night after night, she had heard the walking in the hall.
After weeks of these manifestations, her nerves began to
get edgy and she could not sleep as easily as she used to
when she still lived in Brooklyn. Sure enough, there they
were again, those incessant footsteps. They seemed to her
the steps of a medium-heavy person, more like a woman’s
than a man’s, and they seemed to be bent on some definite
business, scurrying along the hall as if in a hurry.
Suddenly the night was pierced by a shriek: it seemed
directly outside her door, but below. Since she was on the
top floor, the person would have to be on the second floor.
There was no mistaking it, this was the outcry of a woman
in great pain, in the agony of being hurt by someone!
This time she was almost too scared to look, but she
did open the door only to find the corridor abandoned and
quiet now.
She ran in to speak to the other postulants, regula-
tions or no regulations. She found them huddled in their
beds in abject fear. All eight of them had heard the blood-
curdling scream!
By now Alice was convinced that something strange
had taken place here and that a restless personality was
stalking the corridors. A short time later, she and Vera
were in their room, getting ready to retire.
It was a cold night, but no wind was about. The win-
dows were the French window type that locked with a
heavy iron rod from top to bottom. No one could open the
window from the outside, the only way it could be opened
would be from the inside, by pushing the rod up.
“We don’t have to lock the window tonight, do we?”
Vera said. "It isn’t windy.”
But they decided to do it anyway as they did every
night. They put their shoes on the window sill, something
they were in the habit of doing so that the small draft com-
ing in below the windows would “air them out.”
After the window was locked, they retired.
It was well into the night, when the girls awoke to a
loud noise. The French window had broken open by itself
and the shoes had been tossed inside the room as if by a
strong storm!
They checked and found the air outside totally still.
Whatever had burst their window open had not been the
wind. But what was it?
The room was ice cold now. They shuddered and
went back to bed.
There is only a small ledge for pigeons to sit on out-
side the window, so no one could have opened the window
from that vantage point. One could hardly expect pigeons
to burst a window open, either.
The girls then realized that the novices who had been
complaining about the windows in their room being con-
stantly open had not been fibbing. Alice and Vera always
kept their windows closed, yet some unseen force had
apparently opened them from inside on a number of occa-
sions. Now they had seen for themselves how it happened.
Morgan Hall (Long Island)
369
Alice realized that the window had been broken open
as if by force from inside, not outside.
“Someone’s trying to get out, not in,” she said, and
her roommate could only shudder.
There were other peculiar things she soon noticed.
Strange cold drafts upstairs and in the attic. Crosses nailed
to the wall next to the entrance to the upstairs rooms. Only
to those rooms, and to no others, and not inside the rooms,
as one might expect in a convent, but just outside as if
they had been placed there to keep something, or someone
evil out!
In the main dining room, a door, when closed, could
not be distinguished from the surrounding wall. A trick
window near the head of the table was actually a mirror
which allowed the man at the head of the table to see who
was coming towards him from all sides.
Banker Morgan lived in considerable fear of his life,
whether imagined or real, but certainly the house was built
to his specifications. In fact, trick mirrors were so placed in
various parts of the main house so that no one could
approach from downstairs and surprise anyone upstairs,
yet no one could see the one watching them through the
mirrors.
Shortly after Alice had moved into the convent, she
began to have strange dreams in which a blonde young girl
named Alice played a prominent role.
In the dream, the girl’s blonde hair changed to curls,
and she heard a voice say, “This is Alice Morgan, I want
to introduce you to her.”
But when she woke up Alice thought this was only
due to her having discussed the matter with the novices.
Alice Morgan was not the disturbed person there, her psy-
chic sense told her.
To her, all ghostly activities centered around that
attic. There were two steps that always squeaked peculiarly
when someone stepped on them. Many times she would
hear them squeak and look to see who was walking on
them, only to find herself staring into nothingness. This
was in the daytime. On other occasions, when she was at
work cleaning garbage cans downstairs — postulants do a lot
of ordinary kitchen work — she would feel herself observed
closely by a pair of eyes staring down at her from the attic.
Yet, no one was up there then.
The torture of the nightly footsteps together with her
doubts about her own calling prompted her finally to seek
release from the convent and return to the outside world,
after three months as a postulant. After she had made this
difficult decision, she felt almost as if all the burdens had
lifted from the room that had been the center of the psy-
chic manifestations.
She decided to make some final inquiries prior to
leaving and since her superiors would not tell her, she
looked the place over by herself, talked to those who were
willing to talk and otherwise used her powers of observa-
tion. Surely, if the haunted area was upstairs, and she knew
by now that it was, it could not be Alice Morgan who was
the restless one.
But then who was?
The rooms on the third floor had originally been ser-
vant quarters as is customary in the mansions of the pre-
World War I period. They were built to house the usually
large staffs of the owners. In the case of the Morgans, that
staff was even larger than most wealthy families.
Was “the restless one” one of the maids who had
jumped out the window in a final burst for freedom, free-
dom from some horrible fate?
Then her thoughts turned to the Communist Russian
occupancy of the building. Had they perhaps tortured
someone up there in her room? The thought was melodra-
matically tempting, but she dismissed it immediately. The
figure she had seen in the hall was dressed in the long
dress of an earlier period. She belonged to the time when
the Morgan Hall was a mansion.
No, she reasoned, it must have been a young girl
who died there while the Morgans had the place and per-
haps her death was hushed up and she wanted it known.
Was it suicide, and did she feel in a kind of personal hell
because of it, especially now that the place was a convent?
Somehow Alice felt that she had stumbled upon the
right answers. That night, the last night she was to spend
at the convent prior to going home, she slept soundly.
For the first time in three months, there were no
footsteps outside her door.
For a while she waited, once the 10 o’clock bell had
sounded, but nothing happened. Whoever it was had
stopped walking.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
370
* 68
The Guardian of the Adobe
(California)
CASA Alvarado IS California’s best preserved adobe
house, one of the few Spanish houses still standing and
inhabited by people descended from the original settlers
who had come to this land with Don Gaspar de Portola
and Padre Junipero Serra in 1769.
The casa stands on an ever-shrinking piece of land
which was once the proud property of two Spanish gentle-
men named Ygnacio Palomares and Ricardo Vejar. They
received it jointly in a Mexican land grant in April 1837,
the Mexican Republic having by then replaced the Spanish
crown as the dispenser of such favors. It was fertile, but
empty, territory before then and the government liked to
encourage potential ranchers in settling here. To get an
idea of the immenseness of such sweeping grants, one must
only remember that the ranch, even as late as 1875 when
the original grant was reconfirmed by the American
authorities, encompassed 22,340 acres.
The two gentlemen divided the land between them,
with Senor Palomares taking the lower half, which became
known as Lower San Jose, while his friend and partner
Vejar took the Upper San Jose for his estate. The choice of
the name of San Jose for the land was not entirely acci-
dental.
It was on March 19, 1837, that the above named two
gentlemen, in the company of a certain Padre Salvidea of
San Gabriel Mission, were taking a break from the day’s
activities underneath a giant oak tree on the property. They
had been surveying the land that was soon to become
theirs officially and the good Padre decided to bless it right
then and there. Since it was the feast day of St. Joseph,
they dedicated it to that saint, and St. Joseph has been ven-
erated in the area ever since as a special "local” protector.
Senor Palomares realized he had a huge piece of land
on his hands, and, being a gregarious fellow, invited some
of his neighbors and relatives to come with him and settle
in this fertile valley. Among them was a certain Ygnacio
Alvarado and his wife Luisa Avila, who were deeded a
piece of land south of the Palomares home itself. The only
stipulation was that a room be set aside in the new house
to accommodate St. Joseph and to serve as a sanctuary for
religious services.
The Alvarado home was duly built of adobe and
wood as was the custom in 1840, in this part of the world.
Adobe is a natural plaster mixture of soil and is made into
bricks that can withstand the ravages of time, if not of
human desecration.
The house consists of a spacious sala or parlor, forty-
two feet long, and originally there were ten adobe rooms
making up the square building, a shingled roof, and portico
running alongside the house on all sides, graduated to the
surrounding ground by three wooden steps. One of the
adobe bedroom wings was destroyed by a later owner, the
Nichols family, who replaced it with three new redwood
rooms containing Victorian fireplaces. They don’t exactly
fit in with the rest of the house but some day, perhaps, the
house may be restored completely to its original splendor.
The main portion contained, in addition to aforemen-
tioned sala, a large, square dining room, a den, two
kitchens and a winery and blacksmith shop. The Nichols
family had no use for the latter two items and replaced
them with a water tower.
That large sala was the sanctuary the original owner
had promised to maintain, and the altar stood at the north
end during services to St. Joseph. However, the Mexicans
are also a practical and joyous people, so after each Mass,
the altar was turned to the wall and a fiesta held in the
same room, which was obviously suitable for both church
and ballroom!
That homey practice came to an end when the
Pomona Land and Water Company acquired the estate. At
the same time, the parish priest of St. Joseph’s in Pomona
took over the Mass which was no longer followed by a
fiesta, churches being what they are.
As the years went on, Senor Alvarado was stricken
with paralysis, and confined to his bed. But he ordered his
house to be kept open to all his friends, and despite the
owner’s illness, it continued to be filled with many people,
coming and going, and the sounds of hospitality. Dona
Luisa, the owner’s wife, ministered to the throngs, dressed
in black, as was the Spanish custom, and wearing a white
neck scarf over the shoulder, pinned at the throat with a
brooch of Spanish gold. The Alvarado dances continued to
be gay affairs.
The community that had sprung up around the estate
produced many children and before long it became neces-
sary to build a school, because the Casa Alvarado, where
the sessions had first been held, proved much too small.
In the early 1870s, therefore, a plain frame building,
the new school, was erected southeast of the adobe.
The two adobe houses — the Palomares site and the
Casa Alvarado — became the property of the Nichols fam-
ily, owners of the Pomona Land and Water Company, in
1887, but eventually the heirs sold the Palomares house.
They kept the Casa Alvarado and one day a couple from
Sherman Oaks, by the name of Fages, visited the house
and immediately fell in love with it. They were and are
antiquarians, and the casa was just what they wanted.
Devout people, they asked St. Joseph to intercede on their
behalf, and sure enough, six years later the house was for
sale. What made their possession even more appropriate
was the fact that Mrs. Isabella Fages is a direct descendant
of the original Alvarado family and thus it was in a way a
homecoming for both family and house.
After moving in, they had a priest, Father Mathew
Poetzel, bless and rededicate the house and grounds to St.
The Guardian of the Adobe (Galifornia)
371
Joseph, and they placed a plaque telling its remarkable his-
tory upon the outside wall. The land had dwindled over
the years and was now not much more than the ground
required to have a homestead.
A little to the south there was once a wooden barn,
part of the estate. That barn, dating back to the 1840s, had
long since been turned into a house. Despite its proximity
to the Casa Alvarado, it belongs to different owners, and
has been separated from the rest of the estate for many
years. But to those who see the Rancho San Jose as one
entity, it is of course still part and parcel of the original
land grant.
Of course, the city of Pomona has now grown up all
around this spot and the air isn’t as clear as it used to be
when Don Alvarado rode about his ranch. The freeway
comes close to the casa now and gasoline fumes do too, but
no one can touch the grounds themselves. The casa is
secure from greedy speculators and the shrine to St. Joseph
will probably outlast them all.
All of the energies of the Alvarado family have been
directed toward the preservation of the landmark in its
original state and no sacrifice is too large to safeguard it.
It goes without saying that nothing has been changed
in the casa since the house passed back into the family
again. But the partial destruction by the Nichols family,
whose New England practicality did not understand the
sentimental attachment of the Spanish settlers for their own
ways, had left the house scarred, if not damaged. This
must not happen again, and Mrs. Fages watches the con-
struction work around her with a wary eye. In a way she
holds the fort against incursions from hostile strangers
exactly as the first settlers did.
What happened to the barn between the time the
Nichols family sold the Casa Alvarado and the moving in
of the present owners is not certain, but just prior to their
occupation of the place it was a home already, and not a
barn. A Mr. and Mrs. Bolt lived in it. Mrs. Bolt died in it,
of cancer, often rending the night air with screams of pain.
In the meantime the house suffered somewhat from
the weather and when the Leimbach family moved in a few
years ago, it was clear to them that they would have to do
some repairing and remodeling to make the old barn into a
fine home. Meanwhile they are, of course, living in the
house. It is only about thirty miles from Los Angeles on
the freeway, and most convenient in terms of Los Angeles
suburban living conditions. The entrance to the house is
from the side, and downstairs there is a kitchen, a bed-
room, and the living room, from which a staircase leads to
the upper story. Two bedrooms make up that part of the
house.
After they moved in the Leimbachs knew their house
had once been used as a barn and hayloft: they even found
a hay hook in the downstairs bedroom and knew that
horses had once lived in it! But this did not bother them in
CHAPTER SIX: This House Is Haunted
the least, of course, nor did it bother their two daughters,
Denise and Dana. The two girls were aged twelve and ten
respectively at the time of their arrival at the house.
Jo Ann Leimbach, a woman in her thirties, her hus-
band, somewhat older, the two girls, and an occasional
cleaning woman, Mrs. Irene Nunez, were the only people
occupying the house.
Or so it seemed at first, anyway.
* * *
Mrs. Leimbach wasn’t particularly interested in psy-
chic phenomena, but as a child she had had a little precog-
nition, such as the time she had known her grandfather had
died, although he was far away from the family, and how
her mother would tell her about his death.
But this had been a long time ago and none of these
things were in her mind when she and her family moved
into the converted barn on the Alvarado estate.
On September 12, 1967, she was in her sewing room,
which is located in a separate building away from the main
house. The main house was empty except for Mrs. Nunez,
who was cleaning the guest bedroom upstairs. Normally a
courageous woman, Mrs. Nunez felt uneasy this morning,
as if she were being watched by someone she could not see.
This was the first time she had been alone in the
house. Was it getting on her nerves? She is a woman of
Mexican descent and the area is closely tied up with her
people, so it could not be that she was out of her element,
and yet she felt very much estranged at this moment. She
turned around to see if there was perhaps someone in the
room, after all.
As she turned, she clearly heard footsteps coming
toward her. Immediately she froze in her tracks and the
footsteps went right past her. There was no one to be seen,
yet the floorboards reverberated with the weight of a per-
son, quite heavy apparently, rushing past her! She caught
herself running down the stairs, but then thought better of
it and returned upstairs. The uneasy feeling was still pre-
sent, but seemed quiet now.
Had she told her employer about her experience she
would have encountered understanding, not scorn. For
Mrs. Leimbach had already found out by then that there
was someone other than flesh-and-blood people in this
house. In February of the same year, she found herself in
the house with her two girls, while her husband had gone
out to attend to his income tax report. The girls, then aged
ten and twelve, were in the kitchen with her that evening,
when she clearly heard heavy footsteps upstairs.
This was immediately followed by the sound of
someone opening and closing various drawer and of doors
being violently opened and slammed shut. It sounded as if
someone were very angry at not finding what he was look-
ing for, and frantically going from room to room searching
for something.
Thinking of how it would affect her children, since
she could not possibly explain these sounds to them ratio-
372
The ghost at the Adobe:
always watching
nally, she jumped for the radio and turned it on loud so
the noise would cover the sounds upstairs. Then she went
out and brought the dog into the house and tried to get her
to accompany her up the stairs. Tried is right, for the ani-
mal absolutely refused to budge and sat at the foot of the
stairs and howled in utter terror.
Somehow Mrs. Leimbach did not feel up to going it
alone, so she just sat there and waited. For a full ten min-
utes, the racket went on upstairs. Then it stopped as
abruptly as it had begun. About half an hour later, her
sister-in-law Doris and her son’s fiancee, Marion, arrived at
the house. Reinforced by her relatives, Mrs. Leimbach
finally dared go upstairs. From the sound of the commo-
tion she was sure to find various drawers open and doors
jammed. But when she entered the rooms upstairs, she
found everything completely untouched by human hands.
All windows were closed tightly so one could not
blame drafts of air for the disturbances. All doors stood
wide open, yet she had distinctly heard the sound of doors
being violently slammed shut.
There is no house within earshot of theirs, and no
noises in the area that could possibly mimic such sounds.
"I wonder what he is looking for,” she mumbled,
more to herself than for anyone’s benefit. To her, the
heavy footfalls were those of a man.
She did not discuss any of this with her girls, of
course, and somehow managed to keep it from them
although she felt disturbed herself by all this. Surely there
was something wrong with the house, but what? She need
not have worried about her girls since they already had a
pretty good idea what it was that caused the trouble.
The previous July, Mrs. Leimbach and her husband
were having coffee in the kitchen downstairs. It was a clear,
sunny afternoon and all seemed peaceful and quiet. Denise,
the elder daughter, was upstairs, sitting at her window seat
and reading a book. For a moment, she took her eyes off
the book, for it had seemed to her that a slight breeze had
disturbed the atmosphere of the room. She was right, for
she saw a large man walk across the room and enter the
large walk-in closet at the other end of it. She assumed it
was her father, of course, and asked what he was looking
for. When she received no reply, she got up and went to
the closet herself. It struck her funny that the closet door
was closed. She opened it, wondering if her father was per-
haps playing games with her. The closet was empty. Terri-
fied, she rushed downstairs.
“What are you doing? What are you doing?” she
demanded to know, sobbing, as her father tried to calm
her.
Only after he had assured her that he wasn’t playing
tricks on her, did she relent. But if not her father, who had
been upstairs in her room? The Leimbachs tried to explain
the matter lightly, trying everything from “tired eyes” due
to too much reading, to "shadows from the trees” outside.
But the girl never believed any of it.
There was now an uneasy truce around the house
and the subject of the phenomena was not discussed for the
moment. The truce did not last very long, however.
Soon afterward, the two girls woke up in the middle
of the morning even though they were usually very sound
The Guardian of the Adobe (California)
373
sleepers. The time was 2 A.M. and there was sufficient light
in the room for them to distinguish the figure of a large
man in black standing by their beds! He seemed to stare
down at them without moving. They let out a scream
almost in unison, bringing their parents up the stairs. By
that time, the apparition had dissolved.
The war of nerves continued, however. A few nights
later, the girls’ screams attracted the parents and when they
raced upstairs they found the girls barricaded inside the
room, holding the door as if someone were trying to force
it open.
For a moment, the parents could clearly see that
some unseen force was balancing the door against the
weight of the two young girls on the other side of it — then
it slacked and fell shut. Almost hysterical with panic now,
the girls explained, between sobs, that someone had tried
to enter their room, that they had wakened and sensed it
and pushed against the door — only to find the force outside
getting stronger momentarily. Had the parents not arrived
on the scene at this moment, the door would have been
pushed open and whatever it was that did this, would have
entered the bedroom.
But the door did not stop the black, shadowy
intruder from entering that room. On several occasions, the
girls saw him standing by their bedside and when they
fully woke and jumped out of bed, he disappeared.
The Leimbachs and their girls were, however, not the
only ones who had encountered the stranger. Even more
sensitive to the invisible vibrations of a haunted house,
Mrs. Nunez had already had her initial experience with the
man upstairs. But as yet she had not laid eyes on him and
surely did not want to. But it so happened that in the sum-
mer of that year the family decided to go on vacation, and
asked Mrs. Nunez to look after their mail, water the plants
and clean up the house, even though it would be empty. In
addition, the local police were told of the possibility of
prowlers and asked to keep an eye on the house while the
family was away on vacation. The police gladly obliged and
the house was put under surveillance.
Mrs. Nunez accepted the assignment with mixed
emotions. She wasn’t a superstitious woman, but she
always felt watched in that house, never alone, and some-
how she had the impression that the force in the house was
far from friendly. But she had decided to brave it out and
try to get her job done as quickly as possible, and definitely
only in the daylight.
As she approached the house this morning, it seemed
strangely quiet and peaceful. The air was warm, as the
California air usually is, and the humming of bees indi-
cated that summer at its fullest was upon them.
She parked her car in front of the house and went
toward the entrance door. Lumber for the structural
changes the Leimbachs were making was still lying about
all over the front yard. She put the key into the lock and
opened the front door.
Carefully closing it behind her, she then turned and
to her horror saw a figure turn into the hallway and head
for the stairs! At the same time, she heard the heavy foot-
steps of a man scurrying out of earshot, then going up the
stairs, and she clearly heard the floor boards squeaking
overhead as the weight of a person was placed upon them
— or so it seemed.
Despite her abject fear and the pearls of sweat that
now stood on her forehead, she rallied and went after the
intruder up the stairs. The footfalls had stopped by now
and there was no one upstairs. She searched in every nook
and cranny, opened every closet door and even looked
down the stairs and in the cellar. Nothing. The house was
as empty as it should be.
Only then did she remember how strangely icy the
hallway had been when she had entered the house. In the
excitement of seeing the human figure disappear around the
comer she had completely overlooked this fact. But now, as
she sat quietly on the upstairs bed, she recalled it and
shuddered even though it was no longer cold.
Her chores done, she left the house and went home.
When her next day to visit came, she tried hard not
to go, but her sense of propriety forced her to do what was
expected of her.
This time she took her son Richard along for the
ride. She quickly parked the car, opened the door, and
looked inside. Again, the icy, clammy atmosphere began to
envelop her. Quickly she threw the mail she had collected
from the box onto the table in the entrance hall and
slammed the door shut. She could not go further today.
When the Leimbachs returned, she resumed her vis-
its, but whenever she approached the house after that, she
almost “saw” the figure of a man standing by the entrance
door staring out at her with hostile, cold eyes.
The Leimbachs finally received an answer to their
problem.
A famous psychic lady walked through their house
and immediately felt its hostile atmosphere.
“Something threatens this house,” she mumbled,
“and it has to do with both houses and the land, not just
this house.”
Suddenly it occurred to the Leimbachs that their
troubles had started only when they had decided to make
major structural changes in the house.
"Aha,” the psychic said, “there is your problem.”
While the main house, the Casa Alvarado, had
remained untouched by any change, except for that unfor-
tunate addition inflicted upon it in the last century, the
barn, once part of the estate, had been remodeled. But
until the arrival of the Leimbachs, no wall had yet been
removed nor had the basic construction undergone changes.
This was their intent, however, to correspond with their
needs for a modern home.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
374
Had this activity awakened the ire of the guardian
wraith?
Then, too, there was the presence in the house of two
sub-teenage girls, natural sources for poltergeist activities.
The man in black staring out at a hostile world,
which had done so much to his erstwhile domain, was he
the restless spirit of Senor Alvarado himself?
There seemed no need for his watchfulness in the
main house, where the statue of St. Joseph looked out for
dangers. But here, in the barn, there seemed need for a
watchful eye.
After this, the Leimbachs proceeded with greater
caution in their plans to change the house. Perhaps the
question of their justified improvements having been
openly discussed somehow reassured the unseen ears of the
guardian.
It has been quiet at the house of late, but of course
one can never tell. The early Spanish settlers knew how to
take care of themselves, and of their own. And the old barn
is still part of the Alvarado ranch, television aerial and
garage notwithstanding.
♦ 69
The Mynah Bird (Canada)
“COME ON, boy! Come on, boy!” the shrill voice of a
mynah bird called out from its perch on the wall. The cor-
ridor of the old house was deliberately kept dimly lit to go
with the atmosphere of the place. After all, this was and is
Toronto’s first and only topless nightclub. Since it is also
nonalcoholic, due to the absence of a beverage license, it
has to rely heavily on other attractions. The other attrac-
tions are such that nobody very much misses the lack of
spirits in the bottle, especially as there are other spirits —
the real kind — lingering about the place. Of that, anon. As
for the black, yellow- beaked mynah bird, he was brought
back from Bombay by the current owner of the club, Colin
Kerr, from one of his many journeys to India.
Mr. Kerr is not only the owner of a bird, but also a
professional golfer whose activities have taken him all over
the world. He got into the nightclub business when his eye
was caught by an attractive, almost romantic looking old
house in Toronto’s Yorkville district, an area roughly
equivalent to New York’s Greenwich Village or London’s
Soho. He installed his father-in-law on the third floor of
the dark, brick and wood townhouse, with the task of keep-
ing the building clean and in good shape. That was in 1963
and for two years he ran the place as any other club in the
area was run; dancing, an occasional singer, and lots of
romance. Still no liquor, but the Victorian atmosphere of
the place more than made up for it and for a while it was
an off-beat club for young couples to hold hands in. To
make the feeling of remoteness from the outside world even
stronger, Mr. Kerr dimmed his overhead lights, added
heavy red drapes and Victorian furniture to the place and
put in as many antiques of the period as he could garner in
the local antique shops and flea markets.
Mr. Kerr is a slightly built man in his thirties and
soft spoken. He is scarcely the image of the typical night-
club manager and being in this strange house provided him
in a way with self-expression.
The place itself had been an antique shop prior to his
arrival and before that an artist had had his studio upstairs
where Mr. Kerr built a little stage. All kinds of people con-
gregated in the area and there was an atmosphere of adven-
ture and a certain wildness all around the house that
somehow blended well with its insides.
Two years after his arrival on the scene, he decided
to buy the house which he had at first only rented. This
was not without good reason. Mr. Kerr had become aware
of a new, exciting trend in the nightclub business and felt
Toronto was about ready for the innovations first brought
about in the pioneering domain of San Francisco’s North
Beach.
The topless dancers would be a far better attraction
than his dance bands had been. But Mr. Kerr’s artistic
ambitions reached even further into the possibilities of cre-
ative expression: why not let the customers get in on the
show? It was all well and good to sit there and watch a
naked young woman shake and wriggle under the fluores-
cent lights. That had its good points and Mr. Kerr knew
the attractions he offered brought in the crowds. But a
more intimate touch was needed and he provided it.
"Paint our bare-breasted girl!” the Mynah Bird club
advertised in all the Toronto papers. For a two-dollar fee,
any customer could dip his brush in paint thoughtfully
provided by management, and paint a design upon the
naked torso of a young woman. It wasn’t as good as finger
painting, but it was the next best thing to it and the cus-
tomers were given free rein to express their various artistic
viewpoints. The club can hold about seventy people down-
stairs, in what must have been a parlor once, and another
forty in the "theater” on the second floor. The third floor
was used for living quarters.
The innovation caught on like wildfire. The Mynah
Bird remained Canada’s only place of this kind, and soon
people from other cities came to do the painting bit.
Strangely, there was nothing particularly shocking about all
this. The women, to be sure, were young and pretty and
wore only tiny panties which provided the anchor for what-
The Mynah Bird (Canada)
375
The haunted Mynah Bird Cafe — Toronto
ever artistic motifs the amateur painters wished to paint
upon the girls' skin. The paint used was fluorescent and
with the lights low, this made a pretty picture indeed.
When there was no more empty space left on a woman’s
bare skin, the painting session ended, the customers
returned to their seats, and the painted girl began to dance.
All this happened two or three times a night, six days
a week. Mr. Kerr, despite his sexy attractions, found it
unnecessary to hire a body guard or bouncer for his empo-
rium. Perhaps Canadians do not mash so readily as Ameri-
cans, or more likely the absence of intoxicating beverages
kept the men at a distance. At any rate, the predominantly
male audience kept their distance when not painting
women’s breasts. But the proceedings did do something
to the men’s eyes. They became hard and narrow as if
they were watching an arena fight somewhere in ancient
Rome. And the young women, mostly from the outlying
provinces, became hard and cold looking, too, whenever
they caught those glances.
Still, it was a successful operation and still is. Who is
to say that painting designs on bare-breasted women is not
some sort of artistic expression? The women themselves
love it and it isn’t just the touch of the wet brush that fas-
cinates them, but the thought behind it all. They are in the
center of the ring and love the male attention. But, like the
stripper on stage, they also hate being stared at in that way
at the same time. Colin Kerr watches over his seven girls
and makes sure they are not molested, and the women con-
sider their club a kind of home where they are appreciated
for their contribution. The latter are not merely being
painted in the nude. There is the girl in the fish tank, for
instance, a trick done with mirrors, since the tank is only
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
the two gallon kind. (It is similar to another tank in which
Mr. Kerr keeps a live piranha, though he is not part of the
show. So far, anyway.) The woman in the fish tank is com-
pletely nude but she is only inches high to the viewer.
Sometimes the viewers do not believe they are looking at a
live girl, but the girl waves at them and convinces them
pretty fast.
In a club serving soft drinks and even sandwiches
there is bound to be some dishwashing and other nonglam-
orous jobs. Everybody takes turns here at doing everything,
from the painting bit, the fish tank, the topless dancing, to
checking of customers’ coats, seeing them to their tables
and serving them. The girls like being one thing today and
another tomorrow for it gives them a sense of variety and
Mr. Kerr has no complaints from disgruntled waitresses or
tired dishwashers that way.
The girls range from eighteen to twenty-one years in
age and come mostly from lower-middle-class homes, usu-
ally outside the cities. Whenever Kerr needs a replacement,
there is a long line of applicants, which proves — if nothing
else — that some women do like their breasts painted with
fluorescent paint.
But something strange happened when Kerr changed
the club’s policy from straight dancing to the topless busi-
ness. Whether it was his daring approach to night life or
the sudden influx of a group of very young females that
caused the disturbances is a moot question. Perhaps it was
both. Shortly after the club had changed its policy, Mr.
Kerr found that he could not keep the lights turned off at
times.
It was almost as if someone were trying to annoy
him, or perhaps only signal him for some reason, but the
light switches kept turning themselves on regularly. Since
they had not done anything of the kind during the first two
years of his occupancy, this naturally caused some concern.
But there seemed to be no natural explanation for this
behavior. Then some musical instruments — leftovers from
the band days — moved by themselves, very much to the
consternation of Mr. Kerr who discovered that none of the
girls had even been near them. He began to wonder
whether perhaps some psychic force was at work here,
although he had never been particularly interested in such
things.
About that time, his father-in-law reported being
addressed by some unseen person on several occasions.
Since Kerr had also added movies to his attractions — the
latter being stag films from Europe shown in the second
floor “theater” after the downstairs show closed — he
thought that perhaps one of the customers had sneaked up
to the third floor and talked to his in-law. But Mr. Alfred
Lawrence, the custodian, assured his son-in-law that he
could tell a flesh-and-blood stag movie patron from an
invisible ghost.
Things were going well with the Mynah Bird: the
club was having sellouts six nights a week, and Raj , the
bird himself, was being sought for TV appearances left and
376
right. This led to a record album and Mr. Kerr found that
his bird was making more money than he was. This did
not trouble him, however, since he was, after all, paying
the bird in seeds and the bird was happy and learned a lot
of new words from the customers ogling the bare-breasted
women.
Under the circumstances Mr. Kerr felt it wise to
insure his twelve-year-old mynah with Lloyds of London.
Raj was the first and only feathered insurance policy holder
in the history of that austere company. Ever watchful to
inform his doting public, Mr. Kerr let the newspapers
know about this and the crowds that came to see the
mynah bird in the cage became even larger. Of course,
they all stayed for the show.
The rumbling of psychic disturbances did not escape
the women’s attention even though Kerr and his wife, Mrs.
Jessamyn Kerr, took great pains not to alarm them by
drawing their attention to these phenomena.
Although they once had a woman work for them who
claimed to be a full-fledged witch, this woman did not have
any uncanny experiences at the place, or perhaps to her
they were not noteworthy. She was eighteen, from Hamil-
ton, and named Lizerina, and she fit right in with the
decor of the club.
After her departure for greener, or at least, better lit
pastures, it was Joy Nicholls who became one of the hard-
est workers at the Mynah Bird. She arrived in 1967 fresh
from the far northern portion of Canada, the daughter of a
construction foreman. Perhaps she expressed more openly
what every woman dreams of and perhaps she went about
it in a rather unorthodox way, but Joy honestly believed in
her work and liked her surroundings and to her the Mynah
Bird was the most wonderful place in the world.
One month after her arrival, she found herself resting
up at the end of one night. It was about 2:30 in the morn-
ing and time to quit. Upstairs, all was quiet, since the last
customer had gone home. Just then she clearly heard chairs
move overhead as if someone were rearranging them. She
knew for a fact that there was no one else about but forget-
ting all fear for the moment, she ran up the stairs to see
who the intruder was.
As she opened the door of the “theater,” she found
that the chairs which she had left a little earlier neatly
arranged in rows for next evening’s show, were now in dis-
array and strewn all over the place. She put them in order
once more and left.
Many times after this initial exposure to unseen
forces, the same phenomenon happened. Always after the
stag films had been shown, it seemed as if someone threw
the chairs about in great anger.
Then Joy realized that the place used as a theater
now was originally the artist’s studio. Perhaps his sensitive
artistic taste recoiled at the kind of movies shown here, so
delicately advertised by Kerr as “Only for those who will
not be offended.”
A short time after the initial incident with the mov-
ing chairs, Joy was downstairs when she heard someone
walk overhead and then continue down the stairs. But
nobody appeared. Yet, within a fraction of a moment, she
strongly felt that someone was standing close to her, star-
ing at her, coldly and with piercing eyes. Now she did not
see this but felt it with an inner awareness that had always
been acute in her. She knew at once it was a man and she
knew he was angry. Or perhaps sad. Being a generous per-
son she wondered how she could help the stranger. Perhaps
her thoughts somehow pierced the veil of silence.
Shortly after, she found herself alone again in the hall
when she heard her name being called.
"Joy,” a soft, almost hoarse voice seemed to say, and
more urgently repeated, “Joy!”
She turned around to see who was calling out to her,
but of course she was quite alone.
About the same time, Nancy Murray, another one of
the women, complained about someone whom she could
not see staring at her. Joy was a gay, life-loving blonde
with a spectacular figure, while Nancy was more the slim,
sultry type, quiet and introverted — despite her occupation
— but both had a psychic awareness in common, it would
appear.
Despite her bad eyes, Nancy saw someone when she
was alone in the downstairs room. The continual stares of
someone she could not see made Nancy far more apprehen-
sive than the very visual stares of the men in the audience
when she was being painted. After all, she knew what went
through men’s minds, but what do ghosts think?
With the women adding to the number of psychic
incidents almost daily, Kerr finally concluded there was
something the matter with his place. He decided to hold a
seance and, if possible, find out.
It so happened that one of his featured girls, a folk-
singer named Tony Stone, had often served as a clairvoyant
medium at seances and she readily agreed to try. The first
of what became later an almost daily seance, was held
entirely privately, after the customers had left. Only the
Kerrs and the women attended. Upon instruction from
Tony Stone, one candle was placed on the table, which was
covered by an ordinary tablecloth.
After holding hands and generally relaxing their
thoughts for a while, the group looked about. The room
was quite dark in its further recesses and the flicker of the
candle gave the entire procedure an even eerier glow.
Suddenly and without warning, the tablecloth was
yanked off the table, almost toppling the candle. With a
scream, Nancy rose. Some unknown force had managed to
get the tablecloth off the table and threw it with great vio-
lence some distance from them on the floor.
Horror in her eyes, Nancy left the room and has
refused to attend any seances ever since. But Mr. Kerr was
so impressed with the performance he decided to add the
The Mynah Bird (Canada)
377
seance to his regular program: each night, after the show,
and after the stag films, the customers were invited to stay
on for an impromptu seance. Sometimes, when the spirit
moved them, they put the seance on even before the stag
movies.
Soon the Mynah Bird "family” discovered that these
seances — the only public seances of their kind in Canada —
brought on additional disturbances in the house. Dishes in
the kitchen in the rear downstairs would suddenly start to
rattle. Once when Kerr and his wife ran back to see what
was happening, they found the kitchen empty. But as they
looked with amazement into the well-lit kitchen, they saw a
big kitchen knife balance itself as if held by unseen hands.
Kerr grabbed it and examined it. While he was trying to
see if he could balance it by natural means — ever the
skeptic — another stack of dishes came tumbling down on
them. There was no earthly reason for this. Since that first
time, dish rattling follows almost all seances. It is as if their
sittings release some power within the women that creates
the phenomena. Or perhaps someone up there on the sec-
ond floor is not entirely happy with the whole thing.
The first time an audience stayed behind for a seance,
Nancy almost went into deep trance. She had sworn she
would not attend another seance, but her presence was
required in the room as part of her job and she kept a dis-
tance from the medium. Nevertheless, she felt herself sink
into trance and fought it. After that, she spoke to Kerr and
was given permission to stay away from all further seances.
To Nancy, the world of ghosts was scarcely
unknown. It was precisely because of prior experiences that
she had to beg off. Not long ago, while on a visit to a
friend in downtown Toronto, she came upon an old house
on nearby Gloucester Street. That was on the last day of
February 1968 and she will never forget the date.
The old house had been closed down, but she was
curious, and opened the front door to peek in. As she did
so, she perceived coming down the broad staircase, a
strange looking man. He was a soldier in a very unusual
uniform, not one she was familiar with, and he looked
quite as real as any man walking down a staircase. She
even heard his canteen rattle and the steps of his boots as
he came closer toward where she was standing. But as he
came close she could see his face, such a sad face, and it
looked straight at her. But where his neck should have
been, there was a gaping hole. The wallpaper could be seen
right through it and as she realized this she fled in terror.
The uniform was of World War I vintage, she later
learned.
The first public seance had other results, though,
than to frighten Nancy. With her head bowed, medium
Tony Stone spoke of a resident ghost she felt close by.
Superimposed on the face of a lady customer sitting
across the table from her, she described the figure of an old
man with gray hair and a beard, but she could not get his
name that time.
Then, somewhat later, at another seance, she excit-
edly described the man again.
“He’s behind me now,” she exclaimed and her lips
started to tremble as if the ghost was trying to take her
over.
"Lawrence... Oliver... Kendall...” she finally man-
aged to say, slowly, while fighting off the unseen force.
“He’s a very sad person," she added, but she could
not find out why he was here in the club. As more and
more of the public attended the seances, less and less hap-
pened at them which is not at all surprising. They degener-
ated into just another number on the bill and no one took
them seriously anymore. Especially not the resident
specters. They resolutely refused to put on appearances,
unpaid, by command, to amuse the out-of-town visitors.
Even the introduction of an ouija board did not help.
It did establish that Tony Stone was a good clairvoyant but
little else.
She managed to predict accurately the names of sev-
eral people who would be in the audience the next night.
But the Mynah Bird scarcely needs to know who its cus-
tomers are. There are so many of them.
As to Mr. Kendall, he has not yet been identified
from among the many tenants of the old house.
On separate occasions, Nancy and Joy smelled strong
perfume in the downstairs area when neither of them was
wearing any. It was a sudden wafting in of a woman’s per-
fume, somehow reminiscent of a bygone era.
When Joy also heard the swishing sound of taffeta
skirts whisking by her one night, she knew that the sad old
man upstairs was not the only spectral boarder at the club.
Somehow it did not frighten the women as much as the
fury of the man moving those chairs. Was the woman
responsible for the throwing about of the dishes in the
kitchen perhaps?
Late at night, when the customers have gone, nothing
in the world could induce the girls to go up the narrow
corridors and stairwells to find out if one of the denizens of
the nether world is still lurking about in anger. So far Mr.
Kerr does not consider their presence dangerous or even
undesirable. After all, who else offers his clientele bare-
breasted women and ectoplastic presences for the same
ticket?
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
378
* 70
The Terror on the Farm
(Connecticut)
North Woodstock, Connecticut, is New England at
its best and quietest: rolling farmland seldom interrupted
by the incursions of factories and modern city life.
The village itself seems to have weathered the pas-
sage of time rather well and with a minimum of change.
Except for the inevitable store signs and other expressions
of contemporary American bad taste, the village is as quiet
today as it must have been, say, two hundred years ago,
when America was young.
On Brickyard Road, going toward the outer edges of
the village, and standing somewhat apart from the inhab-
ited areas, was an old farm house. It had obviously seen
better days, but now it was totally dilapidated and practi-
cally beyond repair. Still, it was a house of some size and
quite obviously different from the ordinary small farm-
house of the surrounding countryside.
There were sixteen rooms in the house, and for the
past fifty years it had been the property of the Duprey
family. The house itself was built in pre-Revolutionary
times by the Lyons family, who used it as a tavern. The
place was a busy spot on the Boston -Hartford road and a
tavern here did well indeed in the days when railroads had
not yet come into existence.
After the Lyons Tavern changed hands, it belonged
successfully to the Potters, Redheads, Ides, and then the
Dupreys, but it was now a private dwelling, the center of
the surrounding farm, and no longer a public house.
Very little is known about its early history beyond
that, at least that is what Mrs. Florence Viner discovered
when she considered buying the house. She did discover,
however, that Mrs. Emery Duprey, the previous owner,
had suffered great tragedy in the house. One morning she
had taken a group of neighbors’ children to school. The
school was in a one-room house, less than a mile distant.
Her fourteen -year -old daughter Laura was left behind at
the house because she had not been feeling well that day.
When Mrs. Duprey returned home a short time later,
she found the girl gone. Despite every effort made, the girl
was never found again nor was any trace found of her
disappearance.
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Viner decided to buy the
house in 1951 despite its deplorable condition. They
wanted a large country house and did not mind putting it
in good condition; in fact, they rather looked forward to
the challenge and task.
It was on Good Friday of that year that they moved
in. Immediately they started the restoration, but they
stayed at the house and made do, like the pioneers they felt
they had now become.
The farm itself was still a working farm and they
retained a number of farm workers from the surrounding
area to work it for them. The only people staying at the
house at all times were the Viners, their daughter Sandra,
and the help.
Two months had gone by after their arrival when one
evening Mrs. Viner and her daughter, then eleven years
old, were alone in the house, sitting in the kitchen down-
stairs, reading.
"Who is upstairs?” the girl suddenly inquired.
Mrs. Viner had heard furtive footsteps also, but had
decided to ignore them. Surely, the old house was settling
or the weather was causing all sorts of strange noises.
But the footsteps became clearer. This was no house
settling. This was someone walking around upstairs. For
several minutes, they sat in the kitchen, listening as the
steps walked all over the upper floor. Then Mrs. Viner rose
resolutely, went to her bedroom on the same floor and
returned with a 2 2 -revolver she had in the drawer of her
night table just in case prowlers would show up. The
moment she re-entered the kitchen, she clearly heard two
heavy thumps upstairs. It sounded as if a couple of heavy
objects had fallen suddenly and hit the floor. Abruptly, the
walking ceased as if the thumps were the end of a scene
being re-enacted upstairs.
Too frightened to go up and look into what she knew
to be an empty room, Mrs. Viner went to bed. When her
husband returned a little later, however, they investigated
upstairs together. There was nothing out of place nor
indeed any sign that anyone had been up there.
But a few days later, the same phenomenon recurred.
First., there were the footsteps of someone walking up and
down upstairs, as if in great agitation. Then two heavy
thumps and the sound of a falling object and abrupt
silence. The whole thing was so exactly the same each time
it almost became part of the house routine and the Viners
heard it so many times they no longer became panicky
because of it. When the house regained its former splen-
dor, they began to have overnight guests. But whenever
anyone stayed at the house, inevitably, the next morning
they would complain about the constant walking about in
the corridor upstairs.
Mrs. Ida Benoit, Mrs. Viner's mother, came down-
stairs the morning after her first night in the house.
“I’ll never sleep in this house again,” she assured her
daughter. "Why, it’s haunted. Someone kept walking
through my bedroom.”
Her daughter could only shrug and smile wanly. She
knew very well what her mother meant. Naturally, the
number of unhappy guests grew, but she never discussed
the phenomena with anyone beforehand. After all, it was
just possible that nothing would happen. But in ten years of
occupancy, there wasn’t a single instance where a person
using a bedroom upstairs was not disturbed.
The Terror on the Farm (Connecticut
379
A year after they had moved in, Mrs. Viner decided
to begin to renovate a large upstairs bedroom. It was one of
those often used as a guest room. This was on a very warm
day in September, and despite the great heat, Mrs. Viner
liked her work and felt in good spirits. She was painting
the window sash and singing to herself with nothing partic-
ular on her mind. She was quite alone upstairs at the time
and for the moment the ghostly phenomena of the past
were far from her thoughts.
Suddenly, she felt the room grow ice cold. The chill
became so intense she began to shudder and pulled her
arms around herself as if she were in mid-winter on an icy
road. She stopped singing abruptly and at the same time
she felt the strong presence of another person in the room
with her.
"Someone’s resenting very much what I’m doing,”
she heard herself think.
Such a strong wave of hatred came over her she could
not continue. Terrified, she nevertheless knew she had to
turn around and see who was in the room with her. It
seemed to take her an eternity to muster sufficient strength
to move a single muscle.
Suddenly, she felt a cold hand at her shoulder. Some-
one was standing behind her and evidently trying to get
her attention. She literally froze with fear. When she finally
moved to see who it was the hand just melted away.
With a final effort, she jerked herself around and
stared back into the room. There was no one there. She ran
to the door, screaming, "I don’t know who you are or what
you are, but you won’t drive me out of this house.”
Still screaming, she ran down the stairs and onto the
porch. There she caught her breath and quieted down.
When her daughter came home from school, she felt
relieved. The evil in that room had been overpowering, and
she avoided going up there as much as possible after that
experience.
“I’ll never forget that hand, as long as I live,” she
explained to her husband.
In the years that followed, they came to terms with
the unseen forces in the house. Perhaps her determined
effort not to be driven out of their home had somehow got-
ten through to the specter, but at any rate, they were stay-
ing and making the house as livable as they could. Mrs.
Viner gave birth to two more children, both sons, and as
Sandra grew up, the phenomena seemed to subside. In
1958 a second daughter was born and Sandra left for col-
lege. But three weeks later the trouble started anew.
One night in September she was sitting in the down-
stairs living room watching television with James Latham,
their farm worker. The two boys and the baby had been in
bed for hours. Suddenly, there was a terrific explosion in
the general direction of the baby’s room. She ran into the
room and found it ice cold — as if it had been an icebox.
From the baby’s room, another door leads out into the hall,
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
380
and it is usually closed for obvious reasons. But now it
stood wide open, and evidently it had been thrust open
with considerable force. The lock was badly bent from the
impact and the radiator, which the door had hit in opening,
was still reverberating from it. The baby was not harmed
in any way, but Mrs. Viner wondered if perhaps the oil
burner had blown up.
She went down into the basement to cheek but found
everything normal. As she returned to the baby’s room she
suddenly had the distinct impression that the phenomenon
somehow connected with the presence of a young girl.
She tried to reason this away, since no young girl was
present in the household, nor was there any indication that
tied in in any way with the tragic disappearance of Mrs.
Duprey’s girl, of which she, of course, knew. Try as she
might, she could not shake this feeling that a young girl
was the focal point of the disturbances at the house.
One night her sister had joined her in the living room
downstairs. Suddenly there was a loud crash overhead in
what they knew was an empty bedroom. Mrs. Viner left
her worried sister downstairs and went up alone. A table in
the bedroom had been knocked over. No natural force
short of a heavy quake could have caused this. The win-
dows were closed and there was no other way in which the
table could topple over by itself. She was so sure that this
could not have been caused by anything but human intrud-
ers, she called the state police.
The police came and searched the house from top to
bottom but found no trace of any intruder.
Mrs. Viner then began to wonder about the goings-
on. If these unseen forces had the power to overturn heavy
tables, surely they might also harm people. The thought
frightened her, and where she had until then considered
living with a ghost or ghosts rather on the chic side, it now
took on distinctly threatening overtones. She discussed it
with her husband but they had put so much work and
money into the house that the thought of leaving again just
did not appeal to them.
It was inevitable that she should be alone in the
house, except for the children, at various times. Her hus-
band was away on business and the farm help out where
they belonged. Often Mrs. Viner found herself walking
through the rooms hoping against rational reasoning that
she would come face-to-face with the intruder. Then she
could address her or him — she was not sure how many
there were — and say, “look, this is my house now, we’ve
bought it and rebuilt it, and we don’t intend to leave it. Go
away and don’t hang around, it’s no use.” She often
rehearsed her little speech for just such a confrontation.
But the ghost never appeared when she was ready.
Meanwhile the footsteps followed by the heavy
thumps kept recurring regularly, often as many as four
times in a single week. It was usually around the same time
of the evening, which led her to believe that it represented
some sort of tragedy that was being re-enacted upstairs by
the ghostly visitors. Or was she merely tuning in on a past
tragedy and what she and the others were hearing was in
fact only an echo of the distant past? She could not believe
this, especially as she still remembered vividly the ice cold
hand that grabbed her shoulder in the bedroom upstairs on
that hot September day. And a memory would not cause a
heavy door to swing open by itself with such violence that
it burst the lock.
No, these were not memory impressions they were
hearing. These were actual entities with minds of their
own, somehow trapped between two states of being and
condemned by their own violence to live forever in the
place where their tragedy had first occurred. What a horri-
ble fate, Mrs. Viner thought, and for a moment she felt
great compassion for the unfortunate ones.
But then her own involvement reminded her that it
was, after all, her house and her life that was being dis-
rupted. She had a better right to be here than they had,
even if they had been here before.
Defiantly, she continued to polish and refine the
appointments in the house until it looked almost as if it
had never been a dilapidated, almost hopelessly derelict
house. She decided to repaper one of the bedrooms
upstairs, so that her guests would sleep in somewhat more
cheerful surroundings. The paper in this particular room
was faded and very old and deserved to be replaced. As
she removed the dirty wallpaper, the boards underneath
became visible again. They were wide and smooth and
obviously part of the original boards of the house.
After she had pulled down all the paper from the
wall facing away from the window, she glanced up at it.
The wall, exposed to light after goodness knows how many
years, was spattered with some sort of paint.
"This won’t do at all,” she decided, and went down-
stairs to fetch some rags and water. Returning to the room,
she started to remove what she took for some very old
paint. When she put water on the stains, the spots turned
a bright red!
Try as she might, she could not remove the red
stains. Finally she applied some bleach, but it only turned
the spots a dark brown. It finally dawned on her that this
wasn’t paint but blood. On closer investigation, her suspi-
cion was confirmed. She had stumbled upon a blood-spat-
tered wall — but what had taken place up here that had
caused this horrible reminder?
Somehow she felt that she had gotten a lead in her
quest for the solution to the phenomena plaguing the
house. Surely, someone had been killed up there, but who
and why?
She went into the village and started to talk to the
local people. At first, she did not get much help, for New
Englanders are notoriously shy about family matters. But
eventually Mrs. Viner managed to get some information
from some of the older local people who had known about
the house on Brickyard Road for a long time.
When the house was still a public tavern, that is
somewhere around the turn of the nineteenth century or
the very end of the eighteenth, there had been two men at
the tavern who stayed overnight as guests. Their names are
shrouded in mystery and perhaps they were very unimpor-
tant, as history goes.
But there was also a young girl at the tavern, the
kind innkeepers used to hire as servant girls in those days.
If the girl wanted to be just that, well and good; if she
wanted to get involved with some of the men that passed
through on their way to the cities, that was her own busi-
ness. Tavern keepers in those days were not moral keepers
and the hotel detective had not yet been conceived by a
puritan age. So the servant girls often went in and out of
the guests’ rooms, and nobody cared much.
It appears that one such young girl was particularly
attractive to two men at the same time. There were argu-
ments and jealousy. Finally the two men retired to a room
upstairs and a fight to the finish followed. As it was
upstairs, most likely it was in the girl’s own room, with
one suitor discovering the other obtaining favors he had
sought in vain, perhaps. At any rate, as the horrified girl
looked on, the two men killed each other with their rapiers,
and their blood, intermingled in death, spattered upon the
wall of the room.
As she walked back from the village with this newly-
gained knowledge, Mrs. Viner understood clearly for the
first time, why her house was indeed haunted. The restless
footsteps in the room upstairs were the hurried steps of the
unhappy suitor. The scuffling noises that followed and the
sudden heavy thumps would be the fight and the two
falling bodies — perhaps locked in death. The total silence
that always ensued after the two heavy falls, clearly indi-
cated to her that the stillness of death following the strug-
gle was being re-enacted along with the tragedy itself.
And how right she had been about a girl being the
central force in all this!
But why the hostility towards her? Why the icy hand
at the shoulder? Did the girl resent her, another woman, in
this house? Was she still hoping her suitor would come for
her, and did she perhaps take Mrs. Viner for “competi-
tion?” A demented mind, especially when it has been out
of the body for one hundred fifty years, can conjure up
some strange ideas.
But her fighting energies were somehow spent, and
when an opportunity arose to sell the house, Mrs. Viner
agreed readily to do so. Those house then passed into the
hands of Samuel Beno, after the Viners had lived in it from
1951 to 1961 . For five years, Mr. Beno owned the house
but never lived in it. It remained unoccupied, standing qui-
etly on the road.
Only once was there a flurry of excitement. In 1966,
someone made off with $5,000 worth of plumbing and cop-
per piping. The owner naturally entrusted the matter to the
The Terror on the Farm (Connecticut)
381
state police hoping the thieves would eventually return for
more. The authorities even placed tape recorders on the
ready into the house in case some thieves did return.
Since then not much has been heard about the house
and one can only presume that the tragic story of the ser-
* 71
A California Ghost Story
LITTLE did I KNOW when I had successfully investigated
the haunted apartment of Mrs. Verna Kunze in San
Bernardino, that Mrs. Kunze would lead me to another
case equally as interesting as her own, which I reported on
in my book, Ghosts of the Golden West.
Mrs. Kunze is a very well -organized person, and a
former employee in the passport division of the State
Department. She is used to sifting facts from fancy. Her
interest in psycho-cybernetics had led to her to a group of
like-minded individuals meeting regularly in Orange
County. There she met a gentleman formerly with the FBI
by the name of Walter Tipton.
One day, Mr. Tipton asked her help in contacting
me concerning a most unusual case that had been brought
to his attention. Having checked out some of the more
obvious details, he had found the people involved truthful
and worthy of my time.
So it was that I first heard of Mrs. Carole Trausch of
Santa Ana.
What happened to the Trausch family and their
neighbors is not just a ghost story. Far more than that,
they found themselves in the middle of an old tragedy that
had not yet been played out fully when they moved into
their spanking new home.
Carole Trausch was born in Los Angeles of Scottish
parentage and went to school in Los Angeles. Her father is
a retired policeman and her mother was born in Scotland.
Carole married quite young and moved with her husband,
a businessman, to live first in Huntington Beach and later
in Westminster, near Santa Ana.
Now in her early twenties, she is a glamorous-looking
blonde who belies the fact that she has three children aged
eight, six, and two, all girls.
Early the previous year, they moved into one of two
hundred two-story bungalows in a new development in
Westminster. They were just an ordinary family, without
any particular interest in the occult. About their only link
the world of the psychic were some peculiar dreams Carole
had had.
The first time was when she was still a little girl. She
dreamed there were some pennies hidden in the rose bed in
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
vant girl and her two suitors has had its final run. But one
can’t be entirely sure until the next tenant moves into the
old Lyons Tavern. After all, blood does not come off eas-
ily, either from walls or from men’s memories.
the garden. On awakening, she laughed at herself, but out
of curiosity she did go to the rose bed and looked. Sure
enough, there were some pennies in the soil below the
roses. Many times since then she has dreamed of future
events that later came true.
One night she dreamed that her husband’s father was
being rolled on a stretcher, down a hospital corridor by a
nurse, on his way to an operation. The next morning there
was a phone call informing them that such an emergency
had indeed taken place about the time she dreamed it. On
several occasions she sensed impending accidents or other
unpleasant things, but she is not always sure what kind.
One day she felt sure she or her husband would be in a car
accident. Instead it was one of her little girls, who was hit
by passing car.
When they moved into their present house, Mrs.
Trausch took an immediate disliking to it. This upset her
practical -minded husband. They had hardly been installed
when she begged him to move again. He refused.
The house is a white-painted two-story bungalow,
which was built about five years before their arrival.
Downstairs is a large, oblong living room, a kitchen, and a
dining area. On the right, the staircase leads to the upper
story. The landing is covered with linoleum, and there are
two square bedrooms on each side of the landing, with
wall-to-wall carpeting and windows looking onto the yard
in the rear bedroom and onto the street in the front room.
There is a large closet along the south wall of the
rear bedroom. Nothing about the house is unusual, and
there was neither legend nor story nor rumor attached to
the house when they rented it from the local bank that
owned it.
And yet there was something queer about the house.
Mrs. Trausch ’s nerves were on edge right from the very
first when they moved in. But she accepted her husband’s
decision to stay put and swept her own fears under the car-
pet of everyday reason as the first weeks in their new home
rolled by.
At first the children would come to her with strange
tales. The six-year-old girl complained of being touched by
someone she could not see whenever she dropped off for
her afternoon nap in the bedroom upstairs. Sometimes this
presence would shake the bed, and then there was a shrill
noise, somewhat like a beep, coming from the clothes
closet. The oldest girl, eight years old, confirmed the story
and reported similar experiences in the room.
382
Carole dismissed these reports as typical imaginary
tales of the kind children will tell.
But one day she was resting on the same bed upstairs
and found herself being tapped on the leg by some unseen
person.
This was not her imagination; she was fully awake,
and it made her wonder if perhaps her intuition about this
house had not been right all along.
She kept experiencing the sensation of touch in the
upstairs bedrooms only, and it got to be a habit with her to
make the beds as quickly as possible and then rush down-
stairs where she felt nothing unusual. Then she also began
to hear the shrill, beep like sounds from the closet. She
took out all the children’s clothes and found nothing that
could have caused the noise. Finally she told her husband
about it, and he promptly checked the pipes and other
structural details of the house, only to shake his head.
Nothing could have made such noises.
For several months she had kept her secret, but now
that her husband also knew, she had Diane, the oldest, tell
her father about it as well.
It was about this time that she became increasingly
aware of a continuing presence upstairs. Several times she
would hear footsteps walking upstairs, and on investigation
found the children fast asleep. Soon the shuffling steps
became regular features of the house. It would always start
near the closet in the rear bedroom, then go toward the
stair landing.
Carole began to wonder if her nerves weren’t getting
the better of her. She was much relieved one day when her
sister, Kathleen Bachelor, who had come to visit her,
remarked about the strange footsteps upstairs. Both women
knew the children were out. Only the baby was upstairs,
and on rushing up the stairs, they found her safely asleep
in her crib. It had sounded to them like a small person
wearing slippers.
Soon she discovered, however, that there were two
kinds of footsteps: the furtive pitter-patter of a child, and
the heavy, deliberate footfalls of a grownup.
Had they fallen heir to two ghosts? The thought
seemed farfetched even to ESP-prone Carole, but it could
not be dismissed entirely. What was going on, she won-
dered. Evidently she was not losing her mind, for others
had also heard these things.
Once she had gone out for the evening and when she
returned around 10 P.M., she dismissed the babysitter.
After the girl had left, she was alone with the baby. Sud-
denly she heard the water running in the bathroom
upstairs. She raced up the stairs and found the bathroom
door shut tight. Opening it, she noticed that the water was
on and there was some water in the sink.
On January 27 of the next year, Carole had guests
over for lunch, two neighbors name Pauline J. and Joyce
S., both young women about the same age as Carole. The
children were all sleeping in the same upstairs front bed-
room, the two older girls sharing the bed while the baby
girl occupied the crib. The baby had her nap between 1 1
and 2 P.M. At noon, however, the baby woke up crying,
and, being barely able to talk at age two, kept saying
“Baby scared, Mommy!”
The three ladies had earlier been upstairs together,
preparing the baby for her crib. At that time, they had also
put the entire room carefully in order, paying particular
attention to making the covers and spread on the large bed
very smooth, and setting up the dolls and toys on the chest
in the corner.
When the baby cried at noon, all there women went
upstairs and found the bed had wrinkles and an imprint as
though someone had been sitting on it. The baby, of
course, was still in her crib.
They picked up the child and went downstairs with
her. Just as they got to the stairway, all three heard an
invisible child falling down the stairs about three steps
ahead of where they were standing.
It was after this experience that Mrs. Trausch won-
dered why the ghost child never touched any of the dolls.
You see, the footsteps they kept hearing upstairs always
went from the closet to the toy chest where the dolls are
kept. But none of the dolls was ever disturbed. It occurred
to her that the invisible child was a boy, and there were no
boys’ toys around.
The sounds of a child running around in the room
upstairs became more and more frequent; she knew it was
not one of her children, having accounted for her own in
other ways. The whole situation began to press on her
nerves, and even her husband — who had until now tended
to shrug off what he could not understand — became con-
cerned. Feelers were put out to have me come to the house
as soon as possible, but I could not make it right away and
they would have to cope with their unseen visitors for the
time being, or until I arrived on the scene.
All during February the phenomena continued, so
much so that Mrs. Trausch began to take them as part of
her routine. But she kept as much to the downstairs por-
tion of the house as she could. For some unknown reason,
the phenomena never intruded on that part of the house.
She called in the lady who managed the development
for the owners and cautiously told her of their problem.
But the manager knew nothing whatever about the place,
except that it was new and to her knowledge no great
tragedies had occurred there in her time.
When the pitter-patter of the little feet continued,
Carole Trausch decided she just had to know. On March
16, she decided to place some white flour on the
linoleum-covered portion of the upstairs floor to trap the
unseen child. This was the spot where the footsteps were
most often heard, and for that past two days the ghost
child had indeed "come out” there to run and play.
In addition, she took a glass or water with some mea-
suring spoons of graduated sizes in it, and set it all down
A California Ghost Story
383
in a small pan and put it into her baby’s crib with a
cracker in the pan beside the glass. This was the sort of
thing a little child might want — that is, a living child.
She then retired to the downstairs portion of the
house and called in a neighbor. Together the two women
kept watch, waiting for the early afternoon hours when the
ghost child usually became active upstairs.
As the minutes ticked off, Carole began to wonder
how she would look if nothing happened. The neighbor
probably would consider her neurotic, and accuse her of
making up the whole story as an attention -getter in this
rather quiet community.
But she did not have to worry long. Sure enough,
there were the footsteps again upstairs. The two women
waited a few moments to give the ghost a chance to leave
an impression, then they rushed upstairs.
They saw no child, but the white flour had indeed
been touched. There were footmarks in the flour, little feet
that seemed unusually small and slender. Next to the
prints there was the picture of a flower, as if the child had
bent down and finger-painted the flower as a sign of con-
tinuing presence. From the footprints, they took the child
to be between three and four years of age. The water and
pan in the crib had not been touched, and as they stood
next to the footprints, there was utter silence around them.
Mrs. Trausch now addressed the unseen child gently
and softly, promising the child they would not hurt it.
Then she placed some boys’ toys, which she had obtained
for this occasion, around the children’s room and
withdrew.
There was no immediate reaction to all this, but two
days later the eight-year-old daughter came running down
the stairs to report that she had seen the shadow of a little
boy in front of the linen closet in the hall. He wore striped
shirt and pants, and was shorter than she.
When I heard of the footprints by telephone, I set
the week of June 2 aside for a visit to the house. Mean-
while I instructed the Trausches to continue observing
whatever they could.
But the Trausches had already resolved to leave the
house, even if I should be able to resolve their “problem.”
No matter what, they could never be quite sure. And living
with a ghost — or perhaps two ghosts — was not what they
wanted to do, what with three living children to keep them
on their toes.
Across from the Trausch apartment, and separated
from it by a narrow lane, is another house just like it and
built about the same time, on what was before only open
farmland — as far as everyone there knows. A few years
before, the area was flooded and was condemned, but it
dried out later. There is and always has been plenty of
water in the area, a lowland studded with ponds and fish-
ing holes.
The neighbor’s name was Bonnie Swanson and she
too was plagued by footsteps that had no human causing
them. The curious thing is that these phenomena were
heard only in the upstairs portion of her house, where the
bedrooms are, just as in the Trausch house.
Twice the Swansons called in police, only to be told
that there was no one about causing the footsteps. In April,
the Swansons had gone away for a weekend, taking their
child with them. When they returned, the husband opened
the door and was first to step into the house. At this
moment he distinctly heard footsteps running very fast
from front to rear of the rooms, as if someone had been
surprised by their return. Mrs. Swanson, who had also
heard this, joined her husband in looking the house over,
but there was no stranger about and no one could have
it left.
Suddenly they became aware of the fact that a light
upstairs was burning. They knew they had turned it off
when they left. Moreover, in the kitchen they almost fell
over a child’s tricycle. Last time they saw this tricycle, it
had stood in the corner of their living room. It could not
have gotten to the kitchen by itself, and there was no sign
of anyone breaking and entering in their absence. Nothing
was missing.
It seemed as if my approaching visit was somehow
getting through to the ghost or ghosts, for as the month of
June came closer, the phenomena seemed to mount in
intensity and frequency.
On the morning of May 10, 9:30, Mrs. Trausch was
at her front bedroom window, opening it to let in the air.
From her window she could see directly into the Swanson
house, since both houses were on the same level with the
windows parallel to each other. As she reached her window
and casually looked out across to the Swanson’s rooms,
which she knew to be empty at this time of day (Mr.
Swanson was work, and Mrs. Swanson and a houseguest
were out for the morning) she saw to her horror the arm of
a woman pushing back the curtain of Mrs. Swanson’s
window.
There was a curiously stiff quality about this arm and
the way it moved the curtain back. Then she saw clearly a
woman with a deathlike white mask of a face staring at her.
The woman’s eyes were particularly odd. Despite her
excitement, Mrs. Trausch noticed that the woman had wet
hair and was dressed in something filmy, like a white nylon
negligee with pink flowers on it.
For the moment, Mrs. Trausch assumed that the
houseguest must somehow have stayed behind, and so she
smiled at the woman across from her. Then the curtain
dropped and the woman disappeared. Carole Trausch
could barely wait to question her neighbor about the inci-
dent, and found that there hadn’t been anyone at the house
when she saw the woman with the wet hair.
Now Mrs. Trausch was sure that there were two
unseen visitors, a child and a woman, which would account
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
384
for the different quality of the footsteps they had been
hearing.
She decided to try and find out more about the land
on which the house stood.
A neighbor living a few blocks away on Chestnut
Street, who had been in her house for over twenty years,
managed to supply some additional information. Long
before the development had been built, there had been a
farm there.
In the exact place where the Trausches now lived
there had been a barn. When the house was built, a large
trench was dug and the barn was pushed into it and
burned. The people who lived there at the time were a
Mexican family named Felix. They had a house nearby but
sold the area of the farm to the builders.
But because of the flooded condition of the area, the
houses stood vacant for a few years. Only after extensive
drainage had taken place did the houses become inhabit-
able. At this time the Trausches were able to move into
theirs.
The area was predominantly Mexican and the devel-
opment was a kind of Anglo-Saxon island in their midst.
All this information was brought out only after our
visit, incidentally, and neither Sybil Leek, who acted as my
medium, nor I had any knowledge of it at the time.
Mrs. Trausch was not the only adult member of the
family to witness the phenomena. Her husband finally con-
fessed that on several occasions he had been puzzled by
footsteps upstairs when he came home late at night. That
was around 1 A.M., and when he checked to see if any of
the children had gotten out of bed, he found them fast
asleep. Mr. Trausch is a very realistic man. His business is
manufacturing industrial tools, and he does not believe in
ghosts. But he heard the footsteps too.
The Trausches also realized that the shuffling foot-
steps of what appeared to be a small child always started
up as soon as the two older girls had left for school. It was
as if the invisible boy wanted to play with their toys when
they weren’t watching.
Also, the ghost evidently liked the bathroom and
water, for the steps resounded most often in that area. On
one occasion Mrs. Trausch was actually using the bath-
room when the steps resounded next to her. Needless to
say, she left the bathroom in a hurry.
Finally the big day had arrived. Mr. Trausch drove
his Volkswagen all the way to Hollywood to pick up Mrs.
Leek and myself, and while he did not believe in ghosts, he
didn’t scoff at them either.
After a pleasant ride of about two hours, we arrived
at Westminster. It was a hot day in June, and the Santa
Ana area is known for its warm climate. Mr. Trausch
parked the car, and we went into the house where the rest
of the family was already awaiting our visit.
I asked Sybil to scout around for any clairvoyant
impressions she might get of the situation, and as she did
so, I followed her around the house with my faithful tape
recorder so that not a word might be lost.
As soon as Sybil had set foot in the house, she
pointed to the staircase and intoned ominously, “It’s
upstairs.’’
Then, with me trailing, she walked up the stairs as
gingerly as trapeze artist while I puffed after her.
"Gooseflesh,” she announced and held out her arm.
Now whenever were are in haunted area Sybil does get
gooseflesh — not because she is scared but because it is a
natural, instant reaction to whatever presence might be
there.
We were in the parents’ room now, and Sybil looked
around with the expectant smile of a well-trained bird dog
casing the moors.
“Two conflicting types,” she then announced.
"There’s anger and resentfulness toward someone. There’s
something here. Has to do with the land. Two people.”
She felt it centered in the children’s room, and that
there was a vicious element surrounding it, an element of
destruction. We walked into the children’s room and
immediately she made for the big closet in the rear. Behind
that wall there was another apartment, but the Trausches
did not know anything about it except that the people in it
had just recently moved in.
"It’s that side,” Sybil announced and waved toward
the backyard of the house where numerous children of var-
ious ages were playing with the customary racket.
"Vincent,” Sybil added, out of the blue. “Maybe I
don’t have the accent right, but it is Vincent. But it is con-
nected with all this. Incidentally, it is the land that’s caus-
ing the trouble, not the house itself.”
The area Sybil had pointed out just a moment before
as being the center of the activities was the exact spot
where the old barn had once stood.
“It’s nothing against this house,” Sybil said to Mrs.
Trausch, "but something out the past. I’d say 1925. The
name Vincent is important. There’s fire involved. I don’t
feel a person here but an influence. . .a thing. This is dif-
ferent from our usual work. It’s the upper part of the
building where the evil was.”
I then eased Sybil into a chair in the children’s room
and we grouped ourselves silently around her, waiting for
some form of manifestation to take place.
Mrs. Trausch was nervously biting her lips, but oth-
erwise bearing up under what must have been the culmina-
tion of a long and great strain for her. Sybil was relaxing
now, but she was still awake.
“There’s some connection with a child,” she said
now, “a lost child. ..1925. . .the child was found here,
dead.”
“Whose child is it?” I pressed.
“Connected with Vincent. . .dark child. . .nine years
old ... a boy . . . the children here have to be careful ...”
A California Ghost Story
385
r
Does this child have any connection with the
house?”
“He is lost.”
“Can you seem him; can he see you?”
“I see him. Corner. . .the barn. He broke his neck.
Two men. . .hit the child, they didn’t like children, you
see. . .they left him. . .until he was found. . .woman. . .
Fairley. . .name. . .Pete Fairley. . . ”
ii By now Sybil had glided into a semi-trance and I
kept up the barrage of questions to reconstruct the drama
in the barn.
“Do they live here?” I inquired.
"Nobody lives here. Woman walked from the water
to find the boy. He’s dead. She has connection with the
two men who killed him. Maniacs, against children.”
“What is her connection with the boy?”
“She had him, then she lost him. She looked after
him.”
“Who were the boy’s parents then?”
“Fairley. Peter Fairley. 1925.”
Sybil sounded almost like a robot now, giving the
requested information.
"What happened to the woman?” I wanted to know.
“Mad. . .she found the boy dead, went to the men. . .
there was a fight. . .she fell in the water. . .men are here,
there’s a fire...”
“Who were these men?”
Vincent. . .brothers. . .nobody is very healthy in this
farm., .don’t like women.
“Where did the child come from?”
“Lost. . .from the riverside. . .”
“Can you see the woman?”
“A little. . .the boy I can see clearly.”
It occurred to me how remarkable it was for Sybil to
speak of a woman who had fallen into the water when the
apparition Mrs. Trausch had seen had had wet hair. No
one had discussed anything about the house in front of
Sybil, of course. So she had no way of knowing that the
area had once been a farm, or that a barn had stood there
where she felt the disturbances centered. No one had told
her that it was a child the people in the house kept hearing
upstairs.
The woman is out of tempo,” Sybil explained.
That makes it difficult to see her. The boy is frightened.”
Sybil turned her attention to the little one now and,
with my prodding, started to send him away from there.
“Peter go out and play with the children... outside,”
she pleaded.
“And his parents. . .they are looking for him,” I
added.
“He wants the children here to go with him,” Sybil
came back. Mrs. Trausch started to swallow nervously.
“Tell him he is to go first,” I instructed.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
386
“He wants to have the fair woman come with him,”
Sybil explained and I suggest that the two of them go.
She understands, Sybil explained, “and is willing,
but he is difficult. He wants the children.”
I kept pleading with the ghost boy. Nothing is harder
than dealing with a lost one so young.
Join the other children. They are already outside," I
said.
There was a moment of silence, interrupted only by
the muffled sounds of living children playing outside.
Are they still here?” I cautiously inquired a little
later.
“Can’t see them now, but I can see the building.
Two floors. Nobody there now.”
I decided it was the time to break the trance which
had gradually deepened and at this point was full trance. A
moment later Sybil Leek “was back.”
Now we discussed the matter freely and I researched
the information just obtained.
As I understood it, there had been this boy, age nine,
Peter Fairley by name, who had somehow gotten away
from his nanny, a fair woman. He had run into a farm and
gone up to the upper story of a barn where two brothers
named Vincent had killed him. When the woman found
him, she went mad. Then she looked for the men whom
she knew, and there was a fight during which she was
drowned. The two of them are ghosts because they are lost;
the boy lost in a strange place and the woman lost in guilt
for having lost the boy.
Mrs. Kunze and Mrs. Trausch volunteered to go
through the local register to check out he names and to see
if anything bearing on this tragedy could be found in print.
Unfortunately the death records for the year 1925
were incomplete, as Mrs. Trausch discovered at the Santa
Ana Register; and this was true even at the local Hall of
Records in the court house. The County Sheriff’s Office
was of no help either. But they found an interesting item in
the Register of January 1, 1925:
Deputies probe tale of “burial” in orange grove. Sev-
eral Deputy Sheriffs, in a hurried call to Stanton late last
night, failed to find any trace of several men who were
reported to be "burying something” in a isolated orange
grove near that town, as reported to them at the Sher-
iff’s office here.
Officers rushing to the scene were working under the
impression that a murder had been committed and that
the body was being interred, but a thorough search in
that vicinity failed to reveal anything unusual, according
to a report made by Chief Criminal Deputy Ed McClel-
lan, on their return. Deputy Sheriffs Joe Scott and Joe
Ryan accompanied McClellan.
Mrs. Kunze, a long-time resident of the area and
quite familiar with its peculiarities, commented that such a
burial in an isolated orange grove could easily have been
covered up by men familiar with the irrigating system, who
could have flooded that section, thus erasing all evidence of
a newly made grave.
I wondered about the name Peter Fairley. Of course I
did not expect to find the boy listed somewhere, but was
there a Fairley family in these parts in 1925?
There was.
In the Santa Ana County Directories, S.W. Section,
for the year 1925, there is a listing for a Frank Fairley, car-
penter, at 930 W. Bishop, Santa Ana. The listing continues
at the same address the following year also. It was not in
the 1924 edition of the directory, however, so perhaps the
Fairleys were new to the area then.
At the outset of the visit Mrs. Leek had mentioned a
Felix connected with the area. Again consulting the County
Directories for 1925, we found several members of the
Felix family listed. Andres Felix, rancher, at Golden West
Avenue and Bolsa Chica Road, post office Westminster,
Adolph and Miguel Felix, laborers, at the same address —
perhaps brothers — and Florentino Felix, also a rancher, at
a short distance from the farm of Andres Felix. The listing
also appears in 1926.
No Vincent or Vincente, however. But of course not
all members of the family need to have been listed. The
directories generally list only principals, i.e., those gainfully
employed or owners of business or property. Then again,
there may have been two hired hands by that name, if
Vincente was a given name rather than a Christian name.
The 1911 History of Orange County, by Samuel
Armor, described the areas as consisting of a store, church,
school, and a few residences only. It was then called Bolsa,
and the main area was used as ranch and stock land. The
area abounds in fish hatcheries also, which started around
1921 by a Japanese named Akiyama. Thus was explained
the existence of water holes in the area along with fish
tanks, as well as natural lakes.
With the help of Mrs. Kunze, I came across still
another interesting record.
According to the Los Angeles Times of January 22,
1956, "an ancient residence at 14611 Golden West Street,
Westminster, built 85 years ago, was razed for
subdivision.”
This was undoubtedly the farm residence and land
on which the development we had been investigating was
later built.
And there we have the evidence. Three names were
given by our psychic friend: Felix, Vincent, and Peter Fair-
ley. Two of them are found in the printed record, with
some difficulty, and with the help of local researchers
familiar with the source material, which neither Mrs. Leek
nor I was prior to the visit to the haunted house. The body
of the woman could easily have been disposed of without
leaving a trace by dumping it into one of the fish tanks or
other water holes in the area, or perhaps in the nearby
Santa Ana River.
About a month after our investigation, the Trausch
family moved back to Huntington Beach, leaving the
Westminster house to someone else who might some day
appear on the scene.
But Carole Trausch informed me that from the
moment of our investigation onward, not a single incident
had marred the peace of their house.
So I can only assume that Sybil and I were able to
help the two unfortunate ghosts out into the open, the boy
to find his parents, no doubt also on his side of the veil,
and the woman to find peace and forgiveness for her negli-
gence in allowing the boy to be killed.
It is not always possible for the psychic investigator
to leave a haunted house free of its unseen inhabitants, and
when it does happen, then the success is its own reward.
* 72
The Ghostly Usher of Minneapolis
For THIS ACCOUNT, I am indebted to a twenty-two-year-
old creative production assistant in a Minneapolis advertis-
ing agency, by the name of Deborah Turner. Miss Turner
got hooked on some of my books, and started to look
around in the Twin Cities for cases that might whet my
appetite for ghost hunting. Being also musically inclined
with an interest in theater, it was natural that she should
gravitate toward the famed Guthrie Theater, named after
the famous director, which is justly known as the pride of
Minneapolis. At the theater she met some other young
people, also in their early twenties, and shared her interest
in psychic phenomena with them. Imagine her surprise
when she discovered that she had stumbled upon a most
interesting case.
Richard Miller was born in Manhattan, Kansas in
1951 . Until age ten, he lived there with his father, a
chemist in government service. Then his father was trans-
ferred to England, and Richard spent several years going
to school in that country. After that, he and his family
returned to the United States and moved to Edina. This
left Richard not only with a vivid recollection of England,
but also somewhat of an accent which, together with his
childhood in Kansas, gave him somewhat unusual person-
ality.
His strange accent became the subject of ridicule by
other students at Edina Morningside High School where he
went to school, and it did not go down well with the shy,
The Ghostly Usher of Minneapolis
387
introspective young man. In the tenth grade at this school,
he made friends with another young man, Fred Koivumaki,
and a good and close relationship sprang up between the
two boys. It gave Fred a chance to get to know Richard
better than most of the other fellows in school.
As if the strange accent were not enough to make
him stand out from the other boys in the area. Richard was
given to sudden, jerky movements, which made him a good
target for sly remarks and jokes of his fellows students.
The Millers did not have much of a social life, since they
also did not quite fit into the pattern of life in the small
town of Edina.
During the years spent in an English school, Richard
had known corporal punishment, since it is still part of the
system in some English schools. This terrified him, and
perhaps contributed towards his inability to express himself
fully and freely. Somehow he never acquired a girlfriend as
the other students did, and this, too, bothered him a lot.
He couldn’t for the world understand why people didn’t
like him more, and often talked about it to his friend Fred.
When both young men reached the age of sixteen,
they went to the Guthrie Theater where they got jobs as
ushers. They worked at it for two years. Richard Miller got
along well with the other ushers, but developed a close
friendship only with Fred Koivumaki and another fellow,
Barry Peterson. It is perhaps a strange quirk of fate that
both Richard Miller and Barry Peterson never reached
manhood, but died violently long before their time.
However, Richard’s parents decided he should go to
the university, and quit his job. In order to oblige his par-
ents, Richard Miller gave up the job as usher and moved
into Territorial Hall for his first year at the university.
However, the change did not increase his ability to
express himself or to have a good social life. Also, he
seemed to have felt that he was catering to his parent’s
wishes, and became more antagonistic toward them. Then,
too, it appears that these students also made him the butt
of their jokes. Coincidentally, he developed a vision prob-
lem, with cells breaking off his retinas and floating in the
inner humor of the eye. This caused him to see spots
before his eyes, a condition for which there is no cure.
However, he enjoyed skiing because he knew how to do it
well, and joined the university ski club.
But Richard’s bad luck somehow was still with him.
On a trip to Colorado, he ran into a tree, luckily breaking
only his skis. When summer came to the area, Richard
rode his bike down a large dirt hill into rough ground and
tall weeds at the bottom injuring himself in the process.
Fortunately, a motorcyclist came by just then, and got
Richard to the emergency ward of a nearby hospital. All
this may have contributed towards an ultimate breakdown;
or, as the students would call it, Richard just “flipped out.”
He was hospitalized at the university hospital and
was allowed home only on weekends. During that time he
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
was on strong medication, but when the medication did not
improve his condition, the doctor took him off it and sent
him home.
The following February 4, he decided to try skiing
again, and asked his father to take him out to Buck Hill,
one of the skiing areas not far from town. But to his dis-
may Richard discovered that he couldn’t ski anymore, and
this really depressed him. When he got home, there was a
form letter waiting for him from the university, advising
him that because he had skipped all the final exams due to
his emotional problems at the time, he had received Fs in
all his classes and was on probation.
Ail this seemed too much for him. He asked his
mother for $40, ostensibly to buy himself new ski boots.
Then he drove down to Sears on Lake Street, where he
bought a high-powered pistol and shells. That was on Sat-
urday, and he killed himself in the car. He wasn’t found
until Monday morning, when the lot clearing crew found
him with most of his head shot off.
Richard Miller was given a quiet burial in Fort
Snelling National Cemetery. His parents, Dr. and Mrs.
Byron S. Miller, requested that memorials to the Min-
nesota Association for Mental Health be sent instead of
flowers. Richard’s mother had always felt that her son’s
best years had been spent as an usher at the Guthrie The-
ater; consequently he was cremated wearing his Guthrie
Theater blazer. The date was February 7, and soon enough
the shock of the young man's untimely death wore off, and
only his immediate family and the few friends he had made
remembered Richard Miller.
A few weeks after the death of the young usher, a
woman seated in the theater in an aisle seat came up to the
usher in charge of this aisle and asked him to stop the
other usher from walking up and down during the play.
The usher in charge was shocked, since he had been at the
top of the aisle and had seen no one walk up and down.
All the other ushers were busy in their respective aisles.
However, the lady insisted that she had seen this young
man walk up and down the aisle during the play. The
usher in charge asked her to describe what she had seen.
She described Richard Miller, even to the mole on his
cheek. The incident is on record with the Guthrie Theater.
Minneapolis Tribune columnist Robert T. Smith inter-
viewed Craig Scherfenberg, director of audience develop-
ment at the theater, concerning the incident. “There was
no one in our employ at the time who fit the description,”
the director said, “but it fit the dead young man perfectly.”
In the summer several years later, two ushers were
asked to spend the night in the theater to make sure some
troublesome air conditioning equipment was fully repaired.
The Guthrie Theater has a thrust stage with openings onto
the stage on all three sides; these openings lead to an
actors’ waiting area, which in turn has a door opening onto
an area used as a lounge during intermissions.
The two young men were sitting in this waiting area
with both doors open, and they were the only people in the
388
building. At 1 o'clock in the morning, they suddenly heard
the piano on stage begin to play. Stunned by this, they
watched in silence when they saw a cloud -like form floating
through the lounge door and hovering in the center of the
room. One of the ushers thought the form was staring at
him. As quickly as they could gather their wits they left
the room.
One of Deborah Turner’s friends had worked late
one evening shortly after this incident, repairing costumes
needed for the next day’s performance. She and a friend
were relaxing in the stage area while waiting for a ride
home. As she glanced into the house, she noticed that the
lights on the aisle that had been the dead usher’s were
going on and off, as if someone were walking slowly up
and down. She went to the ladies’ room a little later, and
suddenly she heard pounding on one wall, eventually cir-
cling the room and causing her great anxiety, since she
knew that she and her friend were the only people in the
house.
When the Guthrie Theater put on a performance of
Julius Caesar, one of the extras was an older woman by the
name of Mary Parez. She freely admitted that she was psy-
chic and had been able to communicate with her dead sis-
ter. She told her fellow actors that she could sense Richard
Miller’s presence in the auditorium. Somehow she thought
that the ghost would make himself known during Mark
Antony’s famous speech to the Romans after Caesar’s
death.
The scene was lit primarily by torches when the body
of Julius Caesar was brought upon the stage. Jason Harlen,
a young usher, and one of his colleagues, were watching
the performance from different vantage points in the the-
ater. One man was in one of the tunnels leading to the
stage, the other in the audience. Both had been told of
Mary Parez ’s prediction, but were disappointed when noth-
ing happened at that time. In boredom, they began to look
around the theater. Independently of each other, they saw
smoke rising to the ceiling, and shaping itself into a human
form. Both young men said that the form had human eyes.
The aisle that the late Richard Miller worked was
number eighteen. Two women in the acting company of
Julius Caesar, named Terry and Gigi, complained that they
had much trouble with the door at the top of aisle eighteen
for no apparent reason. Bruce Benson, who now worked
aisle eighteen, told that people complained of an usher
walking up and down the aisle during performances. Bruce
Margolis, who works the stage door, leaves the building
after everyone else. When he was there one night all alone,
the elevator began running on its own.
All this talk about a ghost induced some of the young
ushers to try and make contact with him via the Ouija
board. Dan Burg, head usher, took a board with him to the
stage, and along with colleagues Bruce Benson and Scott
Hurner, tried to communicate with the ghost. For a while
nothing happened. Then, all of a sudden the board spelled,
"Tiptoe to the tech room.’’ When they asked why, the
board spelled the word ghost. They wanted to know which
tech room the ghost was referring to: downstairs? "No,”
the communicator informed them, "upstairs.” Then the
board signed off with the initials MIL. At that, one of the
men tipped over the board and wanted nothing further to
do with it.
In November of the next year, an usher working at
the theater told columnist Robert Smith, “It was after a
night performance. Everyone had left the theater but me. I
had forgotten my gloves and returned to retrieve them. I
glanced into the theater and saw an usher standing in one
of the aisles. It was him. He saw me and left. I went
around to that aisle and couldn’t find anything.”
There is also an opera company connected with the
Guthrie Theater. One night, one of the ladies working for
the opera company was driving home from the Guthrie
Theater. Suddenly she felt a presence beside her in the car.
Terrified, she looked around, and became aware of a young
man with dark curly hair, glasses, and a mole on his face.
He wore a blue coat with something red on the pocket —
the Guthrie Theater blazer. With a sinking feeling, she
realized that she was looking at the ghost of Richard
Miller.
For two years after, however, no new reports have
come in concerning the unfortunate young man. Could it
be that he has finally realized that there await him greater
opportunities in the next dimension, and though his life on
earth was not very successful, his passing into the spiritual
life might give him most of the opportunities his life on
earth had denied him? At any rate things have now quieted
down in aisle eighteen at the Guthrie Theater, in Min-
neapolis, Minnesota.
V
The Ghostly Usher of Minneapolis
389
♦ 73
The Ghostly Adventures of a
North Carolina Family
Toni S. IS YOUNG WOMAN of good educational back-
ground, a psychologist by profession, who works for a large
business concern. She is not given to daydreaming or fanta-
sizing. She is the daughter of Mrs. Elizabeth K., or rather
the daughter of Mrs. K.’s second marriage. The thrice-
married Mrs. K. is a North Carolina lady of upper middle-
class background, a socially prominent woman who has
traveled extensively.
Neither was the kind of person who pulls out a Ouija
board to while away the time, or to imagine that every
shadow cast upon the wall is necessarily a ghost. Far from
it; but both ladies were taken aback by what transpired in
their old house at the town of East La Porte, built on very
old ground.
Originally built about fifty years ago, it was to be a
home for Mrs. K.’s father who then owned a large lumber
company, and the tract of timber surrounding the house
extended all the way across the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Undoubtedly an older dwelling had stood on the same
spot, for Mrs. K. has unearthed what appears to be the
remains of a much older structure. The house was reno-
vated and a second story was built on about thirty-five
years ago. At that time, her father had lost one leg as the
result of an automobile accident, and retired from his lum-
ber mill activities to East La Porte, where he intended to
spend his remaining years in peace and quiet. He had liked
the climate to begin with, and there was a sawmill nearby,
which he could oversee. The house is a doubleboxed frame
house, perhaps fifty -by -fifty square, containing around fif-
teen rooms.
Mrs. K.’s family refer to it as the summer cottage,
even though it was full-sized house; but they had other
houses that they visited from time to time, and the house
in East La Porte was merely one of their lesser properties.
Downstairs there is a thirty -by -fifteen -foot reception room,
richly carpeted with chestnut from Furnace Creek, one of
the sawmills owned by the family. It was in this room that
Mrs. K.’s father eventually passed on.
The house itself is built entirely from lumber origi-
nating in one of the family’s sawmills. There was a center
hall downstairs and two thirty-foot rooms, then there were
three smaller rooms, a bath, a card room, and what the
family referred to as a sleeping porch. On the other side of
the center hall was a lounge, a kitchen, and a laundry
porch. Running alongside the south and east walls of the
house is a veranda. Upstairs is reached by a very gentle
climb up the stairs in the middle of the floor, and as one
climbs the steps, there is a bedroom at the head of the
stairs. In back of the stairs, there are two more bedrooms,
then a bathroom, and finally a storage room; to the left of
the stairs are three bedrooms.
The attic is merely a structure to hold up the roof,
and does not contain any rooms. There is a cellar, but it
contains only a furnace. Although the acreage surrounding
the house runs to about sixty acres, only three acres belong
to the house proper. All around the house, even today,
there is nothing but wilderness, and to get to the nearest
town, East La Porte, one needs a car.
Mrs. K. enjoyed traveling, and didn’t mind living in
so many residences; in fact, she considered the house at
East La Porte merely a way-station in her life. She was
bom in Alaska, where the family also had a sawmill. Her
early years were spent traveling from one sawmill to
another, accompanying her parents on business trips.
Under the circumstances, they were never very long
in residence at the house in East La Porte. Any attempt to
find out about the background of the land on which the
house stood proved frutiless. This was Cherokee territory,
but there is little written history concerning the time before
the Cherokees. Anything remotely connected with physic
phenomena was simply not discussed in the circles in
which Mrs. K. grew up.
The first time Mrs. K. noticed anything peculiar
about the house was after her father had passed away. She
and her father had been particularly close, since her mother
had died when she was still a small child. That particular
day, she was sitting at her father’s desk in the part of the
house where her father had died. The furniture had been
rearranged in the room, and the desk stood where her
father’s bed had previously been. Her father was on her
mind, and so she thought it was all her imagination when
she became aware of a distinctive sound like someone walk-
ing on crutches down the hall.
Since Mrs. K. knew for a fact that she was the only
person in the house at the time, she realized that something
out of the ordinary was happening. As the footsteps came
closer, she recognized her father's tread. Then she heard
her father's familiar voice say, “Baby.” It came from the
direction of the door. This gave her a feeling of great
peace, for she had been troubled by emotional turmoil in
her life. She felt that her late father was trying to console
her, and give her spiritual strength.
Nothing happened until about a year later. It was
August, and she had been in New York for awhile. As she
was coming down the stairs of the house, she found herself
completely enveloped with the fragrance of lilacs. She had
not put any perfume on, and there were no lilacs blooming
in August. No one was seen, and yet Mrs. K. felt a pres-
ence although she was sure it was benign and loving.
A short time later, she was sitting at a desk in what
used to be her father’s study upstairs, thinking about noth-
ing in particular. Again she was startled by the sound of
footsteps, but this time they were light steps, and certainly
not her father’s. Without thinking, she called out to her
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
390
daughter, “Oh, Toni, is that you?” telling her daughter
that she was upstairs.
But then the steps stopped, and no one came. Puz-
zled, Mrs. K. went to the head of the stairs, called out
again, but when she saw no one, she realized that it was
not a person of flesh and blood who had walked upon the
stairs.
During the same month, Mrs. K.’s daughter Toni
was also at the house. Her first experience with the unseen
happened that month, in an upstairs bedroom.
She was asleep one night when someone shook her
hard and said, “Hey, you!” Frightened, she did not open
her eyes, yet with her inner eyes, she “saw” a man of about
fifty years of age. She was much too frightened to actually
look, so instead she dove underneath the covers and lay
here with her eyes shut. There was nothing further that
light.
In the fall of the same year, Toni decided to have a
pajama party and spent the night with a group of friends.
Her mother had gone to bed because of a cold. Toni and
her friends returned to the house from bowling at around
11:30. They were downstairs, talking about various things,
when all of a sudden one of Toni’s girlfriends said, “Your
another is calling you.”
Toni went out into the hallway, turning on the lights
as she approached the stairs. Footsteps were coming down
the stairs, audible not only to her but to her two girlfriends
who had followed her into the house. And then they heard
a voice out of nowhere calling out, “Toni, it is time to go
to bed.” It was a voice Toni had never heard before.
She went up the stairs and into her mother’s room,
but her mother was fast asleep, and had not been out of
bed. The voice had been a woman’s, but it had sounded
strangely empty, as if someone were speaking to her from
far away.
The following years, Toni was married and left the
house. Under the circumstances, Mrs. K. decided to sub-
lease part of the house to a tenant. This turned out to be a
pleasant woman by the name of Alice H. and her husband.
The lady had been injured and was unable to go far up the
mountain where she and her husband were building a sum-
mer home at the time. Although Mrs. K. and her new ten-
ants were not associated in any way except that they were
sharing the same house, she and Alice H. became friendly
after a while. One afternoon, Alice H. came to Mrs. K.’s
apartment in order to invite her to have supper with her
and her husband that night. She knew that Mrs. K. was in
her apartment at the time because she heard her light foot-
seps inside the apartment. When there was no reply from
inside the apartment Alice was puzzled, so she descended
to the ground floor, thinking that perhaps Mrs. K. was
downstairs.
Sure enough, as she arrived downstairs, she saw a
shadow of what she assumed to be Mrs. K.’s figure walking
long the hallway. She followed this shadowy woman all
the way from the ground floor guest room, through the
bath into Mrs. K.’s bedroom, and then through another
hallway and back to the bedroom. All the time she saw the
shadowy figure, she also heard light footsteps. But when
she came to the bedroom again, it suddenly got very cold
and she felt all the blood rush to her head. She ran back to
her husband in their own apartment, and informed him
that there was a stranger in Mrs. K.’s rooms.
But there was no one in the house at the time except
themselves, for Mrs. K. had gone off to Asheville for the
day. The experience shook Alice H. to the point where she
could no longer stand the house, and shortly afterward she
and her husband left for another cottage.
In August of the same year, Toni S. returned to her
mother’s house. But now she was a married lady, and she
was coming for a visit only. Her husband was a car dealer,
in business with his father. At the time of the incident, he
was not in the house. It was raining outside, and Toni was
cleaning the woodwork in the house.
Suddenly her Pekinese dog came running down the
stairs, nearly out of her mind with terror, and barking at
the top of her lungs. Toni thought the dog had been
frightened by a mouse, so she picked her up and proceeded
up the stairs. But the dog broke away from her and ran '
behind the door. All of a sudden, Toni felt very cold. She
kept walking down the hall and into the room, where there
was a desk standing near the window. Someone was going
through papers on her desk as if looking for a certain piece
of paper, putting papers aside and continuing to move
them! But there was no one there. No one, that is, who
could be seen. Yet the papers were moving as if someone
were actually shuffling them. It was 2 o’clock in the after-
noon, and the light was fairly good.
Suddenly, one letter was pulled out of the piles of
papers on the desk, as if to catch her attention. Toni
picked it up and read it. It was a letter her father had sent
her in February, at the time she got married, warning her
that the marriage would not work out after all, and to make
sure to call him if anything went wrong. Things had gone
wrong since, and Toni understood the significance of what
she had just witnessed.
At that very moment, the room got warm again, and
everything returned to normal. But who was it standing at
her desk, pulling out her father’s letter? The one person
who had been close to her while he was in the flesh was
her grandfather.
During Toni’s visit at the house, her husband, now
her ex-husband, also had some uncanny experiences. Some-
body would wake him in the middle of the night by calling
out, “Wake up!” or “Hey you!” This went on night after
night, until both Toni and her husband awoke around two
in the morning because of the sound of loud laughing, as if
a big party were going on downstairs.
The Ghostly Adventures of a
North Carolina Family
391
Toni thought that the neighbors were having a party,
and decided to go down and tell them to shut up. She
looked out the window and realized that the neighbors
were also fast asleep. So she picked up her dog and went
downstairs, and as she arrived at the bottom of the stairs,
she saw a strange light, and the laughing kept going on and
on. There were voices, as if many people were talking all at
once, having a social. In anger, Toni called out to them to
shut up, she wanted to sleep, and all of a sudden the house
was quiet, quiet as the grave. Evidently, Southern ghosts
have good manners!
After her daughter left, Mrs. K. decided to sublease
part of the house to a group of young men from a national
fraternity who were students at a nearby university. One of
the students, Mitchell, was sleeping in a double bed, and
he was all alone in the house. Because the heat wasn’t
turned up, it being rather costly, he decided to sleep in a
sleeping bag, keeping warm in this manner. He went to
sleep with his pillow at the head of the bed, which meant
due east, and his feet going due west. When he awoke, he
found himself facing in the opposite direction, with his
head where his feet should have been, and vice versa. It
didn’t surprise the young man though, because from the
very first day his fraternity brothers had moved into the
house, they had heard the sounds of an unseen person
walking up and down the stairs.
One of their teachers, a pilot who had been a colonel
in the Korean War, also had an experience at the house.
One day while he was staying there, he was walking up the
stairs, and when he reached about the halfway mark, some-
one picked him up by the scruff of his neck and pushed
him up the rest of the way to the landing.
But the night to remember was Halloween Eve. Mrs.
K. was in the house, and the night was living up to its rep-
utation: it sounded as if someone wearing manacles were
moving about. Mrs. K. was downstairs, sleeping in one of
the bunk beds, and a noise came from an upstairs hall.
This went on for about two hours straight. It sounded as if
someone with a limp were pulling himself along, dragging
a heavy chain. Mrs. K. was puzzled about this, since the
noise did not sound anything like her father. She looked
into the background of the area, and discovered that in the
pre-colonial period, there had been some Spanish settlers in
the area, most of whom kept slaves.
Toni S. takes her involvement with hauntings in
stride. She has had psychic experiences ever since she can
remember; nothing frightening, you understand, only such
things as events before they actually happen— if someone is
going to be sick in the family, for instance, or who might
be calling. Entering old houses is always a risky business
for her: she picks up vibrations from the past, and some-
times she simply can t stand what she feels and must leave
at once.
But she thought she had left the more uncanny
aspects of the hauntings behind when she came to New
York to work. Somehow the wound up residing in a house
that is one hundred ten years old.
After a while, she became aware of an old man who
liked sitting down on her bed. She couldn’t actually see
him, but he appeared to her more like a shadow. So she
asked some questions, but nobody ever died in the apart-
ment and it was difficult for Toni to accept the reality of
the phenomena under the circumstances. As a trained psy-
chologist, she had to approach all this on a skeptical level,
and yet there did not seem to be any logical answers.
Soon afterward, she became aware of footsteps where
no one was walking, and of doors closing by by themselves,
which were accompanied by the definite feeling of another
personality present in the rooms.
On checking with former neighbors upstairs, who had
lived in the house for seventeen years, Toni discovered that
they too had heard the steps and doors closing by them-
selves. However, they had put no faith in ghosts, and dis-
missed the matter as simply an old structure settling. Toni
tried her innate psychic powers, and hoped that the resi-
dent ghost would communicate with her. She began to
sense that it was a woman with a very strong personality.
By a process of elimination, Toni came to the conclusion
that the last of the original owners of the house, a Mrs. A.,
who had been a student of the occult, was the only person
who could be the presence she was feeling in the rooms.
Toni doesn’t mind sharing her rooms with a ghost,
except for the fact that appliances in the house have a way
of breaking down without reason. Then, too, she has a
problem with some of her friends; they complain of feel-
ings extremely uncomfortable and cold, and of being
watched by someone they cannot see. What was she to do?
But then Toni recalled how she had lived through the
frightening experiences at East La Porte, North Carolina,
and somehow come to terms with the haunts there. No
ordinary Long Island ghost was going to dispossess her!
With that resolve, Toni decided to ignore the pres-
ence as much as she could, and go about her business — the
business of the living.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
392
* 74
Reba’s Ghosts
Reba B. IS A SENSITIVE, fragile -looking lady with two
grown children. She was born in Kentucky, and hails from
an old family in which the name Reba has occurred several
times before. She works as a medical secretary and doctor's
assistant, and nowadays shares her home with three cats,
her children having moved away. Mrs. B., who is divorced,
wondered whether perhaps she had a particular affinity for
ghosts, seeing that she has encountered denizens of the
other world so many times, in so many houses. It wasn’t
that it bothered her to any extent, but she had gotten used
to living by herself except for her cats, and the idea of hav-
ing to share her home with individuals who could pop in
and out at will, and who might hang around her at times
when she could not see them, did not contribute to her
comfort.
Her psychic ability goes back to age three, when she
was living with her grandparents in Kentucky. Even then
she had a vivid feeling of presences all around her, not that
she actually say them with her eyes. It was more a sensitiv-
ity to unseen forces surrounding her — and awareness that
she was never quite alone. As soon as she would go to bed
as a child, she would see the figure of a man bending over
her, a man she did not know. After a long period of this
she wondered if she was dreaming, but in her heart she
knew she was not. However, she was much too young to
worry about such things, and as she grew up, her ability
became part of her character, and she began to accept it as
“normal.’1
This incident begins when she happened to be living
in Cincinnati, already divorces. Her mother shared an old
house with her, a house that was built around 1900; it had
all the earmarks of the post -Victorian era: brass door
knobs, little doorbells that were to be turned by hand, and
the various trimmings of that age. The house consisted of
three floors; the ground floor contained an apartment, and
the two ladies took the second and third floor of the house.
Reba had her bedroom on the third floor; it was the only
bedroom up there situated in the middle of the floor.
One day she was coming up those stairs, and was
approaching the window when she saw a man standing by
it. He vanished as she came closer, and she gave this no
more thought until a few days later. At that time she hap-
pened to be lying in bed, propped up and reading a book.
She happened to look up and saw a man who had
apparently come up the stairs. She noticed his features
fully: his eyes were brown, and he also had brown hair.
Immediately she could sense that he was very unhappy,
even angry. It wasn’t that she heard his voice, but some-
how his thoughts communicated themselves to her, mind
to mind.
From her bed she could see him approach, walking
out to a small landing and standing in front of her door.
Next to her room was a storage room. He looked straight
at Reba, and at that moment she received the impression
that he was very angry because she and her mother were in
that house, because they had moved into his house.
Although Reba B. was fully conscious and aware of
what was going on, she rejected the notion that she was
hearing the thoughts of a ghost. But it did her no good;
over and over she heard him say or think, “Out, out, I
want you out, I don’t want you here.” At that moment he
raised his arm and pointed outward, as if to emphasize his
point. The next moment he was gone. Reba thought for a
moment whether she should tell her mother whose bed-
room was downstairs. She decided against it, since her
mother had a heart condition and because she herself
wasn’t too sure the incident had been quite real. Also, she
was a little frightened and did not want to recall the inci-
dent any more than she had to. After a while, she went off
to sleep.
Not too long after that her daughter, who was then
fourteen, and eleven -year -old son were home with her from
school. It was a weekend, and she wanted the children to
enjoy it. Consequently, she did not tell them anything
about her ghostly experience. She had gone into the front
storage room, when she thought she saw someone sitting
on the boxed stacked in the storage area.
At first she refused to acknowledge it, and tried to
look away, but when her gaze retured to the area, the man
was still sitting there, quietly staring at her. Again she
turned her head, and when she looked back, he was gone.
The following weekend, her children were with her again.
They had hardly arrived when her daughter returned from
the same storage room asked, "Mother, is there someone
sitting in there?” and all Reba could do was nod, and
acknowledge that there was. Her daughter then described
the stranger and the description matched what her mother
had seen. Under the circumstances, Reba B. freely dis-
cussed the matter with her children. But nothing further
was done concerning the matter, and no inquiries were
made as to the background of the hourse.
Summer came, and another spring and another sum-
mer, and they got into the habit of using the entrance at
the side of the house. There were some shrubs in that area,
and in order to enter the apartment in which they lived,
they had to come up the stairs where they would have a
choice of either walking into the living room on the second
floor, or continuing on to the third floor where Reba’s bed-
room was. The tenant who had the ground floor apartment
also had his own entrance.
One warm summer evening, she suddenly felt the
stranger come into the downstairs door and walk up the
stairs. When she went to check, she saw nothing. Still, she
knew he was in the house. A few days passed, and again
Reba's Ghosts
393
she sensed the ghost nearby. She looked, and as her eyes
peered down into the hall, she saw him walking down the
hall towards her. While she was thinking, "I am imagining
this, there is no such thing as a ghost,” she slowly walked
toward him. As he kept approaching her, she walked right
through him! It was an eerie sensation: for a moment she
could not see, and then he was gone. The encounter did
not help Reba to keep her composure, but there was little
she could do about it.
Many times she sensed his presence in the house
without seeing him, but early one evening, on a Sunday,
just as it got dark, she found herself in the living room on
the second floor of the house. She had turned on the televi-
sion set, which was facing her, and she kept the volume
down so as not to disturb her mother, whose room was on
the same floor. She had altered the furniture in the room
somewhat, in order to be closer to the television set, and
there were two lounge chairs, one of which she used, and
the other one close by, near the television set, so that
another person could sit in it and also view the screen. She
was just watching television, when she sensed the stranger
come up the stairs again and walk into the living room.
Next he sat down in the empty chair close to Reba, but
this time the atmosphere was different from that first
encounter near the door of her room. He seemed more
relaxed and comfortable, and Reba was almost glad that he
was there keeping her company. Somehow she felt that he
was glad to be in the room with her, and that he was less
lonely because of her. He was no longer angry; he just
wanted to visit.
Reba looked at the stranger’s face and noticed his
rather high-bridged nose. She also had a chance to study
his clothes; he was wearing a brown suit, rather modern in
style. Even though the house was quite old, this man was
not from the early years, but his clothes seemed to indicate
a comparatively recent period. As she sat there, quietly
studying the ghost, she got the feeling that he had owned
the house at one time, and that their living room had been
the sitting room where the ghost and his wife had received
people.
Reba somehow knew that his wife had been very
pretty — a fair-complexioned blonde, and she was shown a
fireplace in the living room with a small love seat of the
French Provincial type next to it, drawn up quite close to
the fireplace. She saw this in her mind’s eye, as if the man
were showing her something from his past. At the same
time, Reba knew that some tragedy had occurred between
the ghost and his wife.
Suddenly, panic rose in Reba, as she realized she was
sharing the evening with a ghost. Somehow her fears com-
municated themselves to her phantom visitor, for as she
looked close, he had vanished.
As much as she had tried to keep these things from
her mother, she could not. Her mother owned an antique
CHAPTER SIX: This House is(Haunted
covered casserole made of silver, which she kept at the
head of her bed. The bed was a bookcase bed, and she
used to lift the cover and put in receipts, tickets, and
papers whenever she wanted.
One day, Reba and her mother found themselves at
the far end of her bedroom on the second floor. Her bed
was up against the wall, without any space between it and
the wall. As the two ladies were looking in the direction of
the bed, they suddenly saw the silver casserole being
picked up, put down on the bed, turned upside down and
everything spilled out of it. It didn’t fly through the air,
but moved rather slowly, as if some unseen force were
holding it. Although her mother had seen it, she did not
say anything because she felt it would be unwise to alarm
her daughter; but later on she admitted having seen the
whole thing. It was ironic how the two women were trying
to spare each other’s feelings — yet both knew that what
they had witnessed was real.
The ghost did not put in any further appearances
after the dramatic encounter in the living room. About a
year later, the two ladies moved away into another old
house far from this one. But shortly before they did,
Reba’s mother was accosted on the street by a strange mid-
dle-aged lady, who asked her whether she was living in the
house just up the street. When Reba’s mother acknowl-
edged it, the lady informed her the house had once
belonged to her parents. Were they happy in it, Reba’s
mother wanted to know. “Very happy,” the stranger
assured her, “Especially my father.” It occurred to Reba
that it might have been he who she had encountered in the
house; someone so attached to his home that he did not
want to share it with anyone else, especially flesh-and-
blood people like her mother and herself.
The new home the ladies moved into proved “alive”
with unseen vibrations also, but by now they didn’t care.
Reba realized that she had a special gift. If ghosts wanted
her company, there was little she could do about it.
She had a friend who worked as a motorcycle patrol-
man, by the name of John H. He was a young man and
well-liked on the force. One day he chased a speeder — and
was killed in the process. At the time, Reba was still mar-
ried, but she had known John for quite a few years before.
They were friends, although not really close ones, and she
had been out of touch with him for some time. One morn-
ing, she suddenly sensed his presence in the room with her;
it made no sense, yet she was positive it was John H. After
a while, the presence left her. She remarked on this to her
mother and got a blank stare in return. The young man
had been killed on the previous night, but Reba could not
have known this. The news had come on the radio just that
morning, but apparently Reba had had advance news of a
more direct kind.
Reba B. shared her interest in the occult with an
acquaintance, newscaster Bill G. In his position as a jour-
nalist, he had to be particularly careful in expressing an
opinion on so touchy a subject as ESP. They had met a
394
local restaurant one evening, and somehow the conversation
had gotten around to ghosts.
When Mr. G. noticed her apprehension at being one
of the “selected” ones who could see ghosts, he told her
about another friend, a young medium who had an apart-
ment not far away. One evening she walked out onto her
patio, and saw a man in old-fashioned clothes approach
her. The man tried to talk to her, but she could not hear
anything. Suddenly he disappeared before her eyes. The
young lady thought she was having a nervous breakdown,
and consulted a psychiatrist; she even went into a hospital
to have herself examined, but there was nothing wrong
with her. When she returned to her home and went out
onto the patio again, she saw the same ghostly apparition
once more. This time she did not panic, but instead stud-
ied him closely. When he disappeared she went back into
her apartment, and decided to make some inquiries about
the place. It was then that she discovered that a long time
ago, a man of that description had been hanged from a tree
in her garden.
"These things do happen,” Bill G. assured Reba, and
asked her not to be ashamed or afraid of them. After all,
ghosts are people too. Since then, Reba had come to terms
with her ghostly encounters. She has even had an experi-
ence with a ghost cat — but that is another story.
* 75
Henny from Brooklyn
Clinton Street, Brooklyn is one of the oldest sections of
that borough, pleasantly middle-class at one time, still
amongst Brooklyn’s best neighborhoods, as neighborhoods
go. The house in question is in the 300 block, and consists
of four stories. There was a basement floor, then a parlor
floor a few steps up, as is the usual custom with brown-
stone houses, with a third and fourth floor above it. If one
preferred, one could call the third floor the fourth floor, in
which case the basement becomes the first floor; but no
matter how one called it, there were four levels in this
brownstone, all capable of serving as apartments for those
who wished to live there. The house was more than one
hundred years old at the time of the events herein de-
scribed, and the records are somewhat dim beyond a cer-
tain point.
In the 1960s, the house was owned by some off-beat
people, about whom little was known. Even the Hall of
Records isn’t of much help, as the owners didn’t always
live in the house, and the people who lived in it were not
necessarily the owners, not to mention tenants, although
sharing a part of the house with people legitimately entitled
to live there. However, for the purpose of my story, we
need only concern ourselves with the two top floors; the
third floor contained two bedrooms and a bath, while the
fourth or top floor consisted of a living room, dining room,
kitchen, and second bath.
At the time my account begins, the first two floors
were rented to an architect and his wife, and only the two
top floors were available for new tenants.
It was in the summer when two young ladies in their
early 20s, who had been living at the Brooklyn YWCA,
decided to find a place of their own. Somehow they heard
of the two vacant floors in the house on Clinton Street and
immediately fell in love with it, renting the two top floors
without much hesitation. Both Barbara and Sharon were 23
years old at the time, still going to college, and trying to
make ends meet on what money they could manage
between them. Two years later, Barbara was living in San
Francisco with a business of her own, independently mer-
chandising clothing. Brooklyn was only a hazy memory by
then, but on August 1 of the year she and Sharon moved
in, it was very much her world.
Immediately after moving in, they decided to clean
up the house, which needed it, indeed. The stairway to the
top floor was carpeted all the way up, and it was quite a
job to vacuum it clean because there were a lot of outlets
along the way, and one had to look out for extension cords.
Sharon got to the top floor and was cleaning it when she
removed the extension cord to plug it in further up.
Instead, she just used the regular cord of the vacuum
cleaner, which was about 12 feet long, using perhaps three
feet of it, which left nine feet of cord lying on the floor.
All of a sudden, the plug just pulled out of the wall.
Sharon couldn’t believe her eyes; the plug actually pulled
itself out of the socket, and flew out onto the floor. She
shook her head and put it back in, and turned the vacuum
cleaner on again. Only then did she realize that she had
turned the switch on the cleaner back on, when she had
never actually turned it off in the first place! She couldn’t
figure out how that was possible. But she had a lot more
work to do, so she continued with it. Later she came
downstairs and described the incident to her roommate
who thought she was out of her mind. “Wait till something
happens to you,” Sharon said, “there is something strange
about this house.”
During the next five months, the girls heard strange
noises all over the house, but they attributed it to an old
houses settling, or the people living downstairs in the
building. Five months of “peace” were rudely shattered
when Sharon’s younger brother came to visit from New
Jersey.
Henny from Brooklyn
395
He was still in high school, and liked to listen to
music at night, especially when it was played as loud as
possible. The young people were sitting in the living room,
listening to music and talking. It was a nice, relaxed
evening. All of a sudden the stereo went off. The music
had been rather loud rock and roll, and at first they
thought the volume had perhaps damaged the set. Then
the hallway light went out, followed by the kitchen light.
So they thought a fuse had blown. Barbara ran down four
flights of stairs into the basement to check. No fuse had
blown. To be on the safe side, she checked them anyway,
and switched them around to make sure everything was
fine. Then she went back upstairs and asked the others
how the electricity was behaving.
But everything was still off. At this point, Sharon’s
brother decided to go into the kitchen and try the lights
there. Possibly there was something wrong with the
switches. He went into the hallway where there was an old
Tiffany-type lamp hanging at the top of the stairway. It
had gone off, too, and he tried to turn it on and nothing
happened. He pulled again, and suddenly it went on. In
other words, he turned it off first, then turned it on, so it
has been on in the first place.
This rather bothered the young man, and he
announced he was going into the kitchen to get something
to eat. He proceeded into the kitchen, and when he came
back to join in the others he was as white as the wall. He
reported that the kitchen was as cold as an icebox, but as
soon as one left the kitchen, the temperature was normal in
the rest of the house. The others then got up to see for
themselves, and sure enough, it was icy cold in the kitchen.
This was despite the fact that there were four or five radia-
tors going, and all the windows were closed.
That night they knew that they had a ghost, and for
want of a better name they called her Hendrix — it hap-
pened to have been the anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s
death, and they had been playing some of his records.
Shortly afterward, Toby joined the other two girls in
the house. Toby moved in on April 1 . It had been rela-
tively quiet between the incident in the kitchen and that
day, but somehow Toby’s arrival was also the beginning of
a new aspect of the haunting.
About a week after Toby moved in, the girls were in
living room talking. It was about 1 1 o’clock at night, and
they had dimmers on in the living room. Toby was sitting
on the couch, and Barbara and some friends were sitting on
the other side of the room, when all of a sudden she felt a
chilly breeze pass by her. It didn’t touch her, but she felt it
nonetheless, and just then the lights started to dim back
and forth, back and forth, and when she looked up, she
actually saw the dial on the dimmer moving by itself. As
yet, Toby knew nothing about the haunting, so she decided
to say nothing to the others, having just moved in, and not
wishing to have her new roommates think her weird.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
But things kept happening night after night, usually
after 1 1 o’clock when two girls and their friends sat around
talking. After a couple of weeks, she could not stand it any
longer, and finally asked the others whether they could feel
anything strange in the room. Barbara looked at Sharon,
and a strange look passed between them; finally they
decided to tell Toby about the haunting, and brought her
up to date from the beginning of their tenancy in the
house.
Almost every day there was something new to report:
cooking equipment would be missing, clothing would dis-
appear, windows were opened by themselves, garbage cans
would be turned over by unseen hands. Throughout that
period, there was the continued walking of an unseen per-
son in the living room located directly over the third-floor
bedroom. And the girls heard it at any hour of the night,
and once in a while even during the day. Someone was
walking back and forth, back and forth. They were loud,
stomping footsteps, more like a woman’s but they sounded
as if someone were very angry. Each time one of them
went upstairs to check they found absolutely nothing.
The girls held a conference, and decided that they
had a ghost, make no mistake about it. Toby offered to
look into the matter, and perhaps find out what might have
occurred at the house at an earlier age. Barbara kept hear-
ing an obscure whistling, not a real tune or song that could
be recognized, but a human whistle nevertheless. Mean-
while, Toby heard of a course on witchcraft and the occult
being given at New York University, and started to take an
interest in books on the subject. But whenever there were
people over to visit them and they stayed in the living
room upstairs past 1 1 o’clock at night, the ghost would
simply run them out of the room with all the tricks in her
ghostly trade.
"She” would turn the stereo on and off, or make the
lights go on and off. By now they were convinced it was a
woman. There were heavy shutters from the floor to the
ceiling, and frequently it appeared as if a wind were com-
ing through them and they would clap together, as if the
breeze were agitating them. Immediately after that, they
heard footsteps walking away from them, and there was an
uncomfortable feeling in the room, making it imperative to
leave and go somewhere else, usually downstairs into one
of the bedrooms.
As yet, no one had actually seen her. That June,
Bruce, Toby’s boyfriend, moved into the house with her.
They had the master bedroom, and off the bedroom was a
bathroom. Since Barbara would frequently walk through in
the middle of the night, they left the light on in the bath-
room all night so that she would not trip over anything.
That particular night in June, Toby and her boyfriend
were in bed and she was looking up, not at the ceiling, but
at the wall, when suddenly she saw a girl looking at her.
It was just like an outline, like a shadow on the wall,
but Toby could tell that she had long hair arranged in
braids. Somehow she had the impression that she was an
396
Indian, perhaps because of the braids. Toby looked up at
her and called the apparition to her boyfriend’s attention,
but by the time he had focused on it she had disappeared.
He simply did not believe her. Instead, he asked
Toby to go upstairs to the kitchen and make him a sand-
wich. She wasn’t up there for more than five or ten min-
utes when she returned to the bedroom and found her
boyfriend hidden under the covers of the bed. When she
asked him what was wrong, he would shake his head, and
so she looked around the room, but could find nothing
unusual. The only thing she noticed was that the bathroom
was now wide open. She assumed that her boyfriend had
gone to the bathroom, but he shook his head and told her
that he had not.
He had just been lying there smoking a cigarette,
when all of a sudden he saw the handle on the door turn
by itself, and the door open.
When he saw that, he simply dove under the covers
until Toby returned. From that moment on, he no longer
laughed at her stories about a house ghost. The following
night, her boyfriend was asleep when Toby woke up at 2
o’clock in the morning. The television set had been left on
and she went to shut it off, and when she got back into
bed, she happened to glance at the same place on the wall
where she had seen the apparition the night before. For a
moment or two she saw the same outline of a girl, only
this time she had the impression that the girl was smiling
at her.
Two weeks after that, Toby and her boyfriend broke
up, and this rather shook her. She had come back home
one day and didn’t know that he had left, then she found a
note in which he explained his reasons for leaving, and that
he would get in touch with her later. This very much upset
her, so much so that her two roommates had to calm her
down. Finally, the two girls went upstairs and Toby was
lying on the bed trying to compose herself.
In the quiet of the room, she suddenly heard some-
one sob a little and then a voice said, “Toby.” Toby got
up from bed and went to the bottom of the stairs and
called up, demanding to know what Barbara wanted. But
no one had called her. She went back to the room and lay
down on the bed again. Just then she heard a voice saying
“Toby” again and again. On checking, she found that no
one had called out to her — no one of flesh and blood,
that is.
Toby then realized who had been calling her, and she
decided to talk to “Henny,” her nickname for Hendrix,
which was the name given by the others to the ghost since
that night when they were playing Jimi Hendrix records. In
a quiet voice, Toby said, “Henny, did you call me?” and
then she heard the voice answer, "Calm down, don’t take it
so hard, it will be all right.” It was a girl’s voice, and yet
there was no one to be seen. The time was about 5 o’clock
in the afternoon, and since it was in June, the room was
still fairly light.
Toby had hardly recovered from this experience
when still another event took place. Sharon had moved out
and another girl by the name of Madeline had moved in.
One day her brother came to visit them from Chicago, and
he bought a friend along who had had some experience of a
spiritual nature. His name was Joey, and both boys were
about twenty to twenty-one years old.
Madeline and her brother were much interested in
the occult, and they brought a Ouija board to the house.
On Saturday, December 19, while it was snowing outside
and the atmosphere was just right for a seance, they
decided to make contact with the unhappy ghost in the
house. They went upstairs into the living room, and sat
down with the board. At first it was going to be a game,
and they were asking silly questions of it such as who was
going to marry whom, and other romantic fluff. But
halfway through the session, they decided to try to contact
the ghost in earnest. The three girls and Madeline’s
brother sat down on the floor with their knees touching,
and put the board on top. Then they invited Henny to
appear and talk to them if she was so inclined. They were
prepared to pick up the indicator and place their hands on
it so it could move to various letters on the board.
But before their hands ever touched it, the indicator
took off by itself! It shot over to the word yes on the
board, as if to reassure them that communication was
indeed desired. The four of them looked at each other
dumbfounded, for they had seen only too clearly what had
just transpired. By now they were all somewhat scared.
However, Toby decided that since she was going to be
interested in psychic research, she might as well ask the
questions. She began asking why the ghostly girl was still
attached to the house. Haltingly, word for word, Henny
replied and told her sad story.
It was a slow process, since every word had to be
spelled out letter by letter, but the young people didn’t
mind the passage of time — they wanted to know why
Henny was with them. It appears that the house once
belonged to her father, a medical doctor. Her name was
Cesa Rist and she had lived in the house with her family.
Unfortunately she had fallen in love with a young man and
had become pregnant by him. She wanted to marry him
and have the baby, but her father would not allow it and
forced her to have an abortion. He did it in the house him-
self, and she died during the abortion.
Her body was taken to Denver, Colorado and buried
in the family plot. She realized that her boyfriend was dead
also, because this all happened a long time ago. Her rea-
sons for staying on in the house were to find help; she
wanted her remains to be buried near her lover’s in New
York.
“Do you like the people who live in the house?”
“Yes,” the ghost replied.
“Is anyone who lives here ever in any danger?”
Henny from Brooklyn
397
"Yes, people who kill babies.”
This struck the young people as particularly appro-
priate: a close friend, not present at the time, had just had
an abortion. "Will you appear to us?”
“Cesa has,” the ghost replied, and as if to emphasize
this statement, there suddenly appeared the shadow of a
cross on the kitchen wall, for which there was no possible
source, except, of course, from the parapsychological point
of view.
The girls realized they did not have the means to go
to Denver and exhume Cesa’s remains and bring it to New
York, and they told the ghost as much. "Is there anything
else we can do to help you?” “Contact Holzer,” she said.
By that time, of course, Toby had become familiar with
my works, and decided to sit down and write me a letter,
telling me of their problem. They could not continue with
the Ouija board or anything else that night, they were all
much too shaken up.
On Monday, Toby typed up the letter they had com-
posed, and sent it to me. Since they were not sure the letter
would reach me, they decided to do some independent
checking concerning the background of the house, and if
possible, try to locate some record of Cesa Rist. But they
were unsuccessful, even at the Hall of Records, the events
having apparently transpired at a time when records were
not yet kept, or at least not properly kept.
When I received the letter, I was just about to leave
for Europe and would be gone two-and-a-half months. I
asked the girls to stay in touch with me and after my
return I would look into the matter. After Toby had spo-
ken to me on the telephone, she went back into the living
room and sat down quietly. She then addressed Henny and
told her she had contacted me, and that it would be a cou-
ple of months before I could come to the house because I
had to go to Europe.
Barbara decided not to wait, however; one night she
went upstairs to talk to Henny. She explained the situation
to her, and asked why she was still hanging around the
house; she explained that her agony was keeping her in the
house, and that she must let go of it in order to go on and
join her boyfriend in the great beyond. Above all, she
should not be angry with them because it was their home
now. Somehow Barbara felt that the ghost understood, and
nothing happened, nothing frightening at all. Relieved,
Barbara sat down in a chair facing the couch. She was just
sitting there smoking a cigarette, wondering whether
Henny really existed, or whether perhaps she was talking to
thin air.
At the moment, an ethereal form entered the room
and stood near the couch. It looked as if she were leaning
on the arm of the couch or holding onto the side of it. She
saw the outline of the head, and what looked like braids
around the front of her chest. For half a minute she was
there, and then she suddenly disappeared.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
It looked to Barbara as if the girl had been five foot
four inches, weighing perhaps one hundred twenty pounds.
Stunned, Barbara sat there for another ten or fifteen min-
utes, trying to believe what she had seen. She smoked
another five cigarettes, and then walked downstairs to try
to go to asleep. But sleep would not come; she kept think-
ing about her experience.
At the time Sharon left, they were interviewing
potential roommates to replace her. One particularly
unpleasant girl had come over and fallen in love with the
house. Both Barbara and Toby didn’t want her to move in,
but she seemed all set to join them, so Toby decided to tell
her about the ghost. She hoped it would stop the girl from
moving in. As Toby delineated their experiences with
Henny, the would-be roommate became more and more
nervous.
All of a sudden there was a loud crash in the kitchen,
and they went to check on it. The garbage can had turned
itself over and all the garbage was spilled all over the
kitchen, even though no one had been near it. The new
girl took one look at this and ran out as fast as she could.
She never came back.
But shortly afterward, Toby went on vacation to Cal-
ifornia. There she made arrangements to move and found
employment in the market research department of a large
department store. Under the circumstances, the girls
decided not to renew the lease, which was up in July, but
to move to another apartment for a short period. That Sep-
tember, they moved to California. Under the circum-
stances, they did not contact me any further, and I
assumed that matters had somehow been straightened out,
or that there had been a change in their plans. It was not
until a year later that we somehow met in California, and I
could fill in the missing details of Henny ’s story.
On the last day of the women's stay at the house on
Clinton Street, with the movers going in and out of the
house, Toby went back into the house for one more look
and to say goodbye to Henny. She went up to the living
room and said a simple goodbye, and hoped that Henny
would be all right. But there was no answer, no feeling of a
presence.
For a while the house stood empty, then it was pur-
chased by the father of an acquaintance of the girls.
Through Alan, they heard of the new people who had
moved in after the house was sold. One day when they had
just been in the house for a few days, they returned to
what they assumed to be an empty house.
They found their kitchen flooded with water: there
were two inches of water throughout the kitchen, yet they
knew they had not left the water taps on. Why had Henny
turned the water on and let it run? Perhaps Henny didn’t
like the new tenants after all. But she had little choice,
really. Being a ghost, she was tied to the house.
Following her friends to San Francisco was simply
impossible, the way ghosts operate. And unless or until the
new tenants on Clinton Street call for my services, there is
really nothing I can do to help Henny.
398
* 76
Longleat’s Ghosts
Longleat in Somerset must be the most publicized
haunted house in all of England. If it isn’t, at the very least
its owner, Lord Bath, is the most publicity-conscious man
among British nobility I have ever met: a genial, clever,
very businesslike Aquarian who happens to share my birth -
date, although a few years my senior. Longleat and its
ghosts were first extensively publicized by Tom Corbett,
the British society seer, who went there in the company of
a British journalist, Diana Norman, who then wrote a book
on Corbett's experiences in various British houses called
The Stately Ghosts of England. Mr. Corbett goes to great
pains to explain that he is not a medium but a clairvoyant.
He most certainly is not a trance medium, and it takes a
good deep -trance medium to really get to the bottom of
any haunting. All a clairvoyant can do is pick up vibrations
from the past and possibly come into communication with
a resident ghost or spirit entity, while it remains for a
trance medium to allow the spirit or ghost to speak directly
to the investigator.
I began to correspond with Lord Bath in the spring
of 1964, but before I could fix a date for my first visit to
Longleat, NBC television decided to include the magnifi-
cent palace in its itinerary of allegedly haunted houses
which its documentary unit wanted to film.
The Psychic News of May 23, 1964, headlined,
FAMOUS ACTRESS AND MEDIUM TO STAR IN PSYCHIC
FILM — WILL CAMERA RECORD SPIRIT FORMS? The news-
paper was, of course, referring to Margaret Rutherford, the
grand old lady of the British theater, who happened to be
interested in ESP phenomena, although by no means a
medium herself.
The idea of filming at Longleat and elsewhere was
the brainchild of producer -director Frank De Fellitta, who
had read the Tom Corbett-Diana Norman tome on
Britain’s haunted mansions. The NBC team went to Lon-
gleat, and immediately after they had set up for the filming
all sorts of difficulties arose. Cameras would be out of
place, tools would disappear; it seemed as if the resident
ghosts were not altogether happy at the invasion taking
place. But it is hard to tell how much of the reported diffi-
culty was factual and how much of it a product of the NBC
publicity department. One fact, however, was blissfully
ignored in its implications by both NBC and the producer.
They had set up a time-lapse exposure camera in the
haunted corridor at Longleat, a camera which records one
frame of film at a time over a long period of time. Such a
recording was made during the night when no one was
around. On developing the film, a whitish flash of light
was discovered for which there was no easy explanation.
The flash of light could not be explained as faulty film,
faulty laboratory work, or any other logical source. What
the camera had recorded was nothing less than the forma-
tion of a spirit form. Had Mr. De Fellitta any basic knowl-
edge of parapsychology or had he been in the company of
an expert in the field, he might have made better use of
this unexpected bonus.
The choice of Margaret Rutherford as hostess of the
program was not dictated by psychic ability or her integrity
as an investigator, but simply because she looked the part,
and in television that is the most important consideration.
And she had played the magnificently written comedy role
of the medium in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. Even the
austere New York Times, which has generally ignored any
serious treatment of parapsychology, managed to give the
project and Margaret Rutherford quite a bit of space.
“Miss Rutherford and company will visit allegedly
spirit-ridden mansions. She will give her personal impres-
sions of the hauntings — how they occur, when they occur
and, maybe, why they don’t occur,” wrote Paul Gardner.
Nothing of the sort was either intended or delivered, of
course, but it read well in the publicity releases.
* * *
My first visit to Longleat took place in September,
1964, long after the hullabaloo and the departure of Mar-
garet Rutherford and the film crew. However, the usual
large number of tourists was still milling around, so we had
arranged with Lord Bath to come at a time when the
grounds were closed to them.
Longleat is in the west of England, about three hours
from London by car, and truly a palace, rivaling some of
the royal residences in both size and appointments. Lord
Bath himself had long ago moved into more modest quar-
ters at nearby Warminster, where he and his wife lived in a
charming old mill. Longleat itself is named after a river
which runs through the grounds. It has been the home of
the Thynne family for four hundred years. Sometime
before 1580 Sir John Thynne, direct ancestor of the current
Marquess of Bath, began to build Longleat. His successors
enlarged the mansion until it assumed the proportions of a
palace. To describe the art treasures that fill the palace
from top to bottom would take volumes. Suffice it to say
that some very important paintings hang at Longleat and
among them, perhaps a peculiarity of the present Lord
Bath, art work by both Sir Winston Churchill and Adolf
Hitler. The latter are in the private portion of the house,
however, on one of the upper floors.
The first person Lord Bath wanted us to meet was
the old nurse, a certain Miss Marks, who was then in her
seventies. At the time when she took care of little Caroline,
she had several encounters with a ghost.
“I saw a tall, scholarly looking man,” the nurse
explained. "He was walking along and looked as if he
might be reading something; I only saw his back, but he
had a high collar, the wings of it distinctly standing out. I
would say, ‘I think perhaps that is Grandpa. Shall we
Longleat’s Ghosts
399
Longleat’s ghosts are strictly family — with one
exception
hurry up and speak to him?” We would follow him across
the room, but when we got to the door at the end, which
was shut, he just wasn’t there. I didn't think anything of it,
because I saw him lots and lots of times, and in the end I
thought, It isn’t person at all. I didn’t discuss it with
anyone, but I knew it was friendly to me. I loved seeing
this person, even after I discovered it was only a ghost."
From the nurse’s description and that given by Tom
Corbett it was clear to historians that the ghost was none
other than the builder of Longleat, Sir John Thynne.
Thynne had been a banker in the time of Henry VIII and
was known for his sharp business sense. The grounds upon
which Longleat stands were a result of his business acu-
men, and he was very much attached to it in his day. His
haunting ground, so to speak, is the Red Library on the
ground floor, where he usually appears between 7 and 8
o’clock at night.
Lord Bath then took us up to the haunted corridor,
which is now completely bare and gives a rather depressing
feeling, ghost or no ghost. This long, narrow passage runs
parallel to the sleeping quarters of some of the Thynne
family, and it was here that Tom Corbett felt a ghostly
presence.
"This is the corridor,” Lord Bath explained in a
voice that betrayed the fact that he had said it many times
before, “where a duel was fought by one of my ancestors,
the second Viscount Weymouth, because he found that his
wife, Louisa Carteret, had been unfaithful to him. He dis-
covered her in a state, unfortunately, in which he thought a
duel ought to be fought with the man she was with. He
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
fought this duel with the intruder and killed the man, after
which he buried him in the cellar. His skeleton was acci-
dentally found when the boiler was put in downstairs six
years ago.”
One would assume the unfortunate lover to be roam-
ing the corridors at Longleat, seeking revenge, or at least,
to frighten the survivors. But apparently he took his fate
like a man and remained a spirit rather than a ghost. Not
so with Lady Louisa: "People have seen what is assumed
to be the ghost of Louisa Carteret,” Lord Bath explained.
"I haven’t seen her myself, because I don't have that
power. My mother has seen the ghost in the Red Library
downstairs, but not this one.” I asked about visitors. Lord
Bath explained that visitors were never taken to the part of
the house where we were, so there was no way of telling
whether they had experienced anything. I took a good look
at the portrait of Lady Louisa. She was indeed worth fight-
ing over: lovely face, beautiful eyes, slim figure in a green
dress.
Shortly afterwards we left Longleat with the firm
promise to return someday with a trance medium so that
we could have a go at contacting the resident ghosts. But it
wasn’t until two years later that the opportunity came
along.
* * *
It was in September, 1966, when I brought the Lon-
don medium and former nurse, Trixie Allingham, to Lon-
gleat, introduced her to Lord Bath, and proceeded to enter
the palace in the hope of really coming to grips with the
phantoms that had never been dislodged, nor indeed fully
contacted before. For the next two hours, Lord Bath, my
friends and I went through one of the most fascinating and
gripping sessions we’d ever experienced.
All along, Trixie, a frail lady, had been unhappy in
the car, partly because it was a rough ride and partly
because she sensed some great tragedy ahead which would
shortly involve her personally. As we were rounding the
last long curve of the driveway leading to the palace, Trixie
turned to me and said, “I saw the painting of a fair young
woman. I thought she had something to do with my visit
here, and she showed me an opened window as if she were
telling me that there had been a tragedy connected with
that window. Either she was pushed out, or somebody she
loved had flung himself out, and then the vision faded.
Then another woman came to me, rather charming and of
the same period. She was older and looked rather haughty
for a moment. Then she faded."
I had not replied, for I did not wish to give her any
clues. A few minutes later we arrived it the main gate to
Longleat and got out of the car. I gave Trixie time to “get
to herself” and to get the shaky ride out of her system.
Then we entered the Red Library, and I asked Trixie to sit
down in one of the large antique chairs at the head of the
room.
400
Immediately she said in a quivering, excited voice,
“A long time ago something very evil happened here, or
someone had a devilish temptation in this room, looking
out of that window.” She pointed at one of the several large
windows on the far side of the room. “I have a feeling that
there is a French link here, that either the wife or the
daughter was of French ancestry,” Trixie continued.
“There is some connection with the French Revolution, for
I see a guillotine. . .good heavens!”
"Do you sense a ghost here, Trixie?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes, I get a woman. She has a
dress with long sleeves, and she walks as if her hip were
bent. There is a crucifix around her neck and she’s saying,
'Help me, help me, help me!' This is going back more than
a hundred years; her gown is sort of whitish with a mul-
berry shade. From way back.” Trixie paused for a moment
as if getting her bearings. Lord Bath, not exactly a believer,
was watching her seriously now.
"Now I see a horse and a man galloping away, and I
see the woman in tears and I wonder what it means. She
sees the man galloping away, and she thinks life is over,
and now I see her dead. I feel there is a church nearby,
where her effigy is in stone on top of some sort of a sar-
cophagus. She showed it to me.”
I asked Trixie if the woman was the same one she
had seen in the car driving tip, but she couldn’t be sure,
for she hadn’t yet seen the woman’s face. Were there any
other presences in the room?
“Yes,” Trixie replied. “Very dimly over there by the
door and holding the handle, there is a man with a big hat
on, and he wears a collar around the neck. He goes back a
long time, I think.”
I glanced at Lord Bath: nobody had told Trixie about
the apparition seen by the nurse — Sir John Thynne, a man
wearing a strange old-fashioned collar! While Trixie was
resting for a moment, I walked around the library. I
noticed that the shelves were filled with French books and
that some of the furniture was obviously of eighteenth-cen-
tury French origin. Had Trixie simply picked up the
atmosphere of the room?
Trixie suddenly said in a rather challenging tone of
voice: “Henry — is there a Henry here?” Almost like an
obedient schoolboy, Lord Bath stepped forward. Trixie
eyed him suspiciously. “You’re Henry?”
“I’m the only one.”
“Well, they said, 'Go talk to Henry.’”
“Who told you to talk to Henry?” Lord Bath
inquired.
“I don’t know. It is a man, a very unhappy man. He
passed over a long time ago. He killed three people, and I
don't mean in battle.”
The story was getting more interesting. "How did he
kill them?” I demanded to know.
"I look at his hands, and there are brown stains on
them which he can’t seem to wipe off. The letter H seems
to be connected with him, and I have the feeling he did it
Hans Holzer’s wife, Catherine, examining the
haunted corridor
in vengeance. I see a friar come up to him, and him trying
to get absolved and being unable to. The friar is haughty,
arrogant, and then the prior comes in and I see this
unhappy man on his knees, and yet he does not get absolu-
tion, and that is why he comes back here.”
"Can you possibly speak to him, Trixie?” I asked.
"I am speaking to him now," Trixie replied impa-
tiently, “but he says, ‘There is no hope for me.’ I tell him
we will pray for him. I hear him speak in Latin. I know a
fair amount of Latin, and I’m saying it in English: ‘Out of
the depths I have called unto thee, O God, hear my voice.’
Then the monk reappears, and there is also a tall lady here,
by his side. I believe this is his wife; she’s very slender and
beautiful, and she’s holding up one of his hands, saying,
‘Pray, pray as you’ve never prayed before.’”
We left the Red Library and slowly walked up the
staircase, one of the world’s greatest, to the upper stories.
When we arrived at the haunted corridor where the famous
duel had taken place, Trixie sensed that something had
happened around December or January of one particular
year — not an ordinary passing. Immediately she explained
that it had nothing to do with the haunting downstairs.
"The passing of this person was kept quiet. He was
carried out in the dead of night in a gray shroud. I can see
this happening. Five people are carrying out this ominous
task. The whole situation was tragic and hushed up. He
Longleat’s Ghosts
401
■
1
wasn’t murdered and it wasn’t suicide, but it was a person
who came to an untimely end. Above all, they wanted no
attention, no attention. He didn’t live here, but he stayed
here for a while. He came from Spain. I think he died from
a wound in his side, yet it wasn’t murder or suicide. He
was about thirty-five years old. He says ‘O my God, my
God, to come to such an end.’ He was a Catholic, he tells
me. He was not shriven here after he passed. I see lanterns;
he’s not buried in sacred ground. Wait a moment, sir,”
Trixie suddenly said, turning to Lord Bath. "Is there a
name like Winnie or something like that connected with
your family?” Lord Bath’s interest perked up. Winnie
sounded a little like Weymouth.
"Francis, Francis,” Trixie said excitedly now. “And I
hear the name Fanny. She’s just laughing. Did you know
her?”
“Yes,” Lord Bath replied, “a long, long time ago.”
“Was she a very bright person?”
"Well, she was as a child. Her nickname was
Fanny.”
Evidently Trixie had gotten some more recent spirits
mixed in with the old characters. "I see her as a younger
woman, lovely, laughing, running along, and she tells me
you have in your pocket a coin that is bent, out of order,
not a normal coin. Is that true?”
“Yes,” Lord Bath said, surprised.
“She just told me; isn’t she sweet? Oh, and there is a
lord chief justice here. Do you know him?”
“Peculiar,” Lord Bath replied. “There was a lord
chief justice upstairs.”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
For a moment Trixie seemed particularly sad, as she
reported: “There is a child here named Tim, Timothy, but
he died at the age of one-and-a-half. Is this true?”
Lord Bath seemed to struggle with his emotions now.
"Yes,” he finally said in a low voice.
"He wants me to say, ‘I am Tim,’ and you should
know he is still your son.”
Lord Bath confirmed that his oldest son, Tim, had
died in infancy, but that the fact was known only to mem-
bers of the family and had never been publicized.
Trixie then reported a servant woman, continuing to
serve in her ghostly condition, and when I didn’t show any
particular interest, she went on to say that there was also a
rather funny-looking man, “someone holding his head
under his arm, walking, and I really shouldn’t laugh at this
sort of thing, but I saw this man with his head under his
arm.”
Since none of us were laughing, she assumed that it
was all right to address the man with his head under his
arm. "Can you tell me, sir, how you lost your head, and
why?” She listened for a while, apparently getting an
answer from the unseen headless specter. Nodding, she
turned to us. “There is something about some rebels here;
they are linked with France, and these rebels have come in
strength. Somebody was being hounded, a person of high
birth. He was hidden here, and I don’t like it at all.”
Lord Bath was visibly impressed. "During the rebel-
lion of the Duke of Monmouth,” he explained, "some
rebels took refuge here. It is not at all unlikely that one of
them was put to death on these grounds.”
Trixie now exhibited unmistakable signs of weariness.
Under the circumstances, we decided to call it a day and
return in the morning. The following morning we started
again in the Red Library. On entering, Trixie described a
woman walking up and down wringing her hands and say-
ing that her child had died. Trixie identified her as
Christina and explained that this had happened no more
than a hundred years ago. However, my main interest was
in an earlier period, and I asked Trixie to try for full trance
if she could. Again she seated herself in the comfortable
chair at the far end of the Red Library.
“There is a link here with the tragedy I saw in part
yesterday,” she began. “I still see the horseman and the
woman at the window, and I smell the tragedy. There is
something about a rapier wound. Ron is murdered and a
Helen is mixed up in this. The man I saw yesterday is still
here, by the way, and he looks happier now.”
"Ask him to identify himself.”
"I get the initial R. He wears a cape and a lace
collar.”
"Why did he murder the three people?”
“I get the initial P. Someone was in a dungeon here.”
All of a sudden we weren’t hearing Trixie’s voice anymore,
but a rough male voice coming from her entranced lips. I
realized that the ghost had at last taken over the medium
and was about to address us directly.
402
“Who put you into the dungeon?’’
"S. Mine enemy, mine enemy.”
“Is this your house?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Did you build this house?”
“With bad money.”
"What is your name, sir?” I insisted.
Suddenly the entity was gone again and Trixie was
back. "He was a Catholic by birth,” she said, “and he is
showing me a very large ruby ring on his finger. His ankles
hurt him. He must have been chained for a time, and I see
a short dagger in his hand. Now he is fading again.”
“Is he the victim or the murderer?” I almost shouted.
“He did it; he says, ‘I did it, I have no peace.' He
was the owner of the house. He says, ‘You will pray for
me, you will pray for me.”1
I assured the entity through the medium that we
would all pray for him.
"He says someone owes him something.”
"But he can be forgiven; tell him that.”
“There is a little chapel here somewhere in this man-
sion. I can see the altar, and he wants Lord Bath to go
there, to the chapel. ‘If he will do it, he will give me peace;
he will give me rest.”'
I promised that we would do it, without even asking
Lord Bath, for I knew he would go along with it, although
he was not a religious person.
"I can’t do any more, I can’t do any more,” the
medium said now, and she looked exhausted. I questioned
her about what she remembered.
"I saw two men killed over a woman,” Trixie recol-
lected. "There is a lead coffin amongst all the others, one
different from the others. It is away from the others. This
man is in it, the one who murdered. I hear the name
Grace, and someone was hung, hanged from the rafters."
Impressions seemed to hit her now from various directions,
possibly getting different layers of history confused in the
process. It was up to us to sort it out.
“Tom,” Trixie now said firmly, and looked at me. I
asked her to describe the man. “I see him very dimly; he is
old and belongs to an earlier age.” Lord Bath then
informed me that we were in what used to be the chapel,
although the floor had been changed and we were actually
above it. Just as I had promised, we grouped ourselves
around the spot where the altar once stood below, bowed
our heads in prayer, and I said, “May Thomas rest free
from worry, happy in his home. May he be free from any
guilt or fear. Let us now have a moment of silent prayer.”
In the silence I glanced at Lord Bath, a man who had
told me before that he thought himself an agnostic. He
seemed genuinely affected and moved.
“I don’t know whether it was a bishop,” Trixie said,
“but I saw a man with a gold miter on his head make the
sign of the cross and I heard the word ‘progression,’ and
then something very odd happened. A feather was put on
his shoulder, but I don’t know what it means.”
Medium Trixie Allingham in a trance in the
Red Library
“Perhaps his soul is now light as a feather?” I sug-
gested. Trixie then asked Lord Bath whether he knew any
jeweled crucifix in the mansion. Lord Bath could not
remember such an item offhand. Trixie insisted, “It is a
jeweled cross with dark stones, and it has to do with your
people. I also see three monks who were here when you
were praying. Three in a row. But now I feel peace; I feel a
man who had a leaden weight on his shoulder is now with-
out it. It was important that he be helped.”
I have already mentioned that the name which the
medium got in connection with the death of the thirty -
five-year-old Spaniard in the haunted passage upstairs
sounded very close to Weymouth, the man who killed him
in a duel. The medium’s description of this death as being
neither death nor suicide is of course entirely correct: he
was killed in an honest duel, which in those days was not
considered murder. Trixie described the man’s death as an
affair that had to be hushed up, and so it was indeed, not
only because a man had been killed, but also because the
wife of the Viscount had been unfaithful. A scandal was
avoided: the body was interred underneath the kitchen
Longleat’s Ghosts
403
floor, and, as Lord Bath confirmed, it had been found sev-
eral years earlier and been given burial outside the house.
More fascinating is Trixie’s account of the haunting
in the Red Library. The man she described is obviously
the same man described by the old nanny whom I inter-
viewed in 1964, and the same man whom Dorothy Coates,
former librarian of Longleat, had encountered, as well as a
certain Mrs. Grant, former housekeeper in the greathouse.
In a somewhat confused and jumbled way, however,
Trixie hit on many of the facts surrounding the ancient
palace. I doubt that Trixie would have known of these
family secrets, which are never found in tourist guides of
Longleat or in popular books dealing with the Thynne
family. They are, however, available in research libraries, if
one tries hard enough to find the information. There exists,
for instance, a contemporary source known as the “John
Evelyn Diary,” a seventeenth-century chronicle of the Lon-
don scene. From this source we learned that Thomas
Thynne, then already one of the wealthiest men in England
and somewhat advanced in years, had fallen in love with a
sixteen-year-old heiress by the name of Elizabeth Ogle. He
married her despite the great difference in their ages, and
after the wedding ceremony preceded her to Longleat,
where Lady Elizabeth was to follow him in a few days’
time. But Elizabeth never arrived in Longleat. Unwilling to
consummate the marriage into which she felt herself forced
by her family, she ran away to the Netherlands, where she
continued living as if she weren’t married. In the Nether-
lands, Elizabeth Ogle met a certain Count Koenigsmark
and fell in love with this somewhat adventurous gentleman.
Since divorce was out of the question, and Lady Elizabeth
was legally married to Thomas Thynne, the young lovers
decided to murder Elizabeth’s husband so that she might
be free to marry her count.
In view of Thynne ’s affluence and importance, such a
plot was not an easy one to bring off. Koenigsmark there-
fore engaged the services of three paid murderers, a certain
Lieutenant Stern, a Colonel Vratz and a man named
Boroski. The murderous foursome arrived in London and
immediately set about keeping a close watch on their
intended victim. One Sunday night Thynne left a party in
London and entered his coach to be driven home. That
was the signal they had been waiting for. They followed
their victim, and when the coach with Thomas Thynne
reached Pall Mall, which was at that time still a country
road, the murderers stopped it. Lieutenant Stern, galloping
ahead of the coach, put his hands onto the reins of the lead
horse. As Thomas Thynne opened the door of the coach
and stepped out, a volley of shots hit him in the face.
The restless ghost had called “mine enemy.” Could
this have been Stern?
The murder created a great deal of attention even in
those unruly times. Count Koenigsmark and his henchmen
were apprehended just as the count was about to leave
England to join Elizabeth. According to John Evelyn, the
trial, which took place in 1682, saw the count acquitted by
a corrupt jury, but the actual murderers were condemned
to death on the gallows. The hired assassins paid with their
lives, but the man who had hatched the plot got off
scot-free. No wonder the restless spirit of the victim could
not find peace! But if one of the ghosts who contacted us
through Trixie was indeed Thomas Thynne, the victim of
the murder plot, why should he then grieve for the three
people who had been put to death for his murder?
Undoubtedly, Trixie, in reaching several levels of haunt -
ings, had brought up bits and pieces of John, Thomas, and
perhaps even his murderers — all presented in a slightly
confusing but essentially evidential package.
Trixie also spoke of “one lead coffin, different from
all others.” According to the diaries, two weeks after
Colonel Vratz had been put to death his body was still not
decayed, owing to a new process of preservation which was
being used for the first time. “He lay exposed in a very
rich coffin lined with lead, too magnificent for so daring
and horrid a murderer.”
So it seems that at least four ghosts occupied the halls
of Longleat: the Lady Louisa, who mourned her lover’s
death at the hands of her husband; the rebel from the
Duke of Monmouth’s army, who was caught and slaugh-
tered; the builder of Longleat, Sir John Thynne, whose
personal attachment and possibly feelings of guilt keep him
from leaving his rich estate for greener pastures; and, of
course, Thomas Thynne. I should think the latter has
departed the premises now, but I am equally sure that Sir
John is still around enjoying the spectacles his descendant,
the present Lord Bath, is putting on for the tourists. Surely
Sir John would have understood the need to install turn-
stiles in the cafeteria and toilet downstairs, or to bring in
lions for a zoo, and to do whatever was possible to raise
revenue to keep the magnificent palace in prime condition;
for Sir John, not unlike his descendant, was foremost a
man of business and common sense.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
404
* 77
The Ghosts at Blanchland
"The MOST OBVIOUS THING about Blanchland is its
remoteness,” writes G. W. O. Addleshaw in his short his-
tory of Blanchland. It wasn’t as remote for us, because we
arrived on a well-planned schedule, by private car, followed
about two hours later by a busload of special tourists: par-
ticipants in a Hunted Britain Tour arranged by Vision
Travel, under the guidance of Andre Michalski, Polish
nobleman and former orchestra conductor. Over the hills,
into the dales, and over still another chain of hills we rode,
shaken up all the while, but hopeful of eventually reaching
our destination intact. By we I mean my wife Catherine
and myself and London medium Trixie Allingham, whom
I had invited to participate in a rare and unusual experi-
ment. She hadn’t the slightest idea why I was bringing her
up north. All she knew was that I was on a ghost-hunting
expedition, that she would have a quiet room that night
and be brought back to London the following day.
When we left the airport at Newcastle, I had no idea
that I would soon be in the heart of the Middle Ages, in a
small market town so perfectly preserved that it gave one
the impression of being in the middle of a motion-picture
set in Hollywood. The square commons was reached
through a city gate, turreted and fortified, and to the left
was a solid-looking gray stone building with a colorful sign
dangling from the second story. The sign read “Lord
Crewe Arms.” This was the unusual hotel which was once
a sixteenth-century manor house, which in turn had been
converted from a twelfth-century monastery.
The Abbey of Blanchland had been founded by Pre-
monstratensian monks, a strict offshoot of the Benedictines.
The land which gave the abbey its income was originally
part of the old earldom of Northumbria, expropriated by
Henry I for the Norman de Bolbec family. The family
itself added some of their own lands in 1214, and it was
then that the name Blanchland, which means white land,
was mentioned for the first time. Most probably the name
is derived from the white habits of the Premonstratensian
monks. Up until the middle nineteenth century, the area
around Blanchland was wild and desolate, very thinly pop-
ulated and cut off from the outside world. This was, in a
way, most fortunate, because it prevented Blanchland from
being embroiled in the political struggles of the intervening
centuries and allowed the monks to lead a more contempla-
tive life here than in any other part of England. The
monastery was dissolved under Henry VIII, as were all oth-
ers, and in 1 539 the remaining monks were pensioned off,
leaving Blanchland Abbey after four hundred years of resi-
dence. At first a family named Radcliffe owned the estates
and buildings of the dissolved abbey, but in 1623 the
Forsters, an old Northumberland family, came into posses-
sion of Blanchland. By now the church was in ruins, but a
chapel still existed within the main building. Part of the
abbey buildings were converted into houses for the village,
and the abbot’s residence became the manor house. When
the last male of the line died, the property passed into the
hands of Dorothy Forster, who had married Lord Crewe,
Bishop of Durham.
When the owners of Blanchland got into financial
difficulties in 1704, Lord Crewe bought the estates, and
thus the name Crewe was linked with Blanchland from that
moment on. Unfortunately for the family, they became
embroiled in the Scottish rebellion of 1 71 5, taking the Jaco-
bite side. The estates eventually passed to a board of
trustees, which rebuilt the damaged portion of the village.
A group of buildings, chiefly the kitchen and the
prior’s house, eventually became an unusual hotel, the
Lord Crewe Arms, owned and operated by the Vaux Brew-
eries of Sunderland. The stone-vaulted chamber of the
house now serves as a bar. There is an outer stone staircase
leading to the gateway and another one leading to what is
called the Dorothy Forster Sitting Room, a room I was to
know intimately.
We were welcomed by the manager, a Mr. Blenkin-
sopp, and shown to our quarters. Everything was furnished
in eighteenth-century style. Our room, facing the rear, led
onto a magnificent garden behind the house: obviously this
was the monastery garden, or what remained of it. I under-
stood from previous correspondence with the owner that
the area is frequently plunged into sudden mists, but the
day of our arrival was a particularly nice day in early
August, and the sun was warm as late as 7 o'clock at night.
“Mrs. Holzer and yourself are in the Bambrugh Room,”
the manager said, with a significant raising of the eye-
brows, when I came downstairs after unpacking. Then,
making sure that no one was listening to our conversation,
he added, “This is the room in which most of the activities
are reputed to have taken place, you know.” I nodded. I
had specifically asked to be put up in the “haunted room.”
Our arrival had gone unannounced, by my request;
however, I offered to give a press interview after we had
done our work. While my wife and Trixie rested after the
journey from the airport, I took a walk around the
premises. The peaceful atmosphere of the place was incred-
ible. It almost belied the rumors of a haunting. A little
later we had dinner in the candlelit bar downstairs. My
psychic tour had meanwhile arrived and been placed in
various rooms of the inn, and they were eager to participate
in what for them was a unique and exciting adventure: to
witness an actual seance or make contact with an authentic
ghost!
It was already dark when we repaired to the room in
which we were to sleep that night. Things were a bit on
the tight side, with fourteen people trying to squeeze into a
double bedroom. But we managed to find everyone a spot,
and then Trixie took to a chair in one corner, closed her
eyes and leaned back, waiting for the spirits to manifest.
The Ghosts at Blanchland
405
Immediately Trixie looked up at me with a significant
nod. “There was a murder in this room, you know," as if it
were the most natural thing to expect from a room that was
to serve as our sleeping quarters for the night.
“Anything else?” I said, preparing myself for the
worst.
“I saw three monks come along, and the odd thing is
one dropped his girdle — you know, the cord. It is all very
odd.”
I agreed that it was, but before I could ask her any-
thing further, she pointed at the bed we were sitting on. “I
see a woman lying on this bed, and she is dead. She has
been murdered. This happened centuries ago. Now I see a
little child running into the room, also wearing a dress of
centuries ago. There is an unusual coffin leaving this room.
I hear chanting. The coffin is black and shaped like a boat.
I have the feeling this happened between the eleventh and
thirteenth centuries. Also, I have a feeling of sword play
and of a stone, a very special stone standing up somewhere
outside.”
At this point Trixie called for us to join hands to
give her more power for what was to come.
Immediately her face became agitated, as if she were
listening to something, something coming to her from far
away. “I can hear somebody calling, ‘Jesus, Jesus have
mercy, Jesus have mercy,’ and I see a monk wearing a dark
habit, while the others are wearing a grayish white. But
this man has on a dark robe which is extraordinary. He is a
monk, yet he is really Satanic.
“I think his name is Peter. I don't know whether he
committed this murder or got caught up in it. He has a
hawk-like face, and there is a very beautiful woman who
was tied to this monk. I hear her crying, ‘Help me, help
me, help me!”’
“How can we help her?” I asked.
“Get on your knees and pray,” Trixie replied. “She
wants absolution.”
“What has she done?”
"Credo, credo — what does it mean?”
Trixie seemed puzzled, then she handed me a key.
“Go to my room and you’ll find a crucifix there. Bring it to
me.” I asked one of the tour members to get the crucifix
from the room down the hall.
"This very beautiful girl died in childbirth, but it
was not her husband’s child,” Trixie explained. “And now
she wants absolution for what she had done. I hear ‘Ave
Maria.’ She was buried stealthily outside this area, but she
comes back here to visit this guilty love. Her progression is
retarded because of her inability to clear her conscience,
and yet one part of her wants to cling to the scene here.
Wait a minute, I get ‘Lord’ something. Also, I wonder
who was imprisoned for a time, because I see a jailer and
rusty keys. It is all very much like looking at a movie
screen — I’m getting bits and pieces of a picture. There is a
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
great sense of remorse; this woman was married, yet she
had this love for a monk. The child is lying on a bier. It is
all tinged with murder. It seems she killed the child. Now
I’m getting something about Spain and the Inquisition, but
I don’t understand why.”
“Tell her she must divulge her name, so that she may
be completely cleared,” I suggested.
Trixie strained visibly to read the woman’s name. “I
get the initial F.,” she finally said.
“Can you get something about the period when this
happened?”
"She said 1260. She’s beautiful; her hair is chestnut
colored.”
“What happened to the monk?”
“He was banished and died in misery, and she says,
‘My fault, my fault!”’
I instructed Trixie to relieve the unhappy one of
her guilt. Trixie took up the crucifix and intoned in a
trembling voice, “You are forgiven and helped in Christ,
the Savior!” I asked what was the name of the unlucky
monk so that we could pray for him too. “F. F. F.” Trixie
replied. “He was a monsignor.”
At this point, trance set in and Trixie turned more
and more into the unhappy woman ghost. “I thought it
would be some reparation for the misery I caused if I came
back here. I am trying to impress my survival by coming
from time to time. I do not see him now. Oh, we are sepa-
rated from each other. I kneel in the church.”
Trixie “returned,” and the entity again spoke to her,
with the medium relaying her messages to me. “When she
was young, this house belonged to the earl.” I offered to
have some prayers said on her behalf in the church, but in
whose name should they be said?
“Just pray for me. I shall know much happiness and
I shall be free.”
“Then go in peace with our blessings,” I replied, and
I could see that the entity was fast slipping away. Trixie
came out of her psychic state now, visibly tired.
While she was recuperating, I asked the others
whether they had felt anything peculiar during the seance.
One lady spoke up and said that there was a sort of electric
feeling in the room; another admitted to having a strong
feeling that she received the impression of a monk who
wasn’t a real monk at all. Trixie said, "Now I understand
about the three monks and one of them putting down his
cord. He was being defrocked!”
Mr. Hewitt, one of the managers, had been present
throughout the seance, watching with quiet interest. I
asked him for verification of the material that had come
through Trixie. “It all makes sense,” he said, “but the
peculiar thing is that the times are all mixed up — every-
thing is correct, but there are two different layers of time
involved.”
The part of the building where the seance had taken
place was the only part of the abbey remaining from the
very early period, the Abbey of the White Monks — the
406
white monks seen clairvoyantly by Trixie at the beginning
of our session. Mr. Hewitt could not enlighten us concern-
ing the defrocked monk, and when I mentioned it, Trixie
filled me in on some of the details of her vision. "It was a
terrible thing to see this monk. There he stood in his dark
robe, then the cord dropped off and his habit came off, and
then I saw him naked being flayed and flayed — it was a
terrible thing.”
According to the manager, several of the villagers
have seen the apparition of a woman in the churchyard and
also in the church next door to the hotel. People sleeping
in the room we were in had at various times complained of
a “presence,” but nobody had actually seen her. "She was
absolutely beautiful with her rust-colored hair,” Trixie
said. “I could just see her vaguely, but she had on a light
dress, very low, nothing on her head, and her hair was
loose.” The manager turned to me and asked whether he
might bring in a picture of the lady whom they suspected
of being the ghost. When Trixie looked at it, she said
firmly, “This is the girl I saw.” The picture was a portrait
of Dorothy Forster — Trixie had named the woman F. —
and it was this Dorothy Forster who had played an impor-
tant role in the history of Blanchland. In 1715, Dorothy's
brother Thomas was a general in the Jacobite army,
although he was not really qualified for the post. He was
captured and imprisoned at Newgate Prison. Three days
before his trial for high treason, his sister Dorothy man-
aged to enter the prison, disguised as a servant, get her
brother out, and help him escape to France, where he
eventually died. Also of interest is the reference to the ini-
tials F. F. F. by Trixie. In 1701 a certain John Fenwick
killed Ferdinando Forster in a duel at Newcastle. As a
result of this, the estate fell into debt and was later sold to
Lord Crewe, the Bishop of Durham. He in turn married
Dorothy Forster’s aunt, also named Dorothy. “There still
seems to be some confusion as to which of the two
Dorothys haunts the village and the hotel,” says S. P. B.
Mais in a pamphlet entitled "The Lord Crewe Arms,
Blanchland”: “She is to be seen walking along the Hexham
Road and opens and shuts doors in the haunted wing of
the hotel. A portrait of the niece hangs in the sitting room
which is named after her, and a portrait of the aunt hangs
in the dining room alongside that of her husband, the
Bishop of Durham.”
I realized by now that Trixie had tuned in on two
separate times layers: the grim twelfth and thirteenth cen-
turies, together with the story of a monk who had done
wrong and had been punished for it. This particular haunt-
ing or impression came as a surprise to the manager,
because it had not been reported before. On the other
hand, the ghostly presence of Dorothy Forster was gener-
ally known around the area. The question was, which
Dorothy was the ghost? During the state bordering on
trance, Trixie spoke of the house owned by the earl. This
was in reply to the question of whose house it was when
Dorothy was young. So the ghost could only be the niece,
the second Dorothy, because Lord Crewe, the Bishop of
Durham, had married her aunt, also named Dorothy. The
younger Dorothy would have grown up in her aunt’s
house. But why was Dorothy Forster, the younger, seeking
forgiveness of her sins? Here the mystery remains. On the
one hand, Trixie identified the ghost from the portrait
shown her by Mr. Hewitt; on the other hand, Dorothy
Forster definitely had nothing to do with any monks, since
in the eighteenth century there weren’t any monks around
Blanchland.
The following morning we left for Newcastle and a
television interview. A reporter from one of the local
papers, The Northern Echo, headlined the August 9, 1969,
issue with “HAUNTED, YES — BUT WHOSE GHOST IS IT?”
Two psychic sisters from Dallas, Ceil Whitley and
Jean Loupot, who had been on the haunted tour with us,
decided to jot down their impressions in the haunted room
immediately afterwards.
"Both of us feel that Trixie was mistaken in at least
one of her impressions. Trixie felt the young woman was
inconsolable because she had killed her newborn child, but
both of us had the definite impression that she said, ‘did
away with,’ meaning, not killed. We thought it was spirited
away by the monks who delivered it. We are so sure of
this impression that we do want to go back to Blanchland
and see if we can pick up anything further.”
On September 15, 1970, the two ladies got in touch
with me again. “When we were at Blanchland, Jean ‘saw’ a
woman standing beside a wall at an open gateway. She was
quite plump, approximately forty to forty-five years old,
and dressed in a black, stiff, full-skirted, long-sleeved
dress, nipped in at the waist. There was a laced scarf over
her head, crossed in front and back over her shoulders. She
stood with her arms crossed in front of her, and her face
had a look of sad resignation, as though she were remem-
bering some long-past sadness. We thought it was the girl
we ‘picked up’ last summer, only she was showing us her-
self in middle age, though still suffering the loss of her
child.”
The Ghosts at Blanchland
407
m 78
The Ghosts of Edinburgh
I WOULD NOT BE so familiar with some of the ghosts in
and around Edinburgh were it not for the friendship and
enormous help given me by Elizabeth Byrd, the author of
Immortal Queen, and Alanna Knight, author of October
Witch and many other books, and her husband Alistair.
These wonderful friends not only helped plan my recent
visit to Scotland but spent much time with me as well.
There is something very peculiar about the intellectual
atmosphere of the Scottish capital: when you walk along
the impressive eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
streets, you feel in the heart of things, yet also removed
from the turbulence of the world.
"Guess what? I’m coming to Scotland,” I wrote to
Elizabeth in March 1973. It was May 3 when I checked in
at the George Hotel in the heart of Edinburgh. Shortly
after my arrival, Elizabeth paid me a visit with detailed
plans for the rest of my stay, pretty much in the manner of
one of Napoleon’s field marshals when the emperor was
about to embark on a campaign. As my first official act on
Scottish soil I presented Elizabeth with a large bottle of
Scotch, imported from New York. Elizabeth had wanted to
take me to one of the famous old hotels where she had had
an uncanny experience in the ladies’ room. There was some
question on how to get me into the ladies’ room and what
to tell the manager. "Suppose I watched outside and barred
any lady from coming in?” Elizabeth suggested. "Five min-
utes in there should suffice, should you feel any impres-
sion.” I declined, explaining that I wouldn’t mind going to
a haunted men’s room but then since there wasn’t any at
that particular hotel, I would pass. But my curiosity had
been aroused, so I asked Elizabeth what exactly happened
at the ladies’ room at the Hotel.
“Well,” Elizabeth replied in her well-modulated
voice, “last year on December 8, which happens to be my
birthday, I was in a very happy mood. I was in Edinburgh
for business appointments and to celebrate. At noon, I
happened to run into a book dealer who invited me for a
drink. So we went to the Hotel. He ordered the
drinks and I went upstairs to primp. The ladies' room is
immaculate, new, and neon-lit. Absolutely nothing to
frighten anyone, one would think. No one else was in
there. I was there for about two minutes when a feeling of
absolute terror came over me. Without so much as comb-
ing my hair, much less putting on lipstick, I just had to
run.”
“Did you hear or see anything?”
“No, just this feeling of terror. I went down two
flights of stairs and was extremely glad to get that drink
from the book dealer, who said, ‘You look peculiar.’ I kept
wondering what had frightened me so. All I knew about
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
the hotel was that it had been built around 1850. When I
told a friend, Kenneth Macrae, what had happened to me
in the ladies’ room, he said, ‘I know something about the
history of the hotel.’ He suggested I also check with The
Scotsman."
Elizabeth’s greatest terror is fire, so she inquired
whether there had been any disastrous fires at the hotel at
any time. There had indeed been a fire in May of 1971 in
which a woman was killed, and a chef had been found
guilty of starting the fire and causing the woman’s death.
Earlier, in 1967, a fire had broken out in a club nearby and
the hotel staff had been evacuated, but the fire had been
quickly brought under control. The newspaper librarian
regretted that there was no fire of any proportion at the
hotel at any time. A little later Elizabeth went to London
and while there she received a note from her friend Ken-
neth Macrae: "Dear Elizabeth, is it possible that your dis-
comfort in the ladies’ room was prophetic? A Welsh
Rugby supporter was killed in a fire on February 3, 1973,
in the hotel.”
Miss Byrd thought that was the end of that, but then
on April 29, 1973, a really disastrous fire broke out in the
hotel, the result of which left two hundred people dead. “It
must have been this really big fire I felt, long before it
actually happened. I’m glad I wasn’t in the hotel at that
time."
But Alanna Knight had a different impression of the
haunted ladies’ room. “Elizabeth insisted on taking me
there one day. I must admit I was very skeptical, but as
soon as I opened the door I got my unfailing signal — that
old, familiar scalp-crawl — and I knew that despite the
modern decor, and bright lights, there was something terri-
bly wrong. Luckily we had the place to ourselves for the
moment, although I must admit if Elizabeth had not been
there, I would have taken to my heels at once!
“I felt immediately that she was mistaken about
thinking it had anything to do with a fire. I got an impres-
sion of a woman, thirty-five to forty, sometime about 1910,
who had suffered such a tragedy that she took her own life
in that room. It was a particularly gruesome end, and the
room absorbed it. My impression of her was that she was
neat but rather shabbily dressed, a ‘superior’ servant, per-
haps a housekeeper or a teacher or someone of that
nature.”
Because Elizabeth frequently visits the hotel where all
this happened, she has asked I not give the hotel’s name.
She likes the bar, the dining room, and the lounge — every-
thing, in fact, except the ladies’ room. Therefore, when the
call comes, there is but one thing for Elizabeth to do —
leave.
* * *
The telephone rang. It was Ian Groat, who with his
friend James Grandison, who would serve as the driver,
was to take us to the outskirts of Edinburgh for a look at a
haunted country house. During the ride from the center of
408
town up into the hills surrounding it, I had an opportunity
to interview Mr. Grandison.
“This happened in 1965, in a modern bungalow built
in 1935, on the outskirts of Edinburgh,” he began in a soft
voice colored by a pleasant Scottish burr. "The place was
called Pendleton Gardens, and there had not been anything
on the spot before. I lived there for about two years with-
out experiencing anything out of the ordinary, but then
strange things started to happen. At first we heard the
sound of wood crackling in the fireplace, and when we
checked, we found the fire hadn’t been lit. Sometimes this
noise would also occur in other parts of the place. Then
there was the noise of dogs barking inside the house. My
wife used to hear it on her own, and I of course discounted
the whole thing, saying that there must have been a dog
outside. But eventually I began to hear it as well. There
were no dogs outside, and I was able to pinpoint the direc-
tion whence the bark came. Added to this was the noise of
a kettle boiling over on a stove, as if one had to run to the
kitchen and turn off the kettle. Whenever we approached
the entrance to the kitchen, the noise stopped instantly.
While we were still wondering about this, other things
began to happen. A door would suddenly slam in our
faces, just before we got to it. Or I would go to the bath-
room, and the bathroom door would be halfway open, and
just as I reached the handle, it would slam violently open,
wide open.”
“In other words, whoever was causing it was aware of
you?”
“Oh, absolutely, yes. Then we started getting knocks
on the walls. We tried to communicate by knocking back,
and sure enough this thing kept knocking back at us, but
we weren’t able to establish a code, and apparently this
thing didn’t have enough energy to carry on indefinitely.
We tried to ignore the whole thing, but then something or
someone started to knock on the back door. Whenever we
answered the door, there was no one there. One day I was
lying on the bed while my wife Sadie was in another room
with my mother. Suddenly I heard the sound of heavy
footsteps walking down the path to the back door and
someone knocking on the door. It sounded like a woman’s
footsteps, but I can’t be sure. Then my wife and my
mother also heard the footsteps going down the path. We
did nothing about answering the door, and after a moment
the noise came again, but this time it was a thunderous
knock, bang-bang-bang. It sounded like someone was very
annoyed at not getting in, and this time both my wife and
my mother ran to open the door, and again there was no
one there and no sound of footsteps receding up the path.
“We were in the habit of going away weekends then
and coming back Sunday night. During our absence the
house was well locked up, with safety locks on the win-
dows and on the front door. The back door was barred
entirely with bolts and quite impregnable; there was no
way of getting in. The first time we did this, when we
came back we found all sorts of things amiss: the hearth
rug in the bedroom had been picked up neatly from the
floor and placed in the center of the bed. An ashtray had
been taken from the mantelpiece and put in the middle of
the hearth rug. We had a loose carpet in the corridor run-
ning the length of the house. It was loose and not nailed
down. After we got back from our weekend, we found this
carpet neatly folded up end-to-end, and we had to unwind
the thing again and put it back along the corridor. There
was a large piece of wood in the living room, part of the
back of a radio-phonograph. When we came back after the
weekend, instead of lying against the wall, it was flat on
the floor. So the following weekend, we put the piece of
wood back against the wall and two chairs up against it so
it couldn’t possibly fall down. But when we came back, the
wood was again right on the floor, yet the chairs had not
been disturbed! Whoever it was who did it must have
lifted it straight up over the chairs and slipped it out from
behind them and placed it in the middle of the floor, as if
they were saying, ‘Look, I’ve done it again, even though
you tried to stop me.' By now we were pretty sure we had
a poltergeist in our house.”
“What did you do about it?"
“While we were still trying to figure it out, there was
an incident involving a cat. One day we clearly heard a cat
purring in the middle of the kitchen floor. But our cat was
sitting on a chair, looking down at this imaginary cat as if
she could see it. We also heard a terrible crash in the living
room, only to find nothing at all disturbed. Once in a while
one would hear an odd note on the piano, an odd key
being struck, but there was no one near it. This went on
and on, gradually building up. At first it was perhaps one
incident a week. Eventually it was happening every day.
After two years it was getting really ridiculous, and we
were beginning to worry in case the neighbors would hear
dogs barking inside the house and things like that. Finally I
asked a medium by the name of James Flanagan to come
to the house.”
“A professional medium?” I asked.
“It is a hobby with him, but he tells me that his
work is his hobby, and the mediumship is his actual
profession.”
“What happened?”
“He brought another man with him, James Wright,
and they had tape recorders with them. He informed us
that he felt spirits all over the room, and that he could see
them even though we couldn’t. He told us it was the orig-
inal owner of the house, an old lady; she had become
strange and was put in a hospital, where she died. She
didn't know that she was dead and insisted on coming back
to her home. He described her as having reddish hair. Her .
husband had been a freemason."
“Did you cheek this out?”
“The person who had shown us round the house
when we bought it,” Mr. Grandison replied, “was a
The Ghosts of Edinburgh
409
ginger-haired woman who turned out to have been the
daughter of a lady who had died. Also we found a number
of things in the attic having to do with freemasonry.
“What advice did the medium give you to get rid of
the spook?”
“He asked us to get a basin of clean water and put it
in the kitchen and to try to imagine his face in the basin of
water after he had left. Also, in two weeks’ time the entire
phenomenon would disappear — and much to our surprise,
it did. Incidents were less frequent and eventually they
ceased altogether.”
* * *
I had mentioned to Elizabeth Byrd that a certain
David Reeves had been in touch with me concerning a pol-
tergeist at his Edinburgh residence and expressed the desire
to visit with Mr. Reeves.
“It all started at the beginning of 1970, when my
cousin Gladys, her husband Richard, myself, and my wife
Aileen were discussing the unknown and life after death,”
Mr. Reeves had stated to me. "We had heard of other peo-
ple using a Ouija board, so I drew one on a large piece of
paper and placed it on the floor, then placed a tumbler in
the center of the paper, and we all put our right forefingers
on the glass. After a few minutes I experienced a cold
shiver down my back and Richard said he felt the same.
Then the glass started to move!”
They received no message, and Mr. Reeves was very
skeptical about the whole thing. But the little circle contin-
ued using the Ouija board, and eventually they did get evi-
dential messages, from a spirit claiming to be Richard’s
grandfather. The message was succinct: Richard was to
have a crash on his motorbike. A few weeks later he
crashed his three-wheeler, which had a motorbike engine.
Messages came to them now from different people. One
night they received a message stating that the two men
were to drink salt waterf!) and to make their minds blank
at precisely 11 o’clock.
“At 111 ‘fell asleep,’ and what happened afterwards
is an account told to me by the others,” Mr. Reeves
explained. In trance, through Mr. Reeves, an entity calling
himself St. Francis of Assisi manifested. Since none of the
group were Roman Catholics, this was rather surprising to
them. The entranced David Reeves then got up, demanded
that the light — which he called 'the false light’ — be put
out, and that the curtains be opened. This done, he
demanded that everyone fall to his knees and pray. He
himself then proceeded to pray in Latin, a language which
neither Mr. Reeves nor any of those present knew.
Unfortunately, Mr. Reeves’s cousin Gladys mistook
his deep state of trance for illness and put the light on.
Immediately he came out of his trance and complained of
great pains in his hands.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“When I looked at them, they were covered by
blood, and each hand had a hole in the center,” Mr.
Reeves said. "This was witnessed by everyone present. I
quickly ran to the tap and washed the blood away. The
holes then vanished.”
But the holy tenor of their seances soon changed to
something more earthy: Mr. Reeves was impressed with
advance information concerning local horse racing and won
quite a lot of money because of it. This was followed by
what he described as a “distinct evil presence” in the circle,
to the point where his wife refused to participate any
longer. The other couple, Richard and Gladys, evidently
took part of the presence to their own home: poltergeistic
activities started and objects moved of their own volition.
It was at this point that Mr. Reeves contacted me and
wondered what they ought to do next. Unfortunately, I was
unable to find him at the address he had given me. Had he
been forced to move? I wrote him a note advising him to
stay clear of Ouija boards and to consider his experience in
trance as a form of psychic hysteria: it could just be that a
spirit who wanted to be St. Francis had taken over Mr.
Reeves’s body and expressed this unfulfilled desire for
martyrdom.
The discussion of various ghostly events had made
the time fly, and suddenly we halted at our destination,
Woodhouse Lea. Ian Groat, a gunsmith by profession, had
had an uncanny experience here and wanted me to see the
place where it all happened. We were on a hill overlooking
Edinburgh, and there were a stable and a modern house to
our left. Farther up the hill, following the narrow road, one
could make out the main house itself. According to my
information, Woodhouse Lea had originally stood on
another site, farther east, but had been transferred to the
present spot. There was a local tradition of a “White Lady
of Woodhouse Lea,” and it was her appearance that I was
after. It was a bitingly cold day for April, so we decided to
stay in the car at first, while we sorted out Mr. Groat’s
experiences.
“In January 1964 I went to Woodhouse Lea in the
company of Mr. and Mrs. Peter London,” Ian told us.
“We waited for several hours in the basement of the house,
which had been used to store fodder for horses.”
“I gather you went there because of the tradition that
a ‘White Lady’ appeared there?” I asked.
Ian nodded. “After about two hours, a fluorescent
light appeared behind one of the doors, which was slightly
ajar. It seemed to move backwards and forwards for about
five minutes and then disappeared. All three of us saw it.
The light was coming from behind that door. We were
waiting to see whether anything would actually enter the
room, but nothing did, and so we left.”
"What was the house like at that point?”
“It was still standing, though several large pieces of
masonry had fallen and were lying in front of it. The
woodwork was in very poor condition and floorboards were
missing, but part of the original grand staircase was still
410
there. It was dangerous to walk in it at night, and even in
daylight one had to walk very carefully.”
The house could have been restored, if someone had
wanted to foot the expense. For a while the monument
commission thought of doing it, but nothing came of it,
and eventually the owners pulled it down. The decision
was made in a hurry, almost as if to avoid publicity about
the destruction of this historical landmark. It was all done
in one weekend. The masonry and what was still standing
was pulled to the ground by heavy machinery, then
stamped into the ground to serve as a kind of base for the
modern chalet which the owners of the land built on top of
it. It reminded me of some of the barbarous practices going
on in the United States in pulling down old landmarks in
order to build something new and, preferably, profitable.
Peter London was shocked at the sudden disappear-
ance of the old mansion house, and he got to talking to
some of the women working in the stables at the bottom of
the hill, also part of the estate. Several of them had seen
the apparition of a woman in white.
The strange thing is that the British army had
invested seven thousand pounds in central heating equip-
ment when they occupied the building. This was during
World War II and the building was then still in pretty
good shape.
“During the war there was a prisoner-of-war camp
that bordered on the actual Woodhouse Lea Estate,” Ian
continued. “The sentries kept a log of events, and there are
fourteen entries of interest, stretching over a three-year
period. These concerned sightings of a ‘woman in white’
who was challenged by the sentries. Incidentally, the stable
girls saw her walking about the grounds, outside the house,
not in the house itself or in the stables.”
I decided it was time to pay a visit to the area where
the mansion last stood. Since there had been no time to
make arrangements for my investigation, Mr. Groat went
ahead, and to our pleasant surprise he returned quickly,
asking us to come inside the stable office, at the bottom of
the hill. There we were received by a jolly gentleman who
introduced himself as Cedric Burton, manager of the estate.
I explained the purpose of my visit. In Scotland, mention-
ing ghosts does not create any great stir: they consider it
part of the natural phenomena of the area.
“As I know the story,” Mr. Burton said, "her name
was Lady Anne Bothwell. and originally she lived at the
old Woodhouse Lea Castle, which is about four miles from
here. Once when her husband was away, one of his ene-
mies took over the castle and pushed her out, and she died
in the snow. I gather she appears with nothing on at all
when she does appear. That’s the way she was pushed out
— naked. Apparently her ghost makes such a nuisance of
itself that the owners decided to move the castle and
brought most of the stones over here and built the mansion
house called Woodhouse Lea up on the hill. The last per-
son I know of who heard a manifestation was a coachman
named Sutherland, and that was just before electric light
was installed. There has been no sign of her since.”
“I gather there were a number of reports. What
exactly did these people see?”
“Well, it was always the same door on the north side
of the building, and on snowy nights there was a fairly vig-
orous knock on the door; and when someone would go out-
side to investigate, there was never anyone there — nor were
there any footprints in the deep snow. That, I think, was
the extent of the manifestations, which are of course
tremendously exaggerated by the local people. Some say it
is a White Lady, and one has even heard people coming
up the drive. I've heard it said, when the old house was
standing there empty, lights were seen in the rooms.”
“Has the house ever been seriously investigated?”
“Some Edinburgh people asked permission and sat in
the old house at midnight on midsummer’s eve. However,
I pointed out to them that she was only known to appear
around seven in the evening and in deep snow. Midnight
on midsummer’s eve wasn’t the most auspicious occasion
to expect a manifestation. There was another chap who
used to bring his dog up and stand there with his torch
from time to time, to see if the dog was bristling.”
“When did the actual event occur — the pushing out
of the woman?”
“The house was moved to this spot in the early fif-
teenth century. It was originally built around the old Ful-
ford Tower. It is a bit confusing, because up there also by
the house there is an archway built from stones from an
entirely different place with the date 141 5 on it. This
comes from the old Galaspas Hospital in Edinburgh.”
“If Woodhouse Lea was moved from the original site
to this hill in the early fifteenth century, when was the
original house built?”
“Sometime during the Crusades, in the thirteenth
century.”
While the early history of Woodhouse Lea is
shrouded in mystery, there was a Lord Woodhouse Lea in
the eighteenth century, a well-known literary figure in
Edinburgh. Many other literary figures stayed at the house,
including Sir Walter Scott, Alan Ramsey, and James Hogg.
Evidently Sir Walter Scott knew that old Woodhouse Lea
was haunted, because he mentions it in one of his books,
and Scottish travel books of the eighteenth century com-
monly refer to it as ‘haunted Woodhouse Lea.’ In 1932
control of the house passed into the hands of the army, and
much damage was done to the structure. The army held
onto it for thirty years.
"Have there been any manifestations reported in
recent years?”
“Not really,” Mr. Burton replied. "When the bull-
dozer pulled down the old house, we told people as a joke
that the ghost would be trying to burrow her way out of
the rubble. Some of the stones from the old house have
The Ghosts of Edinburgh
411
been incorporated into the new chalet, built on top of the
crushed masonry, to give it a sort of continuity.”
The chalet is the property of George Buchanan
Smith, whose family uses it as a holiday house. He is the
son of Lord Balonough, and his younger brother is the
Undersecretary of State for foreign affairs in Scotland.
“The house has been talked about tremendously,”
Mr. Burton said. "It has even been described as the second
most haunted house in Scotland. Also, Woseley is not too
far from here, and it too has a nude white lady. She has
been observed running on the battlements.”
"Why did they move the house from the old site to
this spot?”
"Because of her. She disturbed them too much.”
“And did the manifestations continue on the new
site?”
“Yes,” Mr. Burton acknowledged. “She came with
the stones.”
He turned the office over to an assistant and took us
up to the chalet. The owner was away, so there was no dif-
ficulty in walking about the house. It is a charmingly fur-
nished modern weekend house, with a bit of ancient
masonry incorporated into the walls here and there. I gazed
at a particularly attractive stone frieze over the fireplace.
Inscribed upon it, in Latin, were the words, OCCULTUS
NON EXTINCTUS: the occult is not dead (just hidden).
m 79
The Ghostly Monk of Monkton
When Elizabeth Byrd moved into a monastic tower at
Old Craig Hall at Musselburgh nine miles outside of Edin-
burgh, she probably didn’t figure on sharing the quarters
with a ghost, much less a monk. If there is one thing Eliza-
beth Byrd doesn't want to share quarters with, it is a
monk. As for ghosts, she has an open mind: to begin with,
she has had ghostly experiences all through the years.
The monastic tower has two stories and is part of a
larger complex of buildings which was once a monastery.
Her landlord, who is also a good friend, lives in the main
house, while Elizabeth is lady of the manor, so to speak, in
her tower — an ideal situation for a romantically inclined
writer, and she has been able to turn out several novels
since moving into Monkton, as the place is called.
We had left my visit to Monkton for the evening of
my second day in Edinburgh, and it turned out to be a
foggy, chilly day. Alistair and Alanna Knight brought me
in their car, and Ian Groat, the gunsmith whom I had met
earlier, was also there.
One walks up a winding stair from the ground floor
to the main floor, in which Elizabeth has made her home.
The apartment consists of a living room with fireplace, a
small kitchen and pantry to one side, and a bedroom to the
other. I am sure that when the monks had the place, they
did not do nearly so well as Elizabeth does now, so I can
readily understand why a monk, especially a ghostly monk,
would be attracted to the situation. We grouped ourselves
around the fireplace with only a candle illuminating the
room.
"I rented this cottage in February, 1972,” Elizabeth
Byrd began the account of her experiences. “I found it
beautifully peaceful and benign. I discovered that the cot-
tage was built in 1459, across a courtyard from a fortified
house, which goes back to the twelfth century. Not much
is known about my cottage except that it was built by
monks. They worked this as an agricultural area, and it
was an extension of Newbattle Abbey near Dalkeith. It
came to be called ‘The Town of the Monks.’ From this,
the name Monkton developed.”
"During the year and a quarter that you have lived
here,” I said, “have you had any unusual experiences?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth replied. “Six months after I got here
I was reading in bed one night with the light on when I
smelled a marvelous juicy kind of baking of meat, or the
roasting of meat, which seemed to emanate from the old
stone fireplace. It actually made me hungry. Of course I
wasn’t doing any cooking. This happened three or four
times in the subsequent weeks, but I took it in stride, just
looked up from my book and said to myself, 'Oh, there it
is again, that smell.’ It wasn’t the kind of meat that you get
in the supermarket: it was more like standing rib roast —
expensive, gorgeous meat.”
Alanna took up the narrative it this point. “I stayed
at this cottage about a year ago for the first time. Of
course, I was rather apprehensive of what I might find, but
I found nothing but this wonderful feeling of great happi-
ness and content. The first time I stayed here with Alistair,
we went off to bed and slept in Elizabeth’s room, and she
slept in her study; it was a Saturday night. I woke up early
Sunday morning and there was the sound of bells ringing.
It must have been about 6 o’clock in the morning and I
thought, ‘Ah, there must be a Catholic church somewhere
nearby. This is obviously a call to early Mass.’ So I didn’t
wake my husband, but soon I heard the sound of trotting
horses, and again I thought, 'Oh, well, that is somebody
out with their horses. After all it is in the country.’ When
we had breakfast, I asked my husband whether the sound
of the bells didn’t wake him around 6 o’clock. He said,
‘What bells?’ I didn’t say anything, but when Elizabeth
came in I asked her, ‘Doesn’t the bell wake you up on a
Sunday morning? Where is your church near here?’ She
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
412
said, ‘We don’t have a church here.' Actually, the bell 1
heard was on the side of the house.”
“The bell has never been heard by anyone except by
Alanna. There is no church within miles,” Elizabeth said.
“Last March I stayed here again,” Alanna continued.
“I slept in Elizabeth’s room, and around eight in the morn-
ing I woke up to a wonderful smell of food and thought,
‘Oh, good, Elizabeth is making something absolutely deli-
cious for breakfast,’ and it was the most gorgeous, juicy
smell, a gamey smell. There was also the smell of lovely,
fresh bread. I jumped out of bed and rushed into the
kitchen. There was no sign of Elizabeth and nothing was
cooking. It was all emanating from the bedroom.”
Now it was Ian Groat’s turn.
“In January, 1973, I was asked to spend a few days’
holiday here. On the first night I retired about 4:30. Before
falling asleep, I realized that I might see things, not
because Elizabeth had told me of anything in particular,
but because I suspected there was a good reason why
she wanted me to sleep in this particular room.”
"Did you, in fact, see anything unusual?”
“Yes,” the gunsmith replied. “The first thing I saw
was a trap door slightly to the left, in the floor, and a pair
of steps leading to the basement. I saw the top of the trap
door and a small monk appeared and looked at me. He had
climbed the steps into the bedroom and was looking
around, but he didn’t seem to see me. Since he didn’t see
me at all, I allowed myself to relax completely. Then I saw
a procession come in. One appeared to be a high dignitary
of the Roman Catholic Church. He may have been a
bishop. He was flanked by monks and they seemed to be
chanting. I had a very good look at the bishop. He was
clean-shaven, with a very serene face, and he looked very
intelligent. The procession walked past me and more or
less disappeared.
“Now another apparition appeared which caused me
a great deal of confusion. I had decided I could see through
the floor if I cared to exercise my faculty to do so. So I
looked through the floor, and what I saw were bales of hay,
and then I saw what appeared to be an opening in the wall,
and through it came what I took to be either Vikings or
Saxons. They were dressed in rough clothing. There were
three of them — an old man, bearded, with gray hair, and
two others, younger and fair-haired, also bearded, and none
of them had weapons. I thought them to be farmers. They
came through this cavity in the wall and they raised their
hands in a greeting sign, but not at me. I was more or less
an observer. Then I decided, since I could see through the
floor, that I could perhaps see outside the building as well,
and I then viewed the building from a height. Now I
appeared to be on a parallel which was outside this
dwelling, looking down. I saw soldiers coming up the drive
and around the corner, and they seemed to be of the mid-
dle seventeen hundreds, dressed in gray coats of a very
superior material. The accoutrements seemed to be made of
white webbing. They were playing their drums and keep-
The Monkton cottage, complete with ghost
ing step with them as they marched. I gained the impres-
sion that I was seeing this standing in a tower, but there is
no tower there. I tried to see more, but I didn’t, so I
decided to go to sleep.”
"My landlord, John Calderwood Miller,” Elizabeth
Byrd added, "bought this property in 1956 and restored it.
There is a reference to it in Nigel Trentor’s book, The For-
tified House in Scotland. I told Mr. Miller about Ian's expe-
rience of having seen the hole in the floor and the monk
going down and the hay, and he said, ‘That is extraordi-
nary, because in 1956 there was a hole in the floor between
where your beds are now, and we had to cover it over and
make a floor.’ There was an exit down to what had been
the stables where there were indeed horses. Now it is a
garage and sheds.”
There was still another witness to the haunting at
Monkton: Ian Adam, whom I had interviewed in London,
the mediumistic gentleman who had been so helpful to me
during my ghost -hunting expedition in April. Originally of
Scottish background, Ian liked coming up to Edinburgh.
The morning of December 27, 1972, he arrived at 3:45.
Elizabeth Byrd remembers it clearly; not too many of her
friends drop in at that hour. But he was driving up from
Newcastle with a friend, and Elizabeth had gotten worried.
“It was a very cold night, and Elizabeth greeted us as
only Elizabeth can,” Ian told me. "Immediately we sat
down in her sitting room, she asked, ‘Do you feel anything
here?’ but even before she had said it, I had felt that it had
a very peaceful atmosphere about it.”
“Within ten minutes, out of the blue, Ian, who had
never been here, said, ‘What a strong scent of rosemary!
This place is redolent of rosemary!”’ Elizabeth reported Ian
as exclaiming, but none of the others could smell it.
The Ghostly Monk of Monkton
413
“The place was very lovely, really," Ian said, “and I
told Elizabeth I was sure there was a woman there, a very
industrious lady, perhaps of the fifteenth century. She
appeared to me to be wearing a sort of off-white dress and
was very busy cooking, as if she had an enormous amount
of work to do. She seemed young, and yet old for her
years, probably owing to hard work. There was a definite
sense of tremendous activity about her, as if she had an
awful lot of people to look after. I had a strong feeling that
the place was one of healing. I saw a man sitting in a cor-
ner on a chair; his leg was being dressed and strapped, and
he was being given an old-fashioned jug, or bottle, to drink
from by another man. I think it had an anesthetic in it. I
remember distinctly there was a great deal of good being
done in this place, as if it were a place where people came
for shelter and healing, if there were accidents or fighting.
It was certainly a place of great spiritual power.”
When I checked Ian’s testimony with Elizabeth, who
had written down his impressions immediately after he had
given them to her, she changed the description of the
woman ghost somewhat. According to Elizabeth’s notes,
the woman seemed between thirty and forty years of age,
wearing pale gray, sort of looped up on one side.
“Was the impression of the man being helped and of
the woman doing the cooking simply an imprint of the
past, or do you think these were ghosts that you saw?”
“Oh,” Ian said firmly, “they were ghosts all right.”
He couldn’t hear anything, but he did smell the cooking.
“Did anything else happen during that night?”
“No. I had a very peaceful night, although I was
absolutely freezing. It must have been the coldest night
I’ve ever lived through. In fact, I got out of bed in the
middle of the night and put a jersey over my head to pro-
tect myself from the intense cold.”
There is one more witness to the haunting at Monk-
ton. James Boyd, by profession a sales representative, but
gifted with psychic and healing powers, once stayed
overnight in the same bedroom Ian Groat slept in when he
had his remarkable experience. This was in early April of
1972.
“In the morning he came to me,” Elizabeth said, and
reported that there was a woman in a long, dirty-white
dress who seemed to be very busy about the fireplace in
the bedroom. The two fireplaces in the sitting room, where
we are now, and the bedroom next door, were once con-
nected. James Boyd also told me, ‘She’s very busy and
tired because she works so hard.’ He had, of course, no
knowledge of Ian Adam’s experience in the house.”
Ian Groat spoke up now. "Two weeks after his visit
here, James Boyd telephoned me and said, 'Ian, I have the
feeling that there is a well in that courtyard. It is all cov-
ered up, but I think if you go down that well, about
halfway down, you will find a cavity in the wall and in this
cavity lots of silver, household silver that was hidden in
times of danger.’ I promised I would tell Elizabeth about it
and I did.”
“There is indeed such a well in the courtyard,” Eliza-
beth confirmed, “but the tower that Ian Groat mentioned
no longer exists. It was part of a peel tower, used for
defense. When I told Mr. Miller about the well, he said,
‘Now that is very extraordinary. About a year ago I went
down into the well, about fifteen feet, and when I looked
up, the light seemed far away.’ Mr. Miller decided to go
back up, as he didn’t know what he might hit down in the
depths. But he did have the feeling that there was a trea-
sure somewhere and encouraged me and my friends to look
for it.”
Now that everyone had had his say, it was time to
tell them of my own impressions. While the others were
talking about the bedroom, I had the very distinct impres-
sion of a large, rather heavy monk witching from the door-
way. He had on a grayish kind of robe, and there was a
rather quizzical expression on his face, as if he were study-
ing us. The name Nicholas rushed at me. I also had the
feeling that there was some agricultural activity going on
around here, with chickens and geese and supplies, and
that in some way the military were involved with these
supplies. These impressions came to me before the others
had given their respective testimonies.
“The monk I saw had a gray robe on,” Ian Groat
confirmed, “and my impression was that I was seeing
events that had occurred and not people who were present
at that particular moment. It was like seeing a film from
the past.”
Well, if the monks and the lady at Elizabeth’s Monk-
ton Tower are film actors, they are one step ahead of Hol-
lywood: you can actually smell the food!
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
414
» 80
Scottish Country Ghosts
For A DAY IN EARLY May, the morning certainly looked
peculiar: heavy, moist fog was covering most of Edinburgh;
fires were burning in all the fireplaces of the hotel; and the
electric light had to be turned on at nine in the morning. It
didn’t seem to bother the natives much, not even when the
fog gave way to heavy rain of the kind I know so well from
the Austrian mountains. Just the same, a schedule is a
schedule. Promptly at 1 0 Alistair and Alanna Knight called
for me at the Hotel George, and we embarked on the trip
we had planned well in advance. Alistair was well armed
with maps of the area to the south and east of Edinburgh,
to make sure that we did not lose time in going off on the
wrong road. Since the Knights came from Aberdeen they
were not so familiar with the countryside farther south as
native Edinburghers might be, and the whole trip took on
even more the mood of an adventure. At first we followed
one of the main roads leading out of town, but when we
got on top of a steep hill in the southeastern suburbs of
Edinburgh, the fog returned and enveloped us so thor-
oughly that Alistair had to halt the car. We decided to
trust our intuition, and between Alanna and myself, we put
our ESP to work, such as it was, telling Alistair to go
straight until he came to a certain side road, which he was
to take. To our immense relief, the fog lifted just then and
we discovered that we had been on the right road all along.
It all started with a note from Mrs. Agnes Cheyne,
who wanted to tell me about an unusual spot eight miles
from Edinburgh called Auchindinny, Midlothian. "I was
born there in 1898,” Mrs. Chfeyne had written. “I am no
chicken.” The ghost who haunts the “Firth Woods” is that
of a woman who was jilted by her lover and in great dis-
tress jumped from a great height into the river Esh. That,
at least, is the tradition. Mrs. Cheyne ’s aunt, who wasn’t
convinced of the reality of ghosts, happened to be walking
through an abandoned railroad tunnel running through to
Dalmor Mill. At the mill, there are two old railroad tun-
nels left over from a branch of the Edinburgh railroad
which has long been abandoned for lack of business. The
tracks of course were taken up many years ago, but the
tunnels have remained as a silent testimony to the colorful
era of railroading. Today, the mill uses the road and trucks
to do business with the outside world. It is a quiet, wooded
part of the country, very much off the beaten track both to
tourists and to business people, and it has retained much of
the original charm it must have had throughout the nine-
teenth century.
The lady walked into the tunnel, and when she came
to the middle of it, she suddenly froze in terror. There was
a woman coming toward her, seemingly out of nowhere.
Her clothes showed her to be from an earlier period, and
there were no sounds to her footsteps. Mrs. Cheyne ’s aunt
looked closer, and suddenly the apparition disappeared
before her eyes. Although she had never believed in ghosts,
that day she returned home to Edinburgh in a very shaken
condition.
After about forty-five minutes, we reached a narrow
country road, and despite the heavy rain, we managed to
see a sign reading “Dalmor Mill.” A few moments later, a
branch road descended toward the river bank, and there
was the mill. We ignored a sign warning trespassers not to
park their cars and looked around. There was a tunnel to
the right and one to the left. First we investigated the one
on the right. Inside, everything was dry, and I remarked
what wonderful mushrooms one could grow in it. We had
scarcely walked ten yards when Alanna turned back, say-
ing, "This is not the right tunnel. Let's try the other one.”
As soon as we had walked into the second tunnel, all of us
felt an icy atmosphere which was far in excess of what the
rainy day would bring about. Besides, the first tunnel was
not equally cold. When we reached the middle of the tun-
nel Alanna stopped. "I wouldn’t want to walk through this
at night,” she said, “and even in the daytime I wouldn’t
walk through it alone."
“What do you feel here?” I asked. I had not told the
Knights about Mrs. Cheyne ’s letter or why we were here.
“There is something about the middle of this tunnel
that is very frightening. I have a feeling of absolute panic,
and this started when I was halfway through this tunnel.”
Without further ado, Alanna turned back and sat in the
car. I am sure that no amount of persuasion could have
gotten her back into that tunnel again.
* * #
Twenty-three miles from Edinburgh, in a fertile val-
ley that was once the center of the mill industry but is now
largely agricultural, there stands the town of Peebles. The
surrounding countryside is known as Peebleshire and there
are a number of lovely vacation spots in the area, quiet
conservative villas and small hotels much favored by the
English and the Scottish. One such hotel is the Venlaw
Castle Hotel, standing on a bluff on the outskirts of town,
seven hundred feet above sea level. It is open for summer
guests only and does indeed give the appearance of a castle
from the outside. Standing four stories high, with a round
tower in one corner, Venlaw Castle represents the fortified
house of Scotland rather than the heavy, medieval fortress.
Access to the castle, now the hotel, is from the rear; behind
it, Venlaw, the hill which gave it its name, rises still fur-
ther. The present building was erected in 1782 on the site
of an old Scottish keep called Smithfield Castle, one of the
strong points of the borderland in olden days. One half of
the present house was added in 1854, in what is locally
known as the mock baronial style.
Venlaw belonged to the Erskine family and in 1 9 1 4
Lady Erskine offered her mansion to the admiralty as a
convalescent hospital for twelve naval officers. According to
Scottish Country Ghosts
415
James Walter Buchanan’s A History of Peebleshire, it
remained an auxiliary Red Cross hospital to the end of
World War I. The same author describes the present
dwelling house as being "built on a commanding position
with one of the finest views in the County. It is presumed
that it occupies the site of the ancient castle of Smithfield,
which was in existence until about the middle of the eigh-
teenth century.”
In 1949 the house passed into the hands of Alexander
Cumming, the father of the present owner, who turned it
into a small hotel.
In the summer of 1968 an American couple, Mr. and
Mrs. Joseph Senitt, decided to spend a few days at Venlaw
Castle. “The room we occupied was at the end of the mid-
dle floor with a little turret room which my daughter
used,” Mrs. Senitt had explained to me. “The very first
night we were there, the room was ice cold even though it
was July, and we couldn’t wait to close the lights and go to
sleep. Immediately upon getting into bed, I suddenly heard
a long-drawn-out and quite human sigh! It seemed to be
near the foot of my bed. For the moment I froze — I was
afraid to move or even breathe. If it hadn’t been for the
fact that my husband was with me, I might have gone into
shock. I said nothing to him, as he usually kids me about
my ghostly beliefs, and I felt he was probably asleep, as he
made no move and said nothing. However, after a moment
I got the strongest feeling that if it was a ghost it was
friendly, because I felt welcome.”
When the Senitts left the castle a few days later, Mrs.
Senitt finally mentioned the incident to her husband. To
her surprise he confirmed that he too had heard the sound.
He had attributed it to their daughter, sleeping in the small
room next door. But Mrs. Senitt was sure that the sound
came from in front of her, and the turret bedroom where
the girl slept was off to a corner in back of the room and
the door was closed. Also, the Senitts were the only people
staying in that part of the hotel at the time.
It was still raining when we crossed the river Tweed
and headed into Peebles. The castle-hotel was easy to find,
and a few minutes later we arrived in front of it, wondering
whether it would be open, since we had not been able to
announce our coming. To our pleasant surprise a soft-
spoken young man bade us welcome, and it turned out that
he was the owner, the son of the man who had opened the
hotel originally, and also that he was the only person in the
hotel at the present time, since it was not yet open for the
season. I asked him to show us the room on the middle
floor with the turret bedroom without, however, indicating
my reasons for this request. I merely mentioned that some
American friends of mine had enjoyed their stay at Ven-
law, and I wanted to see the room they’d occupied. As
soon as we had entered the room, Alanna turned to me and
said, "There is something here. I'm getting a cold, crawly
scalp.” While Alanna was getting her psychic bearings, I
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
took Mr. Cumming aside, out of her earshot, and ques-
tioned him about the hotel. Was there, to his recollection,
any incident connected with the house, either since it had
been turned into a hotel or before, involving death or
tragedy or anything unusual?
Mr. Cumming seemed a bit uneasy at this question.
“There are things we don’t like to speak about,” he finally
said. “We’ve only had one traumatic accident. About
twenty years ago one of our guests fell from a bedroom
window.”
Alanna came over at this point and stopped short of
the window. “There’s something at this window,” she said.
"Somebody either threw himself out of this window or fell
out.” But Alanna insisted that the tragedy went back a
long time, which puzzled me. Was she confusing her time
periods, or did a second death follow an earlier death, per-
haps caused by a possessing entity? Those are the kinds of
thoughts that race through a psychic investigator’s mind at
a time like this. Actually, it turned out that the guest fell
out of a window one flight higher than the room we were
in. He was a miner who had become ill and somehow
fallen out the window. His friends carried him back in, but
he had a broken neck; they actually killed him by moving
him.
Alanna shook her head. “No. What I feel has to do
with this window in this room. It may have something to
do with the original place that stood here before. I get the
feeling of a fire.”
“Well,” Mr. Cumming said, “Venlaw Hill, where we
are standing, was the place where, during the persecutions,
witches were burned, or people accused of such.”
"I have feelings of intense suffering,” Alanna said,
“and I sense some noise, the feeling of noise and of a great
deal of confusion and excitement. I get the feeling of a
crowd of people, and of anger. Someone either fell out of
this window or was thrown out, and also there is a feeling
of fire. But this is definitely a woman. I feel it not only in
this room but down on this terrace below, which seems to
have something to do with it.”
I questioned Mr. Cumming whether any of his guests
had ever complained about unusual phenomena.
“Not really," he replied. “We did have a guest who
complained of noises, but she was mentally disturbed. She
was a resident here for some time in the 1950s. I didn’t
know her well; I was very young at the time.”
“And where did this lady stay?” I asked.
“Why, come to think of it, in the room next to this
one.
I thanked Mr. Cumming and wondered whether the
lady guest had really been unhinged, or whether perhaps
she had only felt what Mr. and Mrs. Senitt felt some fif-
teen years later in the same area.
The afternoon was still young, and we had two hours
left to explore the countryside. We decided to cross the
river Tweed once again and make for Traquair House,
making sure, however, to telephone ahead, since this was
416
not one of the days on which this private manor house
could be visited.
Known as the "oldest inhabited house in Scotland,"
Traquair House at Innerleithen rises to five stories amid a
majestic park, in a tranquil setting that gives the illusion of
another century, another world. It is now owned by Lord
Maxwell Stuart, of a distinguished noble family, related to
the royal Stuarts. There is a tradition that the magnificent
gates of Traquair, surmounted by fabled animals, shall
remain closed until a Stuart king is crowned again in Lon-
don. This Jacobite sentiment goes back to the times when
the earls of Traquair gave support to the Stuart cause, but
the present laird, Peter Maxwell Stuart, is more concerned
with the quality of the beer he brews. He’s also the author
of a magnificently illustrated booklet detailing the treasures
at Traquair House. These include, in the king’s room, the
bed in which Mary Queen of Scots slept, with a coverlet
made by her ladies-in-waiting. That she slept there is not
surprising, since Lady Mary Seaton, the wife of the second
earl, was one of Mary’s favorite ladies-in-waiting. Also, the
very cradle used by Mary Stuart for her son James VI of
Scotland now stands at Traquair, and in the many rooms
of the house there are displayed treasures, documents,
arms, and fine furniture, all of them dating back to the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries, when this great house
was at its zenith. Much as we loved the sight of this beau-
tiful house, so romantic on a rainy day, with the fog just
lifting, we had come not to admire the antiques but to find
out about its ghosts.
The caretaker, Andrew Aiken Burns, who had been
at the house since 1934, took us around, painstakingly
explaining room after room.
“Have you ever had any psychic experiences here?”
“Yes,” he nodded, as if it were the most natural thing
in the world to be asked. “It happened in 1936 in the after-
noon of a beautiful summer day. I was out with my horse,
clearing the brush from the front of the house, near the old
ruined cottage in the field. My horse was a chestnut named
Ginger, and suddenly he flicked his ears and I looked up. I
saw a lady coming down the grass, dressed in a Victorian
dress. She walked slowly down through the gate and into
the cottage and their through the wicket gate into the
garden.”
"What was so special about that? Could she not have
been a visitor?” I asked.
“Well, I left my horse and went right up to see
where this person had gone, and the wicket gate was shut.
She had been through the gate, and still the gate was
shut.”
“Did you ever see her again?”
“No. But later someone showed me some old pho-
tographs, and I recognized one is the lady I had seen walk-
ing on the grass. It was Lady Louisa Stuart.”
Lady Louisa Stuart died in 1875 at age one hundred.
She is buried in a vault in the Traquair church-yard, right
in back of the castle. Why would she walk the grounds? I
wondered.
According to the twentieth laird, Traquair House
goes back to the tenth century when a heather hut stood on
the place. In 1107 King Alexander I granted a charter to
the Traquairs, and he was the first of a long line of Scot-
tish kings who stayed here. Incidentally, Traquair means
dwelling on a winding river. In the thirteenth century the
building was incorporated into a border peel, a defensive
palisade, and it served as such during the long period of
border strife. In 1491 James Stuart, the son of the Earl of
Buchan, became the first Laird of Traquair, and from him
the present family is descended. Over the centuries the
Scottish Country Ghosts
building was largely altered and added to, to fit the chang-
ing times. What was once an austere border fortress
became a Renaissance castle and eventually one of the finer
residences in Scotland. During the Civil War in the seven-
teenth century, Traquair became what the present laird
describes as "one of the great bastions of the Catholic faith
in Scotland,” because of marriages with Catholic ladies.
Since Catholicism was not favored in this part of the coun-
try, Mass had to be celebrated in secret. To this day, there
is a Roman Catholic chapel on the grounds, unfortunately
decorated in the most gaudy modern style and totally at
variance with the rest of the house. In 1688 the house was
raided by a mob from Peebles, and all the religious articles
found were destroyed. It wasn’t until well into the nine-
teenth century that Catholicism was freely admitted into
Scotland. During the rebellion of 1715, Traquair sided with
Bonnie Prince Charles, which brought much misfortune
upon the family.
When Charles Stuart, the fourteenth laird, died
unmarried in 1 861 , the property passed into the hands of
his sister, Lady Louisa, born in 1775. She also didn’t
marry and died in 1875 after spending nearly all her time
on her estate. All her life she had carried on a love affair
with Traquair House. She looked after the gardens, took
great pride in keeping the house itself in perfect order, and,
though she was the first female head of the family in many
centuries, she had the full respect of the villagers and of
her servants. When she died, the question of the inheri-
tance had to be settled by the courts. Eventually, Traquair
House passed into the hands of Lady Louisa’s cousin, the
Honorable Henry Constable Maxwell Stuart, who thus
became the sixteenth laird. Perhaps Lady Louisa was not
altogether happy with the turn of events, for she had been
the last in the direct line to hold Traquair. Possibly, her
spirit does not wish to relinquish her realms, or perhaps
her long residence here has so accustomed her to Traquair
that she is unaware of the fact that there might be another,
better place for her to go.
“Has anyone else seen the ghost of Lady Louisa?” I
asked the caretaker.
“Well, some other people have seen her, but they
have only seen a figure and did not recognize her. Some
have seen her farther up the road.”
"Why is she called The Green Lady?” I asked. I
understood from my friends that the legendary Lady of
Traquair was referred to by that name.
“Well, the dress I saw her wearing,” the caretaker
said, "was kind of green, the color of a wood pigeon.”
“Is there such a dress in existence?” I asked. Since so
much of the old furniture and personal belongings of the
family were preserved at the house, perhaps the original
dress still existed.
"Well, it is a strange thing: one of the old foresters
here — his wife’s mother was Lady Louisa’s dressmaker.
They kept some of the clippings from which the dresses
were made, and when I asked her, the granddaughter
showed me the materials. I recognized the color and the
material of the dress the lady had on when I saw her.” Mr.
Burns, the caretaker, admitted that he had some psychic
abilities. Sometimes he knew things before they actually
occurred, but paid it no great heed.
I asked Mr. Burns to take us to Lady Louisa’s room.
There, beautifully framed on the south wall, was the great
lady’s portrait. “She was friendly with Sir Walter Scott,”
the caretaker commented. The room was oblong, with a
fireplace on one end. Wine-red chairs, two sofas, and a
strange mixture of eighteenth-century and Victorian furni-
ture gave the room a warm, intimate feeling. On one side,
one could gaze into the garden, while the other overlooked
the driveway, so that Lady Louisa would always know who
was coming up to see her. Alanna hadn’t said anything for
quite a while. I found her standing by the garden windows.
The rain had stopped, and the sun began to pierce through
the clouds.
“Do you feel her presence?” I asked.
Alanna gave me a curious look. “Don’t you?”
I nodded. I had known for several minutes that Lady
Louisa Stuart was at home this afternoon, receiving unex-
pected visitors.
* * *
Shortly afterwards, we drove back towards Edin-
burgh. We crossed the river Tweed again, and the rain
started up once more. It was as if fate had held it back for
an hour or so to give us a chance to visit Traquair House
at its best.
I wondered what it was that bound all British ghosts
together. Then it struck me: whether Medieval or Victo-
rian, Renaissance, or Edwardian, they all had style.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
418
* 81
The Ghost on the Kerry Coast
If YOU’VE NEVER heard of Ballyheigue — pronounced just
like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s "Bali-ha’i” — you’ve really
missed one of the most poetic stretches of coastland still
unspoiled by human greed. It isn’t completely untouched
by habitation by any means, but there isn’t — as yet — that
glass-and-concrete luxury hotel, the nearby airport, the chic
clientele. Ballyheigue just sits there, a small fishing village
and a majestic castle, looking out onto the Atlantic. This
stretch of land used to swarm with smugglers not so long
ago, as it was rather difficult for the revenue people to
catch up with the wily Irish in the many bays and loughs
ofWestern Ireland.
Now I wasn’t looking for smugglers’ coves or new
sources of poteen, but the spirit that moved me to travel
down the Kerry coast had been brought to my attention in
a respectable magazine piece, published a couple of years
ago in Dublin. The article, entitled "On the Trail of a
Ghost,” is the factual report of Captain P. D. O’Donnell,
about his strange experiences at Ballyheigue in 1962. The
magazine, Ireland of the Welcomes, is published by the Irish
Tourist Board, but this piece is the only instance of a psy-
chic adventure appearing in its pages. Here then is Captain
O’Donnell’s report:
“It all started during a normal vacation in Bally-
heigue in the first, sunny half of June, 1962. Even on holi-
days, a part-time writer like myself is always on the
lookout for new ideas, but on that vacation I was deter-
mined to get the most out of a heat wave, and to heck with
writing. I relaxed in the quiet atmosphere of the almost
deserted village, lazed on the lonely four -mile -long beach
with the family, or joined in the beach games with the
handful of visitors from the hotel.
“Then, one day — it was the 4th or 5th day of June,
be it noted — I took a walk with my eight-year-old son,
Frank, up the winding avenue above the cliffs to the burnt-
out shell of Ballyheigue Castle. It was purely in deference
to my interest in old castles, and to show my son the cas-
tle. I had only a vague idea of its history, but knew that
from here the strong Crosbie family had once lorded it
over most of the north of County Kerry. They left the
country when the republicans burnt the castle to the
ground during the ‘troubles’ of 1921.
“For a while we talked to an old man working
nearby, and he told us the castle was never explored fully.
Then with camera in hand we started. I am one for always
trying different angles and unusual shots with a camera, so
when our short tour among the ruins satisfied Frank, we
started to take a few snaps for the record. The snap that
mattered was taken inside the castle. Frank was placed
standing against a wall at right angles to the front of the
castle, and I stood back. It was shadowy inside the castle,
but the sun was slanting strongly through a window on his
right. In the viewfinder I was able to get Frank on the left
and hoped also to get the view of the beach through the
window on the right. The light of the sun coming through
the window would be enough, I hoped — no light meters
for my amateur photography.
“The story of the rest of the vacation does not mat-
ter, except to record that the days were filled with sun-
shine, battling the breakers, looking for Kerry diamonds on
Kerry Head, enjoying the relaxation and joining in the
hotel sing-song at night. What did matter, however, was
when the color film came back from the developers. The
snap which I have described appeared to have another fig-
ure in it, partly obscured by the square of light that was
the window. This figure held a sword, and its legs were not
trousered, but appeared as if clothed in hose or thigh
boots! At first I thought this rather frightening, but my
wife passed it off as a double exposure.
"However, when she and I examined the other snap-
shots, we both agreed that there was neither a double expo-
sure nor any other negative which if it was superimposed
on the ‘ghost’ picture could have produced the same effect.
What then was the answer, we wondered. Was it really a
ghost I had photographed?
“The events that followed, indeed, made the affair
more extraordinary. I brought the snap into the office, and
passed it around my friends. Two were more interested
than the others, and asked to see the negative. When I
went home for lunch I slipped the negative into the same
envelope with the snapshot — much to my later regret — and
they were suitably impressed. That night, however, I gave
the envelope to a friend, forgetting that the negative was
also inside — and would you believe it — the envelope disap-
peared most mysteriously. If it was only the snapshot, it
would have been all right, but as the negative was with it,
all was lost. At least I had twelve witnesses who saw both
negative and print, so anyone who says I am a liar can call
them liars too.
“Of course, I advertised in the newspapers, and even
got leaflets printed offering a very good reward, but my
‘ghost’ picture never turned up. I was interviewed by a
newspaper and on radio, and determined to look into the
whole matter of recent Irish ghostly appearances and write
a book on the subject. The news travelled, and shortly
after, I had queries from Stockholm and from Copenhagen
seeking to buy the Swedish and Danish rights of the pho-
tographs. They were offering sums from £25 to £30, and
if I had the photo, I would probably have been the richer
by much more, when other newspapers got interested.
“Why were the Danes so interested in a photograph
of a ‘ghost’ from the wilds of Kerry? That story is
extremely interesting. According to old Kerry records a
Danish ship, the Golden Lyon, of the Danish Asiatic Com-
pany, en route from Copenhagen to Tranquebar, was
wrecked on the strand at Ballyheigue on October 20, 1730.
The Ghost on the Kerry Coast
419
At Ballyheigue in Ireland, a ghostly
sailor stays on.
It had been blown off its course by a fierce storm, but the
local story was that the Crosbies of Ballyheigue Castle set
up false lights on horses’ heads to lure the ship ashore.
The ship’s captain, thinking the bobbing lights ahead from
other shipping, kept on course, only to become a wreck on
the Atlantic breakers.
“The crew were rescued by Sir Thomas Crosbie and
his tenants. Also salvaged were many bottles of Danish
wine, clothing, equipment, and twelve chests of silver bars
and coin. The last was for the purpose of paying for goods
and labor in Tranquebar, and was the cause of six people
meeting their deaths. Soon afterwards, Sir Thomas Crosbie
died suddenly, by poison it was rumored, and his wife,
Lady Margaret, claimed a sum of £4,500 for salvage and
the loss of her husband. She said it was because of his
labors and exertions on the night of the wreck that he died.
The ship’s master, Captain J. Heitman, opposed the claim
indignantly, and moved the twelve chests of silver down
into the cellar under the strong tower of the castle. How-
ever, delay followed delay, and by June 1731, he still found
he could not get the silver safely to Dublin, and home to
Denmark, or on another ship.
"Then one night he was aroused by the sound of
many voices outside the castle gates. Jumping up, he was
left under no illusions that a raid was in progress. About
fifty or sixty men with blackened faces stormed the gates,
and attacked the tower. Lady Margaret then arrived and
flung herself in front of the captain, saying he would be
killed if he ventured outside. Meanwhile, the sentry on the
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
door to the cellar rushed, bleeding from stab wounds, up to
his comrades on the first floor of the tower. He told them
that his two fellow sentries lay dead outside, and that the
mob had disarmed him. As the other Danes had only one
musket between them and little ammunition — another bone
of contention between Heitman and Lady Margaret — they
retreated to the top room of the tower and were spectators
to the scene of the twelve chests of silver being loaded on
farm carts. Then the shouting stopped and the carts van-
ished into the night.
“However, within three days, Sir Edward Denny, the
governor of Tralee, had nine men in Tralee gaol. One of
the Danes had spotted a nephew of Lady Margaret’s in the
mob, and it soon became apparent that the whole robbery
was planned by friends of the Crosbies. In the dispositions
taken before the several trials, a number of the accused
stated that four chests of the silver had been laid aside for
Lady Margaret. These were never recovered. Lady Mar-
garet denied knowing anything about the affair and the
Danes recovered only £5,000 out of a total of £20,000 in
silver. Some of the raiders fled across the Shannon to Clare,
others left for France in a fishing boat loaded with silver,
while the majority simply went to earth and said nothing.
“Two Crosbies, relatives of Lady Margaret, were
tried in Dublin and acquitted, but a third man, named
Cantillon, a tenant of the castle Crosbies, was found guilty.
One man hanged himself in Tralee gaol and another, who
turned state’s evidence, was found dead in his lodgings in
Dublin. It was said he was poisoned, although the castle
put it out that he died of typhoid and drinking too much.
And the local tradition handed down the story that most of
420
the gentry of north Kerry were involved. The castle at Bal-
lyheigue was owned by the Cantillons, ancestors of the
man found guilty, before the Crosbies arrived in Kerry.
They were originally de Cantillons, who came to Ireland
with the Norman invaders.
“Pieces of Danish china still exist locally, and in the
cellars of Ballyheigue Castle lie some bottles with Danish
crests, but of the missing silver there is still no trace. Some
of the accused said it was buried in the orchard there, oth-
ers that it was buried in an orchard three miles away near
Banna Strand, and still others that it was buried behind
Ballysheen House. If you enquire today in Ballyheigue, you
will surely find someone who will tell you that he knows
where it is buried, that he and his forefathers were afraid to
dig it up, and maybe he might let you into the secret!
“The Danes are naturally still interested. It would
make great copy if the ‘ghost’ photo was of one of the
Danish sailors, and besides there is the lost treasure in sil-
ver. Long ago in the time of King Brian Boru, Viking ships
of Norsemen and Danes raided Ireland, established the
cities of Dublin, Wexford and Waterford, and brought loot
back to Scandinavia. It was probably a simple matter for
those envious of the Danish silver to persuade the local
farmers that the presence of Danish silver in Ballyheigue
Castle was a chance to reverse the flow of loot, and besides
there was the landlord’s wife, who lost her husband saving
the shipwrecked Danes. However, the affair of the ghost
picture has a more interesting history.
“All these historical details were new to me, and I
found it highly interesting to read that swordsmen did
indeed flash their swords in the castle. What was almost
fantastic, however, was a little detail that almost escaped
my notice. Remember, I said I had come on vacation to
Ballyheigue in June. I arrived on June 1st. The second
week was wild and rainy and it was not possible to take
any color pictures in that week. The first week, however,
was heat wave weather, with sunshine for 1 5 hours every
day. It was after the weekend of lst/2nd of June that I
began to take the second roll of color film, and I am rea-
sonably certain that the ‘ghost’ picture was taken on the
4th or 5th of June. Now, the record states that the Danish
Silver Raid took place at midnight on June 4, 1731! Coinci-
dence? Or do swords flash in Ballyheigue Castle on every
June 4th when three Danish sailors died?
“You may bet I will be there next June 4th, with
camera at the ready. Do I believe in this ghost? Well, it’s a
good excuse for visiting that charming spot again. Will I
be afraid, while waiting there till midnight? Not on your
life. I won’t be alone, but somehow I don’t believe we will
see anything at night. The ‘ghost’ photo was taken in mid-
afternoon with the sun slanting through the window from
the west. Possibly, what I photographed was an imprint on
the wall. But then again, the Danes were there, they were
probably wearing seaboots, and there was swordplay there
on the 4th of June.”
* * *
So much for Captain O’Donnell’s experience. The
irony of losing his negative can be appreciated — for I too
guard my psychic photographs, such as those of the ghostly
monks at Winchester Cathedral, England, as if they were
treasures, which in a way they are.
I made inquiries about the author of the article and
was assured his integrity was the highest. As an officer he
was not given to imagining things.
We had been visiting Listowel and decided to con-
tinue on to Ballyheigue. On the map it seemed an easy
hour's ride, but it was almost sundown by the time we
rounded the last hill and saw the sparkling sea before us.
Quickly passing through the village, we drove up to
the gate of the castle. There was an old gatekeeper in a tiny
house nearby and we had no trouble convincing her that
we meant the castle no harm. We opened the old gate our-
selves and then the car drove up the winding driveway
towards the gray castle, the ruins of which loomed large
over the landscape. The gentle slopes reaching from its
ramparts to the sandy shore were covered by meadowland,
which was moist, as so much of Ireland is. On the land
were perhaps two dozen cows and many more mementos of
their presence.
We avoided the cows and parked the car close to the
castle walls. Then I started to film the scene, while our dri-
ver ate a belated luncheon. The cows did not seem to
bother him.
The castle looked eerie even in the daytime, with its
windows staring out into the country like the eyes of a
blind man. Inside, the walking was hazardous, for wet soil
had long filled in the rooms. The fire that had devoured
the castle in 1921 had left nothing of the interior standing,
and the totally gutted heart of the once proud house now
looked like an ancient Roman ruin. We walked about the
many rooms, and Sybil tried to pick up impressions. Natu-
rally, she knew nothing whatever about the place.
Ultimately, we followed her into one of the first-floor
rooms looking out to the sea — a room whence one could
have easily observed the ships and all that came and went.
Here she stopped and listened, as if from within. Her psy-
chic voice was giving her directions and we waited quietly
for her words.
“Sybil, what do you think happened here?” I decided
to break the silence.
"Whatever happened here,” she replied hesitatingly,
"certainly happened at a much lower level than the one
we’re on. I have a feeling that there is an underground pas-
sage connected with the sea.”
She did not, of course, know about the Danish sailors
and how the silver was hidden.
The Ghost on the Kerry Coast
421
"I don’t think I’m going back more than 150 years,’’
she added, “although I know there are influences here
going back three hundred years.”
I urged her on, as she hesitated.
“This passage leading to the sea, Sybil — who came
through it?” I asked.
"The name I have in mind is Donald,” she replied.
“I have a feeling of three young men, possibly sons, con-
nected with the house, but Donald was not. The house was
a large family house, but the people who came through the
passage were travellers. . .seafaring folk."
Again I thought, how would Sybil know, consciously,
of the Danish sailors coming here for refuge? She could not
know this.
“Were they of local origin?” I asked.
“Foreign,” she shot back, "probably coming from
France. Lots of coming and going here.”
“Why had these men come to the house?”
"Some connection with food," Sybil replied, not at all
sure of her impression now, “food or something for the
table.”
“Any tragedy here?”
“Not those coming from France but the people living
in the house.”
“What happened?”
“There is the influence of a woman, the name is, I
think, Emily, but the woman is connected with the house.
The tragedy is through the woman. At first I had only the
feeling of a man here, but now the woman is very strong.”
"A man?”
“Men,” Sybil corrected herself, and added: “The
name Glen comes to me. The man’s fate in the
house. . .something to do with the food. Could it be poi-
son? He was eating, when something happened.”
One should realize at this point that Sybil had said
several things that were pretty close to the true facts. Sir
Thomas Crosbie, owner of the castle, was poisoned shortly
after the Danish wreck had been salvaged. Was Lady Mar-
garet as guilty of this sudden death as of the “raid” on the
Danish silver staged later on?
Also, the raiders eventually fled to France by boat.
Had Sybil felt this event somehow? But I wanted to hear
more of what my psychic friend had to say here in the
ruined drawing roofs of Ballyheigue Castle.
“I have a feeling of a man going down the passage. I
think he was drowned because he disappears in the sea.”
“Any fighting here?” I asked.
"I don’t feel it now,” Sybil said. “The woman is not
constant to this house; she comes or goes away. The con-
flict is between the sea and the house. I think it could be a
family feud. There is something else but I am not getting
it as clearly as I am getting a foreign influence here.”
“Other than French?”
“Also, there is a Northern influence. Many foreign
visitors. Beyond Scotland, Sweden. Fair men, Nordic influ-
ence. Two periods.”
Sybil, of course, knew nothing about the Danish
sailors.
Who was Emily? Who was Donald?
Did Captain O’Donnell indeed photograph the Dan-
ish silver raid, when the Danish sailors died defending
their property in Ballyheigue castle?
Not having examined the photograph, I cannot attest
to its genuineness, but I have taken similar pictures else-
where and know it can be done. Thus I have no reason to
doubt the story so movingly told by the Captain.
The silver may still lie somewhere underneath the
crumbled walls of the castle. The Danes, as we know, only
managed to get a fourth of their treasure out of there in the
long run. And there may well be an eighteenth-century
swordsman defending it now as of yore.
It really does not matter. When you stand at the
empty windows of Ballyheigue Castle and look out into the
bay towards Kerry Head as the sun slowly settles behind
the water line, you can well believe that the place is haunt-
ed.
As we rode back towards County Clare, it became
chilly and the moisture in the air came down as light rain.
Nobody spoke much.
At one point, we almost took a wrong turn in the
road, perhaps due to the darkness now settling around us,
or perhaps we were all a bit tired.
Ballyheigue Castle had disappeared into the night by
now and the Danish silver was safe once more.
# 82
Haunted Kilkea Castle, Kildare
From A DISTANCE, Kilkea Castle looks the very image of
an Irish castle. Turreted, gray, proud, sticking up from the
landscape with narrow and tall windows which give it a
massive and fortified appearance, Kilkea Castle is neverthe-
CHAPTER SIX; This House is Haunted
less one of the most comfortable tourist hotels in present-
day Ireland. Anyone may go there simply by making a
reservation with the genial host, Dr. William Cade.
The castle is about an hour and a half by car from
Dublin, in the middle of fertile farmlands. There are beau-
tiful walks all around it, and the grounds are filled with
brooks, old trees, and meadows — the latter populated by a
fairly large number of cows.
Kilkea was built in 1 1 80 by an Anglo-Norman knight
named Sir Walter de Riddleford, and it is said to be the
422
oldest inhabited castle in Ireland, although I have seen this
claim put forward in regard to several places. Let there be
no mistake: the inside has been modified and very little of
the original castle remains. But the haunting is still there.
The castle has four floors, not counting cellars and
roof. The rooms are of varying sizes and kinds. The
haunted area is actually what must have been the servants’
quarters at one time, and it is reached through a narrow
passage in the northern section of the castle. The room
itself is just large enough for one person, and if you should
want to sleep in it, you had better make a reservation way
ahead of time. All you need to do is ask Dr. Cade for the
haunted room. He will understand.
The story of the haunting goes back to the early
Middle Ages. Apparently one of the beautiful daughters of
an early owner fell in love with a stableboy. Her proud
father disapproved and threatened to kill them both if they
continued their association. One night, the father found the
young man in his daughter’s room. In the struggle that fol-
lowed the man was killed, but we are not told whether the
woman was killed or not. But it is the man’s ghost who
apparently still roams the corridors, trying to get his sweet-
heart back.
In the course of rebuilding, this room became part of
the servants’ quarters. A number of people have reported
uncanny feelings in the area. The owner of Kilkea himself,
though skeptical, has admitted to witnessing doors opening
by themselves for no apparent reason.
Locally, the so-called Wizard Earl is blamed for the
happenings at Kilkea Castle, and there is even a legend
about him. Apparently to please his lady fair, the earl
Kilkea Castle has its own resident ghost.
transformed himself into a bird and sat on her shoulder.
But he had not counted on the presence of the castle cat,
who jumped up and ate the bird. The legend continues
that the earl and his companions still ride at night and will
eventually return from the beyond to “put things right in
Ireland” — if that is necessary. The legend does not say
what happened to the cat.
» 83
The Ghosts at Skryne Castle
One FINE DAY we started out from Dublin aboard one of
the Murray cars one rents in Ireland if one doesn’t have a
car of one’s own, and as luck would have it, we had a most
pleasant and intelligent driver by the name of Guy Crod-
der, who understood immediately what we were after.
Passing the airport, we started to look for Mara Cas-
tle, a ruin James Reynolds had briefly mentioned in his
Irish ghost books as being suspect from the ghost-hunting
point of view. The suburban town of Newton-Swords was
interesting and charming, but nobody there knew of Mara
Castle. Since our schedule for the day was heavy, I decided
to go farther north. We took some of the quiet back roads,
but our driver had a good sense of direction, and by high
noon we had arrived at our first destination.
County Meath is much less forbidding than the West
of Ireland we had recently left, and the nearness of the
river Boyne gave the land an almost Southern charm.
Before us rose majestically the high tower of a ruined
church, built in the fourteenth century and dedicated to St.
Colmcille, one of Ireland’s three most sacred saints. The
tower, sixty feet high on a hill of about five hundred feet
elevation, dominates the landscape. But it was not this
once-magnificent church we were seeking out. The much
smaller castle of Skryne or Screen, at the foot of the hill,
was our goal.
What had brought me here was a brief story in James
Reynolds’ More Ghosts in Irish Houses, published in 1956.
He tells of this castle, smallish as castles go, set back of the
river Boyne woodlands, not far from Tara, which he visited
when it was owned by a relative of the Palmerston family
which had long owned the house.
According to Reynolds, the tragedy that led to the
haunting at Skryne happened in 1740. At that time the
occupants of the house were one Sir Bromley Casway, and
his ward, a beautiful young girl by the name of Lilith
Palmerston. Lilith had led a sheltered life here and in
The Ghost at Skryne Castle
423
Dublin, and had had little contact with the world of society
or men. During her long stay at Skryne, she met a country
squire named Phelim Sellers whose house stood not far
from Skryne and whose wife had died mysteriously, possi-
bly as the result of a beating administered by the brutish
man.
Lilith Palmerston instantly disliked the neighbor. He
in turn became a frequent visitor at Skryne Castle, playing
cards with her elderly guardian, but always having an eye
for her. On one occasion, Reynolds tells us, Sellers attacked
her but was thwarted in his design by the gardener. Now
Lilith asked that they return to Dublin to escape the
unwanted attentions of this man. Her guardian agreed and
all was in readiness for their journey down to the city. The
last night before their planned departure, Sellers got wind
of Lilith’s plans, broke into her room and murdered her.
Later caught, he was hanged at Galway City.
A number of persons living at the castle have heard
shrieks in the night, and seen a woman in white clutching
at her throat run out of the house.
Sellers had killed Lilith by forcing foxglove fronds
down her throat, thus strangling her.
So much for Reynolds’ vivid account of the tragedy
at Skryne Castle.
I had not announced our coming, but we were fortu-
nate in that the castle was open. It so happened that the
owners were tossing a wedding breakfast for someone in
the area; thus the house was bustling with servants. It was
even more fortunate that only the downstairs part of the
old house was being used for the festivities, leaving us free
to roam the upper stories at will.
The house stood across from a cluster of very old
trees, and on the meadow between them a lonely goat
tended to her luncheon.
Built in 1172, the castle had fallen into disrepair and
was rebuilt in the early nineteenth century. I walked
around the castle, which looked more like an early Victo-
rian country house than a castle, despite its small tower ris-
ing above the second story. The house was covered with
ivy from one end to the other. The windows were neat and
clean and the garden in back of the house seemed orderly.
I managed to talk to one of the caterers in the house,
a lady who had come here on many occasions and slept
upstairs now and then. She was Kay Collier, and quite
willing to talk to me even about so elusive a subject as
ghosts.
“I’ve never noticed anything unusual myself,’’ she
began, “but there is a tradition about a ghost here. It’s a
tall man walking around with a stick, wearing a hard hat,
and a dog with him. He’s been seen outside the castle.
Mrs. Reilly, of Skryne, she’s seen him.”
Since she could not tell us anything more, I made a
mental note to look up Mrs. Reilly. Then I asked Sybil,
who had been sitting quietly outside under the age-old
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
424
tree, to join Catherine and me in the upstairs rooms of the
castle. The salon to the left of the stairs was elaborately
and tastefully furnished in early Victorian style, with mir-
rors on some of the walls, delicate furniture, couches, sofas,
and small antiques dressing up the room.
Sybil sat down in one of the comfortable chairs,
placed her hand over her eyes and gathered impressions.
For a moment, no one spoke. The silence, however peace-
ful on the surface, was forbidding, and there was, to me at
least, an atmosphere of doom hanging rather heavily
around us in this room.
“This room immediately attracted me,” Sybil said
now.
“You know I first turned right, then turned around
and came straight to this room instead.”
I nodded. She had indeed changed course as if led by
some invisible force.
“I feel that this is where a woman has walked,” Sybil
said slowly, deliberately. “The mirrors have some signifi-
cance; perhaps there was a door behind the mirror on the
right hand side, because she comes from the right.
Whether she comes from the garden. . . .”
Was Sybil making contact with the unlucky wraith of
Lilith whose favorite spot the garden had been, the same
garden where her battered body had been found?
Naturally I had never told her of the tradition sur-
rounding the castle, nor of James Reynolds’ account.
"Do you feel her now?” I asked.
“Very slightly,” Sybil replied, and looked up. "I don’t
think that she has been seen for some time. Fifty-eight,
fifty-nine. I don’t think she has made her presence known
for some time, but she is here."
“Can you communicate with her?”
“I’m only conscious of her, but not directly in con-
tact with her. Also, there seem to be two periods, and yet
the woman should not be a 'period piece’ ghost — and yet
she has this link with the past.”
“What period do you think she belongs to?”
“I have an early period, of 1624, but the feeling in
this room is of a very feminine influence, two periods.”
“What did you feel outside the castle?”
"The tree is very important to this house somehow.”
"What did you feel by the tree?”
“There I felt conflict. There I felt death. A man.
This is the early period. We should go back to the tree, I
think.”
“Anything else you feel here?”
“I think something happened here in 1959. Perhaps
the lady walked. I think you will find a link, something
running, not from the house but to the house. That’s
where the tree comes in. Running from the old place, the
church tower to this house — not this house but the one
that stood here then.”
“Can you describe any figure you see or sense?”
“Here the woman I see has fair hair, arranged in
curls; she belongs to the early 1900s — 22 comes up — I
keep seeing the number 22. Could be her age. Perhaps she
is a descendant of the people in the yard.”
“Any names?”
“I have the girl's name. . . there are two names. . .
Mathilda, Mary... Madeleine... Mathild,.... something like
that....”
Was Sybil referring to Lilith? How close are the
sounds of Lilith and Mathild? Was she repeating a whis-
pered name from the faint lips of a long-ago murder
victim?
We left the room now and walked to the tree oppo-
site the castle. Here Sybil sat down again and listened to
what her psychic sense would tell her. The tree must have
been here centuries ago and its twisted, scarred branches
must have witnessed a great deal of history.
"What do you get, Sybil?” I finally asked.
“This is connected with the early part of the house.
As I see it, the original drive to the house would be just in
front of this tree. Coming down the rough driveway I have
the distinct feeling of a horseman. Sixteenth century. He is
running away from soldiers, running to this house. The
soldiers are not Irish. There is a foreign element here.”
"Is the one who is running Irish?”
"He is not Irish, either. But he belongs to this area.
The soldiers following him have nothing to do with the
area. They’re alien. This is the remnant of a battle. He is
taking refuge, but he does not reach the house.”
“What happens to him?” I asked.
“His stomach is injured. The soldiers come down to
the house. His body is near this tree. The injury is because
of a horse going over him, I think, and he is left here. He
dies here — he does not reach the house.”
“Is he a soldier or a civilian?”
“I think he is a civilian, but who is to know in these
times....”
“Anything about a name, or rank?”
“I only get a foreign name. It’s a French-Italian
name. Alien to this country although he lives here.”
“Is he still here under this chestnut tree?”
“Yes, he is,” Sybil replied. “He still has to reach the
house; he is not aware that he is dead. He has the feeling
he has to get to the house. But he can’t do it.”
“Does he wish to talk to us?”
“He has someone close to him, not a blood relation,
perhaps a brother-in-law, in the house. This is the person
he had to go to. Fian. . .F-I-A-N-M-E. . .Fianna.. ..”
“Anything we can do for him?”
“I think that he would have to have some relation
here, he has to feel a link. To know that he can go to the
house. He is bewildered.”
“Tell him the house has changed hands, now belongs
to a Mr. Nichols,” I said, but Sybil shook her head, indi-
cating the futility of communication at this point.
"It was a much bigger house, much rougher house,”
Sybil said, and of course the original Skryne castle was all
that.
Sybil Leek at Skyrne Castle
“A much straighter house,” Sybil continued to
describe what she saw in the past, "with the door more to
the right than it is now. The door he is heading for. The
little garden was part of the house.”
I asked Sybil to reassure the ghost that we would
help him.
Sybil told the ghost that he was safe from his pur-
suers, and not to worry about reaching the house.
"Now he is to my right,” Sybil said, and a moment
later, "I can’t find him now. I can only hear this one word
— FIANMA — ”
I promised to deliver the message, whatever it meant,
for him, and suddenly the ghost was gone.
"He's gone now,” Sybil said quietly, “and now the
house is gone.”
We packed up and started back to the village of
Skryne, to look for Mrs. Reilly.
Much later I consulted the material about Skryne and
I found some interesting information.
A local historian, the Reverend Gerald Cooney,
wrote:
"The ancient name of Skryne was Ochil or Cnoc
Ghuile, meaning the Hill of Weeping. Following the death
The Ghosts at Skryne Castle
425
Skyrne Castle — where a
woman was murdered
long ago
of Cormac mac Airt, who established the Fianna, his son
Cairbre became Highking. The Fianna rebelled against
their king and the battle of Gabhra (Gowra) was fought at
the foot of the hill now called Skryne. The Fianna were
utterly defeated but Cairbre was killed in the battle.”
The Fianna were the partisans of parliamentary gov-
ernment in medieval Ireland. Had Sybil somehow mixed
up her centuries and seen a ghost going back to this battle?
We did not have to drive far. Someone pointed Mrs.
Reilly’s house out to me and I walked down a little country
road to her gate. The house was set back behind a well-
kept wall, a neat, reasonably modern country house covered
by flowers. I rang the bell at the gate and soon enough
Mrs. Reilly came out to greet me. She was a spunky lady
in her sunny years, and quite willing to tell me all about
her ghostly experiences.
"I can’t exactly tell you when it happened,” she said
with a heavy brogue, "but it was a long time ago. I know
about it through an uncle of mine, also named Reilly. I’m
Kathleen Reilly.”
“What is the story then?” I asked. The Irish have a
way of telling someone else’s story and sometimes a lot
gets lost in the transition — or added. I wanted to be sure
the account was believable.
"The ghost, well he was a coachman, and he had a
dog. He was seen several times about the castle. And then
there was a ghost of a nun seen, too.”
"A nun?” I asked.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“A long time ago, the castle was a monastery and
there was a nun’s room.”
“Was there ever any battle around here?”
“The battle of Tara,” she replied and pointed toward
another hill. “That's Tara over there.”
"Has anyone ever come from there and taken refuge
in the castle?”
“Not that I ever heard of.”
She took me up to the house where I could see across
the wooded glen to Skryne Castle.
"You see the spire?” she asked. “Well, right under-
neath is the nun’s room.”
The room Sybil had felt the woman’s presence in, I
realized at once.
"Twenty years ago,” Mrs. Reilly volunteered, "a man
I know by the name of Spiro slept in that room. He saw
the nun, and he would never go back into that room.”
"Did anyone ever die violently in the castle?” She
was not sure. The house had been in the same family until
twenty-five years ago when the present owner, Nichols,
bought it.
“The girls often heard noises. . .the rustling of
clothes. . . . I thought I heard footsteps there one night when
I was sittin’ for the woman who has it now. I did hear
footsteps, and there was no one in to my knowledge but
myself.”
"Where in the house was that?” I asked.
"The part where the nuns are supposed to be there,”
Mrs. Reilly replied. In other words, the upstairs salon
where we had been, which was Lilith’s room.
"Have you been there often?”
426
"Many times. I worked there three years.”
“Are you ever afraid?”
“No, I’m not. When I heard the footsteps I was a bit
afraid, but it went away.”
I thanked Mrs. Reilly and pondered the business
about the nuns. Had the witnesses merely drawn on their
knowledge of a monastic background of the house to
ascribe the rustling of clothes to nuns? Had the figure in a
white bed robe seemed like a nun to them? And was it
really Lilith’s ghost they had encountered?
Puzzle upon puzzle.
Our driver suggested that we drive into the nearby
town of Navan, also known in Gaelic as An Uaimh. Here
we found a nice restaurant and had a warm meal. The hills
of Tara were our next goal, and though I had no reason to
suspect a haunting in Ireland’s ancient capital, or what was
left of it, I nevertheless felt it was a worthwhile excursion.
One could always try to see if Sybil got any impressions.
Enough mayhem had taken place here over the centuries to
create disturbances.
We arrived on the hill where Tara once stood in little
more than half an hour. The place is absolutely breathtak-
ing. Except for a hut where a small entrance fee is paid to
this national shrine, and a church on a tree-studded hill in
the distance, the hill, or rather the hilly plateau, is com-
pletely empty. Ancient Tara was built mainly of wood, and
not a single building is now above ground.
Here and there a bronze plaque on the ground level
indicates where the buildings of the old Irish capital stood.
Brian Boru held court here in the eleventh century, and
after him, the office of Highking fell into disrepute until
foreign invaders made Ireland part of their domain.
As we looked around, the wind howled around us
with unabating fury. The view was imposing, for one could
look into the distance towards Dublin to the south, or
towards Drogheda to the north, and see the rolling hills of
Eastern Ireland.
“I don’t think I have ever been so moved by a place
since I was in Pompeii,” Sybil said. “The tremendous
Druidic influences are still around and I wish this place
were kept in a better state so that people could come here
and see it as it was.”
As an archaeologist, I could only concur with Sybil.
The ominous shapes under the soil surely should be exca-
vated. But I learned that only part of the land on which
Tara once stood was owned by the nation; a small portion
of it was privately owned and therein lies so much of Ire-
land’s trouble: they could not get together to allow for
proper excavations, so none took place.
» 84
Ghost Hunting in County Mayo
ROSS HOUSE STANDS ON a bluff looking directly out into
Clew Bay, halfway between Westport and Newport, and in
about as nice a position as anyone would wish. From its
windows you can see the many islands dotting the bay, one
of which is part of the demesne of the house, and the lush
green park in back of the house gives a nice contrast to the
salty clime of the frontal portion. All in all, it is a house
worthy of its owner, Major M. J. Blackwell, retired officer
formerly in the British Army and nowadays in business in
Chicago, U.S.A., as the second, but by no means minor,
half of the celebrated firm of Crosse & Blackwell.
I shan’t tell you how to get to Ross House, for it is
not easy, what with Western Irish roads, but then there is
no need to go there unless you’re invited, is there? — and
that might well be, for the Major is hospitality personified
and his house always rings with the laughter of young rela-
tives and their friends come over for a holiday.
The house itself is exquisitely furnished in both its
stories, the rooms being large and modern, for the house is
not too ancient; the broad Georgian staircase is a master-
piece unto itself, and, as I found out later, it also attracted
one of the resident ghosts frequently. But about this in
good time.
I first heard about Ross House from the Major’s
young nephew, Edwin Stanley, an American living in New
Jersey. Mr. Stanley had read my books and thought it
might be worth my while to visit the house. Subsequently
Major Blackwell himself invited us to come. We finally
made it, driving up from Leenane, where we were staying.
As soon as we had met the brood of youngsters
assembled in the house, and the two baby cats, I repaired
with the Major to his study upstairs, where we could get
down to ghost business.
"Let’s talk about the house first,” I began. "When
was it built?”
“It is a Georgian house as you can see, but prior to
that, there had been another house here of which we are
not quite certain, to the back of the present house. It is on
the oldest maps. I inherited it from my mother, and it goes
back in her family for quite a long time. My mother’s side
of the family has proven its descent from 779 A. D., but
they even have good claims all the way back to 365 A.D.”
"That's about the oldest family tree I’ve heard of,” I
said, "even counting my wife’s, which goes back to the
800s. You yourself, were you born here?”
"No, I was born in England, but I spent most of my
childhood here, always loved the place, the boats, the peo-
Ghost Hunting in County Mayo
427
pie. Five years ago I inherited the place from my mother.
When I’m not here, I live outside of Chicago.”
I asked the Major what his mother’s family name was
and it turned out to be O’Malley — the famous O’Malley
clan of which Grania O’Malley, the pirate queen of the six-
teenth century, was not its greatest but certainly its best-
known member. Then a sudden impulse struck me. During
lunch, which we had had in the big downstairs room to the
right of the entrance door, Sybil had slipped me a piece of
paper, murmuring that it was something that had "come”
to her. The name rang a bell and I pulled it out of my
pocket now.
Scribbled on it were the words
"Timothy .. .Mother. . .O’Malley." There was, of course, a
mother O'Malley — the Major’s own!
"During the times you’ve been here, Major,” I con-
tinued now, “have you ever noticed anything unusual?”
The Major nodded. “About six years ago, the follow-
ing happened. I was asleep in my room upstairs, when sud-
denly I woke up; at the end of my bed I saw standing an
old maidservant; Annie O’Flynn was her name — she had
been a maid of my grandmother’s.
"I was completely lucid now, having gone to bed at a
normal time the night before. My talking to this ghost
woke my wife up, and I pointed her out to my wife, saying
— ’Look, Annie O’Flynn is here, and she’s got a friend
with her,’ for there was another woman with the maid.
When I said this, the ghostly maid smiled at me, appar-
ently happy at being recognized. My wife did not see
them, but she can attest to the fact that I was fully awake
at the time.”
“Amazing,” I conceded. “What did you do about it?”
"Well, the next morning I went down to talk to
Tommy Moran, an old man who works for us and knows a
great deal about the people here, and after I described the
other ghost to him he was able to identify her as a local
friend of Annie’s who had passed on also.”
“Was that the first time in your life that you’ve had a (
psychic experience?”
"Oh no; for instance when I was in the south of
France, where I was brought up, I was going up to see
some friends who lived just above Nice, and I was with a
friend. We had sat down for a moment on a bridge leading
into this chateau when we heard the sound of horses and a
coach going at full speed. I said to my friend, let’s get out
of the way because someone’s coach has run away! But the
noise just went past us and continued on, no coach, no
horses! So we continued to our friend Col. Zane’s house.
When we told him of our experience he laughed. ‘That’s
nothing, really,’ he explained. ‘That goes on all the time
there. It’s a ghost coach.”'
“Any other incidents?” I asked with expectation.
Obviously, Major Blackwell was gifted with the sixth
sense.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
"The only other one was here when I dug up the
tomb of Dermot MacGrania.” Grania is Irish for grace,
incidentally, and it is pronounced more like "gronia.”
“I’ve seen the monolith outside the house, down
towards the back end of the estate,” I said. "What’s the
story of that tomb?”
"I started to dig, because I am terribly interested in
archaeology. One night I dreamt that I was working on it,
as usual, when the stone moved and out from under the
stone came this extraordinary figure who was dressed in a
kilt and leggings around his feet, and he advanced towards
me and I was never so frightened in my life. I couldn’t get
to sleep at all, and the next morning I went down to the
pier, because the two men who had been working on the
diggings with me lived across the water and came over by
boat.
“Before they landed, they told me immediately,
'We’re very, very sorry, but we will not do any more work
on the tomb of Dermot MacGrania! ’
“Evidently, they too had been frightened off. I have
not touched it since then, and that was thirty years ago. I
won’t permit any digging at the tomb, unless it is for the
good of it — for I feel that at the time I was not looking into
it for that reason, but rather in the hope of finding trea-
sure, and that is why I was stopped.”
“This tomb is a pre-Christian relic, is it not?” I
asked after a moment of pensive contemplation. Suddenly
the twentieth century was gone and the very dawn of his-
tory was upon us.
“Similar graves exist up in County Sligo. According
to the legend told about this particular grave, when Der-
mot escaped with Grania, they were caught here and killed
and buried here by his enemies. That was about 1 500 B.C.
This is, of course, the very beginning of Irish history.”
“Idas anyone else had any unusual experience at this
tomb?”
“None that I know of. But there have been psychic
experiences in the house itself.”
I settled back in the comfortable leather chair in the
Major’s study and listened as Major Blackwell calmly
unfolded the record of ghosts at beautiful Ross blouse.
“Miss Linda Carvel, a cousin of mine, has seen the
old maid walking up and down and my wife and I have
heard someone walking up and down where the original
stairs used to be.”
The Major showed me the spot where the wall now
covered the stair landing. Only the main staircase exists
today.
The former staircase was at the front of the house
but structural changes had made it unnecessary.
"My wife has heard it at least four or five times a
week. She has also heard the door knocked on.”
“Almost like a maidservant,” I observed. “Did any-
one see the maid?”
“Yes, Linda Carvel actually saw her walking into that
front room. This was only two years ago. Everybody had
428
gone to church, and there was nobody in the house at the
time except my wife, myself, my daughter, and Linda.
Linda suddenly came into the room to us, white as a sheet.
‘I just saw a woman walk into Granny’s room,’ she said.
‘She was dressed in a white and blue uniform — a starched
uniform.’ I discussed this with Tommy Moran and he con-
firmed that that was the uniform the maids wore in my
grandmother’s time!”
“What do you make of it, Major?”
"I think it is the same one, Annie, who came to see
me. She died a normal death, but she was fantastically
attached to the family and the house. She spent her whole
life here. She married a man named John O’Flynn, a tailor,
but she adored it here and even after she left she came
back all the time bringing us gifts.”
“Have any other phenomena been observed here?”
“In the drawing room, downstairs, Tommy Moran
and all his sons have seen two people sitting in front of the
fireplace. I know nothing about them firsthand, however.
My cousin, Peter O'Malley, also has seen them. He is the
one also who had a shocking experience. He saw the most
terrible face appear in the window of the drawing room.”
“What exactly did he see?” I was all ears now. The
whole atmosphere seemed loaded with electricity.
“I wasn’t here at the time, but he just says it was a
most terrible face. That was ten years ago.”
“What about Inishdaff Island, Major?” I asked.
“There is an old monastery there I hope to restore.
We’ve got the records back to 1400 and there it says
‘church in ruins.’ The peninsula we are on now, where the
house stands, also turns into an island at high tide, inci-
dentally, and the path of the pilgrims going over to that
ruined church can still be traced. The road would not have
been built for any other reason.”
“You didn’t see anything unusual on the island,
though?”
“No, I didn’t, but Tommy Moran, and some other
relatives of mine — actually four people altogether — did.
The island has always been considered. . .that there is
something wrong with it.”
We got to talking about the other members of the
family now; Mrs. Blackwell had been unable to join us at
lunch since she was staying at Castlebar with their
fourteen-year-old daughter, who was in the hospital there
because of a broken leg. It appeared, however, that there
was more to that accident than a casual mishap.
“The extraordinary thing about it is this. The night
before it happened, she dreamt that an ambulance drove up
to the front of the house. Now the front of the house is
blocked off to cars, as you saw. So every car must come
through the back. She saw the ambulance come to the front
entrance, however, pick someone up and drive off. Also, the
ambulance did not have a red cross or other familiar sign
on it, but a circular thing in Irish writing! That was exactly
the ambulance that came up the next evening and picked
her up; it was a Volkswagen ambulance with an Irish
Ross House — County Mayo
inscription on the side in a circle just as she had described
it to us! Edie is definitely psychic also.”
“So it seems,” I said. “Anything else about her I
might want to know?”
“One time she dreamt she saw Grandmother — my
mother — and described her perfectly in every detail. Being
terrified of ghosts, Edie, in her dream, pleaded with my
mother’s apparition not ever to have to see a ghost again.
Granny promised her she wouldn’t, but she would always
know.”
There were two more points of psychic interest, I
discovered. The unexplained putting on of lights and open-
ing of doors in the nursery, and something else that I only
learned towards the end of our most enjoyable stay. But in
a way it made a perfect finale.
Right now everybody was handed heavy clothing and
overshoes, for we would be sailing — well, motorboating —
to the island across the bay and it was wet and chilly, the
Major assured us. Cathy looked like a real outdoor girl in
the Major’s fur jacket, and Sybil was so heavily bundled up
she scarcely made the entrance to the cabin of the little
boat. The assorted cousins of both sexes also came along in
a second boat, and within minutes we were out in the open
bay crossing over to the island of Inishdaff, all of which
belonged to the Major’s estate.
We landed on the island ten minutes later. The
sandy beach was most inviting to a swim and Major Black-
well admitted he was working on just such a project. What
with the absence of sharks, I felt this to be about the most
ideal place to swim in any ocean.
We next scaled the heights of the hill, taking the cen-
ter of the island, upon which stood the ruined abbey. It
Ghost Hunting in County Mayo
429
was at once clear to me that we were standing close to the
roof of that church and that the lower part had simply
filled in with soil over the centuries. In one corner of the
“elevated floor” was the simple grave of one of Tommy
Moran’s sons, a Celtic cross watching over him. Otherwise
the island was empty.
While the others stood around the ruined abbey,
Major Blackwell, Tommy, and I mounted the other side of
the wall and then descended onto the wet ground. We then
proceeded to the top of the island whence we had a mag-
nificent view of all the other islands around us, all the way
out to the farthest, which indeed was Ireland’s outpost to
the sea, beyond which lay America. It was among these
many islands and inlets that the pirates of old hid, safe
from prosecution by the law.
We fetched some heavy stones from the enclosure of
the church and sat down so that Tommy Moran could talk
to me about his experiences.
I first questioned him about the frightening face seen
here and in the house.
“Mike Sheils told it to me, sir.” Tommy Moran
began with a heavy brogue. “He worked the glass house
with me for years. He was a man not easily frightened. At
the time there were blackthorn trees in the burial ground.
He was passing through when he heard some noise. He
looked over his shoulder and what he saw was a sheep’s
head with a human body.”
“No," I said.
“Yes, sir,” Tommy nodded, “it was a head covered
with wool the same as sheep. There were three boys in
front of Mike. He knocked them down and ran.”
“Did you yourself ever have any such experiences
here, Tommy?” I reflected that a disheveled human face
might very well look like a sheep’s head to a simple, imagi-
native islander used to lots of sheep.
“During me own time, sir,” he began, “they were
bringing torf to Ross House by boat, that was Mrs.
O’Malley’s husband, who was gettin’ the torf, and they
were rowing, two of them, but they had no sail. They
wanted to keep as close to the shore as they could. They
were brother and sister, Pat Stanton and his sister Bridget.
Suddenly a man came down from the burial ground trying
to grasp his oar and take it out of the water. Pat rowed like
mad to get away; he recalls the man was stark naked, had
no clothes on at all. Finally, they got away.”
“There was no one living here at the time?”
“No one, no,” Tommy assured me, and the Major
nodded assent.
I was fascinated by the old man’s tales. Surely,
Tommy could not have made them up, for what he had
said did make some sense when matched with the horrible
face looking into the dining room window. Somewhere
along the line a human being living like an animal must
have found shelter on the desolate island, and, perhaps
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
brought up by animals, this man was taken for a monster.
I did not feel that this was a ghost in the sense I use the
term.
Tommy told us other tales, some bordering just
barely on the supernormal, and then we rejoined the others
and went back to the house. It was time for me to question
Sybil Leek about her impressions of the church and burial
ground.
“There were impressions, but not a presence as we
understand it, Hans,” Sybil explained, “but I strongly urge
that the place be excavated, for there might be some works
of art underneath. There is also a passage, which we dis-
covered this afternoon, on the right hand side. The high
altar connecting with the first monastic cell.”
We had returned now to the house, and took off the
heavy clothing the Major had lent us for the journey.
While tea was being prepared, we grouped ourselves
around the fireplace, waiting.
It was then that I recalled a chance remark Sybil had
made to me earlier about a man she had met when we first
came to the house, prior to lunch. Perhaps we could sort
this out now, before Tommy Moran left for his chores.
"I left the main party in the house for a while,
because I wanted to be on my own,” Sybil explained, “so I
walked through the path leading to the wrought-iron gate
which led into a garden. I walked right down as far as I
could go, until I came to an open space which was on the
other side of the garden to where I had started. I reached
the tomb. I stayed by the tomb for a little while, then I
went toward the gate, ready to climb over the gate, and I
was in deep thought. So I wasn’t surprised to see a man
there. To me he looked rather small, but of course I was
on higher ground than he was. He wore no hat, but he had
peculiar hair, gray hair.”
“What did he do when he saw you?”
“He smiled at me, and appeared to come towards me.
I was continuing to walk towards him. He said, ‘So you
have come back again?’ and I replied, ‘But I haven’t been
here. I don’t know this place.' He turned and walked
towards the sea and I turned away and went back.”
“Did he look like a ghost to you?”
“You know I never know what a ghost looks like. To
me, everything seems the same. I have this difficulty of
distinguishing between flesh-and-blood and ghosts.”
When I informed Major Blackwell of Sybil’s
encounter, he was taken aback and said: “My God, she’s
seen the other one — she’s seen the Sea Captain!”
It turned out that there was another ghost he had not
told us about when we talked about the house. Sybil, he
felt, had not made contact with the ghostly maidservant —
perhaps she had found a more permanent niche by now —
but somehow had picked up the scent of the ghostly
seaman.
I questioned Tommy Moran, who at seventy-five
knew the place better than any other person, what this sea
captain business was all about.
430
“I don’t know his name, sir,” Tommy said, ‘‘but he
was in the house about a hundred years ago. He bought
this place and he thought so much about it, he went out to
England to bring back his wife and family. He said when
he was gone that he would come back, dead or alive!
"He died at sea, and he has since been seen by many,
always in daylight, always smoking a cigar; Mike Sheils
saw him sittin’ in the drawing room once. Several people
saw him on the stairway and he always just disappeared.
One of my sons saw him and it frightened him. He had no
hat, but always this cigar. Very black hair, as tall as you
are, sir, according to Mike Sheils.”
There you have it, a sea captain without his cap but
with a cigar! On recollection, Sybil was not sure whether
she heard him say, “So you’ve come back again” or “See,
I’ve come back again.”
» 85
The Ghost at La Tour Malakoff, Paris
MAISON-LAFITTE IS A RUSTIC, elegant suburb of metro-
politan Paris, reached easily by car within half an hour.
Near the race course there is a cluster of townhouses within
a park setting, aristocratic reminders of a disappearing ele-
gance. More and more high-rise, high-price apartment
houses have replaced the old residences.
On the corner of rue Racine and avenue Montaigne
there stands a three-story residence within about an acre of
landscaped grounds. When I visited the house it was
exactly as it had been since it was built during the Second
Empire, in the 1860s. A glass-enclosed conservatory faced
toward the garden and a tower reached up beyond the roof
in the romantic Victorian manner of the period. The only
new addition was a low-ceilinged projection room on the
other end of the garden: the last tenant had been motion
picture personality Robert Lamoureux.
Inside the house, the appearance of an elegant town-
house in the country was further maintained by the pres-
ence of high ceilings, white walls, gold appliances, and
wrought -iron staircases in the front and rear.
No. 3 avenue Montaigne was built by Emperor
Napoleon III for his own account. Ostensibly a hunting
lodge (Maison-Lafitte was then still rural), in reality it
housed a favorite mistress, whose portrait the Emperor had
had painted and placed on the outside wall.
With the advent of the Republic, the house became
state property and was maintained as a "Residence of
State” until World War II. Important visitors — but not
those important enough to be housed in the Elysee Palace
— were lodged there. During World War II German sol-
diers occupied the house and, in the process, looted it of
anything that was not nailed down. When Allied troops
took over the property, they completed the job. Subse-
quently it was purchased by M. DuPres, a gentleman
interested in real estate. When Mme. DuPres saw the
house, she had him take it off the market and moved in
with their family.
* * *
In the fall of 1949, Mr. and Mrs. D. rented it for
their own use. Mr. D. was a high-ranking diplomat at the
American Embassy in Paris. Mrs. D., Pennsylvania-born,
was of English, Welsh, and Irish descent and was born
with a caul, a fact some people regard as a sign of psychic
talents. She and Mr. D. have four children and now live
near Washington, D.C., where Mr. D. practices law.
When the D.s rented the house, they also took over
the services of Paulette, the “bonne-a-tout-faire” who had
been with the DuPres family for many years. The house
had meanwhile been tastefully refurnished and the appoint-
ments included a fine grand piano in the “salon,” the large
downstairs reception room where the lady in Napoleon’s
life presumably met her illustrious lover whenever he vis-
ited her.
Mrs. D. liked the house from the start; but she could
not help wondering about the oval portrait of the lovely
lady attached to the wall of the tower.
Shortly after moving to the house, Mr. D. had to
travel for three weeks on government business. Mrs. D.
was left with her children, Paulette the maid, and a nurse-
maid— neither of whom spoke a word of English. Mrs.
D.’s French was then almost nonexistent, so she looked
forward to a somewhat unusual relationship with her
servants.
Several nights after her husband’s departure, Mrs. D.
was awakened at 3 A.M. by the sound of music. It was a
rambling but lovely piano piece being played somewhere
nearby. Her first reaction was how inconsiderate the neigh-
bors were to make music at such an hour, until she realized
that she had no neighbors near enough to hear anything. It
then struck her that the music came from inside her house,
or, to be specific, from the salon downstairs. She rushed to
the bathroom and sat down on an ice-cold bathtub to make
sure she was awake. An hour later the playing stopped.
During that hour she was much too scared to go down and
see who was playing her piano. The music had not been
particularly macabre, but rather more on the pleasant side
and somewhat rambling.
Who was she to discuss her experience with? The
Embassy staff would hardly react favorably to such matters
and her French did not permit her to question the servants.
The Ghost at La Tour Malakoff, Paris
431
The haunted villa at La Tour Malakoff, Paris
The next night, the ghostly piano music came on
again, promptly at 3 A.M., and stopped just as promptly at
4 A.M. Night after night, she was being treated to a concert
by unseen hands. Mrs. D. still would not venture down-
stairs at the time of the spooky goings-on, but prior to
retiring she tried to set traps for her unknown visitor, such
as closing the piano lid or leaving sheet music open at cer-
tain pages. But the ghost did not respond: everything was
exactly as she had left it, and the music was as clear as
ever.
She greeted her husband with a sigh of relief on his
return. When she told him of her ordeal, he was amazingly
understanding. Had the ghost been playing that night, Mr.
D. would have sat up to listen, but unfortunately, his
return abruptly ended the nocturnal concerts.
Gradually the matter of the ghostly pianist faded into
memory, especially as the D.s did a lot of entertaining in
the house. Among their guests were Neill O., her hus-
band’s assistant, and his wife. One Sunday morning they
descended the stairs to breakfast in a somewhat shaken
condition. When questioned by Mrs. D., the couple com-
plained about the inconsiderate “neighbor” who had kept
them awake playing the piano at 3 A.M. Their room had
been exactly above the salon. Mrs. O. added that she had
clearly heard a hunting horn outside the house and that it
had awakened her.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
The views from La Tour Malakoff
Other overnight guests of the D.’s complained simi-
larly about nocturnal concerts downstairs. What could the
hosts do but say they hoped their guests would sleep better
the next night?
Eventually Mrs. D., with the help of Neill O., inter-
rogated the maid about the house in which she had served
for so long.
“What about that portrait of a lady outside?” Mrs.
D. wanted to know. Apparently Napoleon had wearied of
his mistress after a while and left her to live by herself in
the house. During those lonely years as a former Imperial
mistress she had little company to comfort her: only a
grand piano for her amusement, and soon it became her
one and only passion. When Mrs. D. asked the maid about
a ghost in the house, the girl blanched. Living on the third
floor, Paulette had often heard the ghostly piano concert
downstairs but had been too scared to investigate. During
the DuPres residency, Paulette had been alone with the
children on one occasion when the nurse had gone to sleep.
One of the children started to cry and Paulette
rushed to the room. She found the little girl standing in her
bed wide awake, pointing to a corner of the room and say-
ing, “Look at the pretty lady!” Paulette, however, could
not see anyone or anything.
After the D.s left Paris, the house passed into the
hands of Robert Lamoureux, who added the projection
room on the grounds but left everything else as it was.
He, too, gave up the house and eventually moved
elsewhere. The house then became part of a real estate par-
cel acquired by speculators for the purpose of tearing down
the old houses and erecting a new apartment house on the
spot. In August 1968, 1 was granted permission by the La
Tour Malakoff Society to visit the house, with the tense
suggestion that I do so as soon as possible if I wanted to
find the house still standing.
Finally, in 1969, 1 did so, and fortunately the wreck-
ers had not yet come. The house already showed its state
of abandonment. The once carefully kept garden was over-
432
grown with weeds, the windows were dirty and the absence
of all furniture gave it an eerie, unreal feeling.
I walked up and down the staircase, taking pictures
and "listening with an inner ear" for whatever vibrations
might come my way. I did not hear any music, but then
the grand piano was no longer there. An Italian watchman,
who had spent hundreds of nights on the property guard-
ing it from intruders, looked at me and wondered what I
wanted there. I asked if he had had any unusual experi-
ences in the house. He shook his head and explained he
wouldn’t have — he never slept there and wouldn't dream of
♦ 86
Haunted Wolfsegg Fortress, Bavaria
The FORTIFIED CASTLE at Wolfsegg, Bavaria, is not State
property and can be visited only through the kindness and
permission of its owner. It is one of the few privately
owned fortresses in the world, I believe, and thereby hangs
a tale.
The late Georg Rauchenberger, by profession a
painter and the official guardian of monuments for the
province of The Upper Palatinate, which is part of the
state of Bavaria, purchased this ancient fortress with his
own savings. Since he was the man who passed on monies
to be spent by the state for the restoration of ancient mon-
uments in the province, he had of course a particularly
touchy situation on his hands, for he could not possibly
allow any funds to be diverted to his own castle. Conse-
quently, every penny spent upon the restoration of this
medieval fortress came from his own pocket. Over the
years he gradually restored this relic of the past into a liv-
able, if primitive, medieval fortress. He put in some of the
missing wooden floors, and turned the clock back to the
eleventh century in every respect.
Two persons, so far, can sleep comfortably in the
large fortress, but as it is still in the process of being
restored, it will be a long time before it can compare with
some of the “tourist attractions” under State control. Nev-
ertheless, small groups of interested visitors have been
admitted most days of the week for a guided tour through
the Hall of Knights and other parts of the fortress. Ordi-
narily visitors are not told of the hauntings at Wolfsegg,
but I am sure that anyone referring to these lines will find
at least a friendly reception.
Because of the nearness of the River Danube, the
fortress at Wolfsegg was always of some importance. It
rises majestically out of the valley to the equivalent of four
or five modern stories. Quite obviously constructed for
defense, its thick bulky walls are forbidding, the small win-
dows— high up to discourage aggressors — and the hill upon
which the fortress perches making attack very difficult.
doing so. Why not? He just smiled somewhat foolishly and
changed the subject.
When my photographs were developed by the profes-
sional service I use, one of them showed a strange light
streak I could not account for. It was a picture of the iron
staircase in the house. The shapeless light streak appears
between the second and first floors. Was it perhaps
Napoleon’s lady friend rushing downstairs to welcome
her lover?
One can’t be sure about those things.
Never conquered, Wolfsegg’s Twelfth Century
bulwarks are formidable.
As a matter of fact, Wolfsegg never fell to an enemy,
and even the formidable Swedes, who besieged it for a long
time during the Thirty Years' War, had to give up. Built in
1028, Wolfsegg belonged to several noble Bavarian fam-
ilies and was always directly or indirectly involved in the
intricate dynastic struggles between the various lines of the
Wittelsbachs, who ruled Bavaria until 1918. Many of the
masters of Wolfsegg made a living by being “Raubritter”
— that is to say, robber barons. All in all, the area had an
unsavory reputation even as early as the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries. The walls are thick and the living quarters
located well above ground.
The Knights Hall on the third floor is reached by a
broad staircase, and one flight down there is also a lookout
tower which has been restored as it was in the sixteenth
century. In the inner court there is a wooden gallery run-
ning along part of the wall (at one time this gallery covered
Haunted Wolfsegg Fortress, Bavaria
433
The village is remote and depends
largely on tourism.
Entrance to the fortress Wolfsegg
One of the two rooms “fixed up” by the owner
Georg Rauchenberger
the entire length of the wall). The lower stories have not
yet been fully restored or even explored.
Georg Rauchenberger himself heard uncanny noises,
footsteps, and experienced cold drafts at various times in
various parts of the fortress. The late Mrs. Therese
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
Pielmeier, wife of the custodian, actually saw a whitish
form in the yard, full of luminescence, and she also heard
various unexplained noises. On one occasion, Mr.
Rauchenberger saw a young lady coming in with a small
group of visitors, and when he turned to speak to her she
disappeared.
434
In the yard, where the ghost of the
Countess was seen
I held a seance at Wolfsegg with a Viennese lady
who served as my medium at the time. Through the trance
mediumship of Mrs. Edith Riedl, I was able to trace the
terrible story of a triple murder involving a beautiful
woman, once the wife of a Wolfsegg baron, who had
become the innocent victim of a political plot. The legend
of the beautiful ghost at Wolfsegg had, of course, existed
prior to our arrival on the scene. Apparently, greedy rela-
tives of a fourteenth-century owner of Wolfsegg had
decided to take over the property, then of considerable
value, by trapping the young wife of the owner with
another man. The husband, told of the rendezvous, arrived
in time to see the two lovers together, killed both of them,
and was in turn murdered in “just revenge” by his cunning
relatives.
The portrait of the unlucky lady of Wolfsegg hangs
in one of the corridors, the work of the father of the cur-
rent owner, who painted her from impressions received
while visiting the castle.
Although I was able to make contact with the atmos-
phere surrounding the “white woman” of Wolfsegg, and to
shed light upon a hitherto unknown Renaissance tragedy, it
is entirely possible that the restless baroness still roams the
corridors to find recognition and to prove her innocence to
the world.
One reaches Wolfsegg on secondary roads in about a
half hour’s drive from Regensburg, and it is situated near a
small and rather primitive village, northwest of the city on
the north side of the Danube River. There is only one inn
The Medieval gallery
Strong walls and small windows
characterize the early medieval fortress.
in this village, and staying overnight, as I once did, is not
recommended.
This is a remote and strange area of Germany,
despite the comparative nearness of the city of Regensburg.
By the way, Regensburg is sometimes also called Ratisbon,
and is the center of one of the few remaining strongly
Celtic areas in Germany.
Haunted Wolfsegg Fortress, Bavaria
435
m 87
A Haunted Former Hospital in Zurich
The HOUSE IN QUESTION is now a private residence,
owned by Colonel and Mrs. Nager. The Colonel is a pro-
fessional officer and takes a cautious attitude towards psy-
chic phenomena. Mrs. Catherine Nager is not only a
talented medium herself, but also serves as secretary to the
Swiss Society for Parapsychology headed by the Zurich
psychiatrist Dr. Hans Negele-Osjord.
Rather aristocratic in design and appearance, the
house stands on upper Hoenger Street at a spot where it
overlooks much of downtown Zurich. It is a square,
heavy-set stone house with three stories, and an attic above
the top story. In this attic there is a window that does not
want to stay closed — no matter how often one tries to close
it. When this happened all the time, the Nagers kept
accusing each other of leaving the window open, only to
discover that neither of them had done it.
The house is set back from the road in a heavily pro-
tected garden; it is painted a dark gray and there is a
wrought- iron lantern over the entrance.
When I first visited the house in the company of the
owner, the attic immediately depressed me. The famous
window was open again and I had no difficulty closing it.
But it could not have opened by its volition.
Down one flight there is a small room which for
many years has served as a maid’s room. It was here that
the most notable phenomena have been observed. A maid
named Liesl saw a man wearing a kind of chauffeur’s cap
standing between the bed and the wall with a candle in his
hand. She panicked and ran from the room screaming in
terror. Mrs. Nager checked the room immediately and
found it empty. No one could have escaped down the stairs
in the brief interval. Another servant girl took Liesl’s place.
A year and a half after the initial incident, the new girl saw
the same apparition.
Next to the maid’s room is another room famous for
uncanny atmospheric feelings. Guests who have stayed
there have frequently complained about a restlessness in
the room, and nobody ever slept well.
On the third floor there is still another maid’s room
where a girl named Elsbeth saw the ghostly apparition of a
man wearing a peculiar beret. When Mrs. Nager ’s son was
only eight, he saw a man emerge from between the window
curtains of his room. He, too, emphasized the peculiar cap
the man wore — something not seen today.
Other servants have described the ghost as being a
man of about thirty-five, wearing the same peculiarly Swiss
cap; they have seen him all over the house.
The explanation is this: during the seventeenth cen-
tury the house had been a military hospital. Many
wounded soldiers who came there died. The cap worn by
the apparition was the soldier’s cap worn in the period.
Most likely the man is lost between two states of being and
would like to get out — if only someone would show him
the way.
» 88
The Lady from Long Island
MAURICE O. IS AN elderly man of Polish extraction,
healthy, vigorous, and strong, despite his years. He is
firmly rooted in the Roman Catholic faith but is also aware
of the psychic world around him. Mr. O. operates a work-
shop located in a loft occupying the second story of a
house on lower Broadway. The section is one of the oldest
parts of New York City. This case was brought to my
attention by the man’s nephew, a teacher on Long Island
who had developed an interest in historical research, espe-
cially research pertaining to the American Revolutionary
period.
When I met Mr. O., he was at first very suspicious
of me and my psychic friend, Ingrid Beckman. He didn’t
understand what parapsychology was or what we were
going to do in his place. Patiently, I explained that I
wanted Ingrid to get her bearings and to see whether she
could pick up something from “the atmosphere.” While
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
Ingrid was puttering around in the rear of the place, I con-
vinced Mr. O. that I had to know what had happened to
him, so that I could judge the case fairly. He explained
that he had been in the neighborhood for fifty -five years.
He remembered that, when he was a small boy, another
building had stood on the same spot. "I came here from
Poland in 1913, when I was ten years old,” Mr. O.
explained in a halting, heavily accented voice. “In this spot
there was an old building, a red brick building with few
windows. On the corner there was a United cigar store.
Down the block was a saloon. They had girls there; cus-
tomers could come into the saloon, have the girls, and go
upstairs with them. In those days it cost them fifty cents or
a dollar. There also used to be a barber shop in the build-
ing. In 1920 they tore down the old building and built the
present factory loft, but they used the same foundations.”
When Mr. O. moved his business into a building he
had known all his life, it was a little like a homecoming for
him. He was in the business of servicing high-speed sewing
machines, which were sent to him from all over the coun-
try. Most of the time he did the work alone; for a while,
his brother Frank had assisted him. In those days he never
gave psychic phenomena any thought, and the many
436
strange noises he kept hearing in the loft didn’t really
bother him. He thought there must be some natural expla-
nation for them, although there were times when he was
sure he heard heavy footsteps going up and down the stairs
when he was alone in the building. One Saturday afternoon
around 4 o’clock, as he was ready to wash up and go home,
he walked back into the shop to wipe his hands. All of a
sudden he saw a heavy iron saw fly up into the air on its
own volition. It fell down to the floor, broken in two. Mr.
O. picked up the pieces and said to nobody in particular,
“Ghost, come here. I am not afraid of you; I want to talk
to you.” However, there was no answer.
“See that latch on the door,” Maurice O. said to us,
and showed us how he locked the place so that nobody
could come in. “Many times I’ve seen that latch move up
and down, as if someone wanted to get in, and when I
went outside there was no one there.”
Oftentimes he would hear footsteps overhead in the
loft above his. When he would go upstairs to check what
the noise was all about, he would find the third-floor loft
solidly locked up and no one about. Once, when he went
to the toilet between 1 :30 and 2 P.M. , at a time when he
knew he was alone in the building, he found himself locked
out of his place, yet he knew he had left the door open.
Someone, nevertheless, had locked the latch from the inside.
Finally, with the help of a friend, he broke the door open
and of course found the place empty. The incident shook
Mr. O. up considerably, as he couldn’t explain it, no mat-
ter how he tried. During this time, too, he kept seeing
shadows, roughly in the shape of human beings. They
would move up and down in the back of his workshop and
were of a grayish color. “It was the shape of a banana,”
Mr. O. commented. Curiously, during the first eight years
of his occupancy — he had been across the street for forty
years before — Mr. O. had had no such problems. It was
only in the last two years that he began to notice things out
of the ordinary.
However, Mr. O. had heard rumors of strange
goings-on in the building. A previous owner of the loft
building had a music store and was in the habit of spend-
ing Saturday nights in his shop with some invited friends,
listening to music. One night, so the story goes, around
midnight, everything started to pop out of the shelves,
merchandise flying through the air, and the entire building
began to shake as if there had been an earthquake. While
all this was going on, the people in the music store heard a
tremendous noise overhead. They became frightened and
called the police. Several radio cars responded immediately
but could not find out what was wrong. Everything seemed
normal upstairs. Shortly after, the owner sold the building
and moved to California.
Mr. O.’s workshop is L-shaped, with a small office
immediately behind the heavy steel door that gives access
to the corridor, and thence to a steep staircase that leads
out into the street. The machine shop itself is to the left
and in back of the office. Thus, it is possible to work in the
back of the shop and not see anyone coming in through the
entrance door. But it is not possible to escape hearing any
noises on the floor, since the entire building is not very
large.
The day after Thanksgiving 1971 Maurice was alone
in the shop, working quietly on some orders he wanted to
get out of the way. Since it was the day after Thanksgiving
and just before the weekend, the building was very quiet.
There was no one upstairs, and Maurice was sure he was
the only one in the building at the time. Suddenly, he saw
a lady walk into his office. Since he had not heard the
heavy door slam, which it always does when someone
walks in, he wondered how she had gotten into the build-
ing and into his office. She wore what to Maurice seemed a
very old-fashioned, very chic dress, white gloves, and a
bonnet, and she smelled of a sweet fragrance that immedi-
ately captured him. What was so nice a lady doing in his
sewing machine shop?
Maurice did not pursue his line of thought, how she
had gotten in in the first place, but asked her what she
wanted. Somehow, he felt a little frightened. He had
noticed that her face was more like a skeleton covered with
skin than the face of a flesh-and-blood person. The lady
seemed unusually white. There was no reply; she simply
stood there, looking around the place. Maurice repeated his
question.
“Well,” she said finally, in a faraway tone of voice, “I
just came here to look at the place. I used to live in this
building.” Then she went to the window and pointed to
the street. “I used to play over there — these houses are all
new brick houses. My father and mother had a corn farm
where the Federal Building is now, downtown.”
“Was there anything peculiar about her tone of
voice?" I asked.
“No, it sounded pretty clear to me, real American,”
O. replied. “She said, ‘You know, all these new buildings
weren't here during Revolutionary times.’ Then she added,
rather apologetically, ‘I just came around to look.”1
Maurice was standing in back of the counter that
separates his office from the short stretch of corridor lead-
ing from the entrance door. The lady was standing on the
other side of the counter, so Maurice could get a good look
at her; but he was too frightened to look her in the face.
When he backed up, she started to talk rapidly. "I just
wanted to visit the neighborhood. I used to live here.”
Then, pointing her hand toward the window, she said,
“The headquarters of the British Army used to be across
the street.”
The statement made no impression on Mr. O. Besides,
he was much too upset by all this to wonder how a woman
standing before him in the year 1971 could remember the
location of the headquarters of the British Army, which
had left New York almost two hundred years before.
“What did she look like?” 1 asked.
The Lady from Long Island
437
"She was dressed very nicely, and she looked just like
any other person except for her face. I didn't see her
hands, but she had on brand new gloves, her dress looked
new, and the hat was real nice.”
“Did you see her walking?”
"Yes, she was walking.”
“What happened next?”
“Well,” Maurice explained, swallowing hard at the
memory of his experience. "I finally got up enough courage
to ask her, ‘Where are you going now?”'
The question had seemed to make the lady sad, even
upset. “I’m leaving to visit relatives on Long Island,” she
said finally. “In the cemetery. My relatives, my friends, my
father and mother.”
Maurice became more and more uneasy at all this.
He pretended that he had some business in the rear of the
shop and started to back up from the counter.
“I’m going to visit you again,” the lady said and
smiled.
For about a minute, Mr. O. busied himself in the
back of his workshop, then returned to the office. The
woman was gone.
“Was the door still closed?”
“The door was closed. No one could have left with-
out slamming this door, and I would have heard it. I
quickly opened the door to convince myself that I had
really spoken to a person. I looked around; there was
nobody outside. Nobody.”
Maurice checked both his door and the door down-
stairs. Neither door had been opened, so he went back up
to continue working. He was still very much upset but
decided to stay till about 5 o’clock. When he was ready to
go home and had put the keys into the door, he suddenly
began to smell the same perfume again — the perfume the
lady had brought with her. She’s back again, he thought,
and he looked everywhere. But there was no one about.
Quickly he locked the door and ran downstairs.
A year to the day after the apparition, Maurice
decided to work late — more out of curiosity than out of
any conviction that she would return. But the lady never
did.
Mr. O.’s nephew, who is a teacher and a researcher,
commented, "With reference to the British headquarters’
being across the street, I have checked this fact out and
have found that during the Revolution the British head-
quarters were across the street from this same building
my uncle now occupies. This is a fact I know my uncle
couldn’t possibly have known.”
“Ingrid,” I said, after I had asked her to join me and
Mr. O. in the front of the workshop, “what do you feel
about this place?”
“There is a lot of excitement here,” she replied. “I
think there is a man here who is kind of dangerous, very
treacherous, and I think someone might have been injured
here. This happened about twenty-five years ago.”
“Do you think there is an earlier presence in this
house?”
"I feel that this was a prosperous place, an active,
busy spot. A lot of people were coming here. It was part
home, part business. Before that I think this building was
something else. I think a family lived here. They may have
been foreigners, and I think the man was killed. I feel that
this man came to this country and invested his savings
here. He wanted to build up a family business. I also think
there is a woman connected with it. She wears a longish
dress, going below the knees.”
"What is her connection with this place?”
“She may have spent her childhood here — what hap-
pened here might have happened to her father. Perhaps she
came here as a young child and spent many years in this
building. She has some connection with this man, I feel.”
"Does she have any reason to hang onto this place?”
"Maybe she doesn’t understand why all this has hap-
pened, and she can’t accept it yet. Perhaps she has lost a
loved one.”
Every year, around Thanksgiving, Maurice O. will
wait for the lady to come back and talk to him again. Now
that he knows that she is “just a ghost,” he isn’t even
afraid of her any longer. As far as the lady is concerned,
she need not worry either: when the British Army head-
quarters stood across the street, the area was a lot safer
than it is now, especially at night; but she really needn’t
worry about muggings either, things being as they are.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
438
* 89
The Ghost of the Olympia Theatre
There ARE THREE THEATERS of renown in Dublin: the
Gate, the Abbey, and the Olympia. The Gate was closed
for repairs, and the Olympia was running a musical revue
when we visited Dublin for the first time, in the late sum-
mer of 1965.
Lona Moran, the stage designer, had first told me of
the hauntings at the Olympia, and my appetite was further
whetted by Michael MacLiammoir, although he thought
the Gate’s ghosts were more impressive!
We booked seats for the night of August 19. The
revue starred popular Irish comedian Jack Cruise in some-
thing called “Holiday Hayride.” To tell the truth, it was
pleasant without being great, and we laughed frequently at
what to sophisticated Americans must have appeared
old-hat comedy. Overtones of Palace vaudeville made the
show even more relaxing and the absence of boisterous
rock-and-roll groups — inevitable in England these days —
made it even nicer for us. In a comedy sketch taking off on
Dublin police — called here the Garda — one of the cops
played by Chris Curran made reference to our TV appear-
ance that morning, proving again how small a town Dublin
really is. Or how topical the revue was. At any rate, Lona
Moran, who had often worked here before becoming the
designer for Telefis Eireann, had arranged to meet us after
the show and discuss the haunting with us.
Dick Condon, the house manager, joined us in the
bar around eleven, and Miss Moran was not long in com-
ing either. Sybil’s purple evening sari drew a lot of atten-
tion, but then Sybil is used to that by now.
We decided to repair to the stage itself, since the
house had meanwhile gone dark. The stagehands agreed to
stay a little late for us that night, and I started my inquiry.
“I’ve beard some very curious tappings and bang-
ings,” Lona Moran began, “and doors being shaken when
they were very heavily chained. I have heard windows rat-
tle, outside the room where I was sitting, and when I came
out I realized there was no window!”
“How long ago was that?”
"That was about this time last year,” Lona Moran
replied. "It was in the backstage area, in the dressing room
upstairs, number 9. Outside there is a completely blank
wall. Actually, Mr. O’Reilly was with me and he heard it
too. It was early morning when I went into that room,
about half past five. We had been working all night. We
went up to the dressing room to make notes and also to
make tea, and this awful banging started. It sounded like a
window being rattled very, very persistently. I went stiff
with fright. I was very tired at the time. At intervals, the
noise covered a period of about an hour, I’d say, because
we left the room around 6:30 and only then we realized
there was no window.”
“Did you hear this noise at any other time?”
“Yes, when I worked on stage during the night. I
heard a window rattle, and once got as far as the first floor
to see if I could see it and then I lost my nerve and came
down again.”
“There was no possibility of a window making the
noise?”
“Well, I suppose a window could have done it — but
what window ?”
“Do you know if any structural changes have taken
place here?”
“No, I don’t; but the theater is over two hundred
years old.”
“Do you know if any tragedy or other unusual event
took place in this area?”
“I don’t know of any, but the theater is supposed to
be haunted. By what, I really don’t know.”
“Did you experience anything unusual before last
year?”
“Yes, before then there were lots of bangings. The
door of the bar would shake and rattle very badly, on very
calm evenings, as if someone were rattling it. The sound of
things dropping also. I thought Jeremy, my assistant, was
dropping things and accused him rather sharply, but he
wasn’t.”
“Ever hear footsteps?”
"I think I’ve imagined I heard footsteps — I don’t
know really whether they were or weren’t — always during
the night when we were working — two of us would be
working on the stage together, and no one else in the
theater.”
“And what happened on those occasions?”
“Rattling noises and creaking. . .and something that
might be footsteps.”
“Have you ever felt another presence?”
“I had the feeling last September that there was
something there, when I walked through that door and saw
no window.”
I asked if she had ever had psychic experiences before
she set foot into the theater.
"I simply did not believe, but I do now,” Lona
Moran replied. She had never experienced anything
unusual before coming to the Olympia. She had worked as
stage designer for the Olympia Theatre for fourteen
months prior to going into television.
I turned to Lona Moran’s associate, who had come
along to tell of his own experiences here.
“My name is Alfo O’Reilly,” the tall young man
said, “and I’m theater designer and television designer here
in Dublin. I myself have designed only two or three pro-
ductions here, and last year, for the theater festival, I
designed an American production. On the particular
evening in question Lona and I worked very late into the
night, and I had not heard any stories at all about this the-
ater being haunted. We went up to the dressing room, and
The Ghost of the Olympia Theatre
439
we were sitting there quietly exhausted when we heard
these incredible noises.”
“Those are the noises Miss Moran spoke of,” I com-
mented, and Alfo O’Reilly nodded and added:
“I have found that when I’m terribly exhausted, I
seem to have a more heightened awareness. We knew there
was only one other person in the theater, the night watch-
man who was roaming elsewhere, and we were alone
upstairs. There was certainly nothing in the corridor that
could create this kind of noise. I’ve heard many things,
footsteps, at the Gate Theatre, which is certainly haunted,
but not here.”
1 thanked Mr. O’Reilly and turned to a slim young
man who had meanwhile arrived onstage.
“My name is Jeremy Swan and I work with Telefis
Eireann,” he said by way of introduction, “and I used to
work here as resident stage manager. About this dressing
room upstairs — I remember one season here, during a pan-
tomime, the dressing room was wrecked, allegedly by a
poltergeist.”
"Would you explain just how?”
"All the clothes were strewn about,” Swan explained,
"makeup was thrown all around the place — we questioned
all the chorus girls who were in the room at the time — that
was number 9 dressing room.”
The haunted dressing room, I thought.
"Apparently there had been knocking at the door
every night and nobody there,” the stage manager contin-
ued, “at half past nine. One night when I was working
here as assistant to Miss Moran I went upstairs to the
washroom there, and when I came out I felt and I was
almost sure saw a light — just a glow — yellow; it seemed to
be in the corner of the corridor. I followed the light round
the corner — it moved, you see — and it went into the corri-
dor where number 9 was, where there was another door.
The door was open, and now it closed in my face!”
"Incredible,” I was forced to say. “What happened
then?”
“There was nobody in the theater at all. It was after
midnight. Now all the doors in the corridor started to rat-
tle. That was four years ago.”
"Have you had any experiences since then?”
"I haven’t worked here very much since.”
“Did you feel any unusual chill at the time?”
“Yes, I did before I went upstairs to the corridor. It
was very cold onstage. Suddenly, I heard whispering from
back in the theater.”
“What sort of whispering?”
“Sh-sh-sh-sh,” Jeremy Swan went on. “It sounded
like a voice that didn’t quite make it.”
"Anything else?”
“Then I heard this banging again. Beside me almost.
On stage. I did not want to say anything to Miss Moran,
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
and then I went up to the washroom where this funny light
business started.”
“At what height did the light appear?”
“Sort of knee level.”
I thanked the young man and looked around. The
stagehands had come forward the better to hear the ques-
tioning. Somehow they did not mind the overtime; the sub-
ject was fascinating to them.
All this time, of course, Sybil Leek was absent, safely
out of earshot of anything that might be said about the
haunting onstage. I was about to ask that she be brought in
to join us, when a middle-aged stagehand stepped forward,
scratched his head and allowed as to some psychic experi-
ences that might perhaps interest me.
“What is your name, sir?” I asked the man.
“Tom Connor. I’m an electrician. I’ve been here fif-
teen years.”
"Anything unusual happen to you here at the
Olympia?”
“About eight years ago when I was on night duty
here, I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. So I
thought it was one of the bosses coming and I went to
check and there was nobody, so I went to the top of the
house and still didn’t see anybody. I came back again and I
heard footsteps coming down the gallery, so I went to the
switchboard, put on the houselights and searched — but
there was nobody there.”
“Did you hear this just once?”
“During the same fortnight when that show was on,”
Tom Connor replied quietly, "I had the same experience
again. Footsteps coming down from the dressing rooms. I
went and checked. Still, nobody. Couple of nights after-
wards, I was having a cup of tea, and I was reading a book,
sitting on the rostrum, and the rostrum lifted itself a few
inches off the ground! I felt myself coming up and I
thought it was one of the bosses, and I said, well, I’m
awake! It’s all right, I’m awake. But to my surprise, there
was nobody there.”
"You felt the rostrum physically lifted up?”
“Yes, as if someone of heavy weight had stood on the
end of it.”
“So what did you do then?”
“When I realized that there was no one there, I got a
shock and felt a cold shiver, and put on more lights and
had a look around. There was nobody in the theater.”
“Did you ever experience anything unusual in the
area of the dressing rooms upstairs?” I asked.
“No, except that I heard the footsteps coming down,
very clearly.”
“Man or woman?”
“Heavy footsteps, like a man’s.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, at night, half-past twelve, 1 o’clock, I get this
cold, clammy feeling — my hair standing on end — I am
always very glad to get out of the place.”
440
Meanwhile, Dick Conlon, the house manager, had
come onstage, having finished counting his money for the
night.
I interrupted my interesting talk with Tom Connor,
stagehand, to question Conlon about his experiences, if
any, at the Olympia.
“I've been here thirteen months,’’ he said, "but so far
I haven’t noticed anything unusual.”
By now Sybil Leek had joined us.
“Sybil,” I said, “when we got to this theater earlier
this evening, you did not really know where we were going.
But when we got to our seats in stage box I, you said to
me, ‘Something is here, I feel very cold.’ What was your
impression on getting here?”
"There is undoubtedly a presence here and I think it
moves around quite a lot. The box has some association
with it. I am mainly concerned though with the dressing
room that had the number changed. I have not been up to
this room, but it is upstairs. Second door, almost faces the
stage. The corridor continues and there is a left hand turn.
Then there are two doors. Not a particularly healthy pres-
ence, I feel. I don’t feel it is connected with the theater."
“Then how would it be here?”
"I have an impression that this is something in the
year 1916, and something very unruly, something destruc-
tive. It is a man. He doesn’t belong here. He wishes to get
away.”
“What is he doing here?” I asked. The story was tak-
ing a most unusual turn.
Sybil thought for a moment as if tuning in on her
psychic world.
“He stayed here and could not get out, and the name
is Dunnevan. That is the nearest I can get it. I can’t see
him too well; the clearest place where I see him is upstairs,
along the corridor that faces the stage on both landings.
Near the dressing room that had the number changed.”
“This man — is he a soldier or a civilian?” I asked.
“There is so much violence about his nature that he
could have been of military character. But again I get a lit-
tle confusion on this.”
“Did he die here?”
“I have a feeling that he did, and that he came to a
very unsavory end. Perhaps not within the walls of this
place, but having been here, having stayed here for some
time. I think he wanted to stay in here. After the theater
was closed.”
“Is there any fighting involved?"
“Yes, I have the feeling of some violence. More peo-
ple than this man.”
“Is he alone?”
“He is the victim of it."
"What does he want?”
"I think he just is continuing in the same violent way
in which he lived.”
“Why is he causing these disturbances?”
"He needs to escape. A connection with. . .1 think
this man has sometime been imprisoned. The noises
are really his protestation against the periods of being
restricted. He does not know this is a theater. But some-
thing vital happened in that top dressing room and the
impressions there would be clearer.”
Unfortunately, the hour was so late we could not go
up there that night.
“This man moves around the theater a lot,” Sybil
commented. “He was moving around here under pressure.”
I thanked Sybil, and not knowing if any of the mater-
ial obtained from her in this clairvoyant state had validity,
I looked around for someone who could either confirm or
deny it.
Again a stagehand, Albert Barden, was helpful.
“There was some fighting here,” he said in his delib-
erate voice. "It was during the Easter rebellion, in 1916.”
“Any soldiers here?” I asked, and a hush fell over the
audience as they listened to the stagehand.
“As a matter of fact,” he continued, “there was a
civilian shot — he was suspected of I.R. A. activities, but it
was discovered afterwards that he had something to do
with the Quartermaster stores down in Ironbridge Bar-
racks. He was shot by mistake."
“Where was he shot?”
“In the theater.”
“Downstairs?”
The man nodded.
"Though I was only six years old in 1916, I remem-
ber it as if it were yesterday. It was sometime between the
rebellion and the Black and Tan fighting of 1921 , but he
surely was shot here.”
In Ireland, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish
between the two civil wars; as a matter of fact, they run
one into the other, for it is true that for five long years all
of Eire was a battleground for freedom.
It was very late by now and we had to leave the the-
ater. Outside, Dublin was asleep except for a few pubs still
plying their trade.
I thanked Lona Moran and her friends for having
come down to help us pin down the specter of the
Olympia.
Now at least they know it isn't a fellow thespian
unhappy over bad notices — but a man who gave his life in
the far grimmer theater of reality.
The Ghost of the Olympia Theatre
441
» 90
The Haunted Rectory
The FIRST TIME I heard of the haunted rectory of Car-
lingford was in August 1965, when its owner, Ernest
McDowell, approached me on the advice of an American
friend who knew of my work.
“I own an old rectory which is haunted. If you are
interested I will show you over the house with pleasure.”
Subsequently, I ascertained that Mr. McDowell was a
man of standing and intelligence, and his report was to be
taken seriously. I arranged for us to go up to the Dundalk
area in late July 1966. By this time, two editors from the
German fashion magazine Constanze, Mr. and Mrs. Peter
Rober, had decided to join us for a firsthand report on my
methods, and also to act as neutral observers and arbiters
should my camera yield some supernormal photographs.
For this purpose, an elaborate system of safeguards was
devised by Mr. Rober. It consisted of his bringing from
Hamburg the very sensitive film I normally use for the
purpose and personally inserting it in my Zeiss camera,
which he kept in his own possession until we were ready to
visit the house in question.
After he had filled the camera with film, he sealed it
with string and red scaling wax, so that I could not possi-
bly manipulate the camera or the film inside without
breaking the seal. By this method he was in a firm position
to attest to the fact that nobody had tampered with my
camera and to further attest that if supernormal results
were obtained, they had been obtained genuinely and not
by fraud. I was happy to oblige the German editors, since
an article in that materialistic country, dealing in a positive
way with psychic phenomena, would be an important step
forward.
The Robers arrived on a hot Saturday evening at
Jury’s Hotel, and the following morning we set out for
Dundalk in one of those huge Princess cars that can seat
six comfortably. We arrived at Ballymascanlon Hotel north
of Dundalk by lunch time; I had chosen this comfortable
inn as our headquarters.
The former Plunkett residence, now fully modernized
and really an up-to-date hostelry in every sense of the
word, has beginnings going back to the ninth century,
although the house itself is only a hundred years old. This
area abounds in “giants’ tombs” and other pre-Christian
relics, and was the center of the Scanlan family for many
centuries. Later it belonged to the Cistercian monks of
Mellifont, a ruin we had visited the year before when we
crossed the river Boyne.
As soon as Mrs. Irene Quinn, the hotel’s spunky
owner, had settled us into our rooms, we made plans. I put
in a telephone call to Ernest McDowell and a pleasant,
well-modulated voice answered me on the other end of the
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
line. He was indeed ready for the expedition; within an
hour he had driven over from his own home, a farm south
of Dundalk called Heynestown, and we sat down in the
comfortable lounge of Ballymascanlon Hotel to go over his
experiences in detail.
“Let us start with the history of the house, as far as
you know it at this moment,” I asked McDowell, a pleas-
ant-looking, well-dressed young man in his fortieth year
whose profession was that of a painter, although he helped
his brother run their farm as required. By and large Ernest
McDowell was a gentleman farmer, but more gentleman
than farmer, and rather on the shy side.
"The house was built in the seventeenth century,” he
began. “It was then a private house, a mansion that
belonged to the Stannus family, before it was bought by
the Church of Ireland for a rectory. The builder of the
newer portion was the grandfather of the celebrated
Sadler’s Wells ballerina Ninette de Valois. I bought it in
1960.”
"Have you moved in yet?”
“I haven’t really. . .the house is empty, except of
course for the ghosts.”
“Ah yes,” I said, “How large a house is it?”
“Twenty-two rooms in all. Nobody has lived there
since I bought it, through.”
“When was your first visit to the house, after you
had acquired it?”
“I went up there every week to see if it was all
right.”
“Was it?”
"Well, yes, but one summer afternoon, in 1963 — it
was early September, I recall — my brother and I were at
the rectory. My brother was out cutting corn, and I was
mowing the lawn. It was rather a hot evening and I
thought I was getting a cold. I was very busy, though, and
I just happened to look up, towards the door, when I
noticed moving towards the door a figure of a girl in a red
dress.
"The motor of the lawnmower was not in good repair
and it had bothered me, and I was taken aback by what I
saw. It was a red velvet dress she wore, and before I could
see her face, she just vanished!”
“Did she look solid?”
“Solid.”
“Did she cast a shadow?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see her shoes?”
"There wasn’t time. I started from the ground up,
and the red dress was the first thing I noticed.”
"About that face?”
“I couldn't make it out.”
"What period would you say the dress belonged to?”
“It was Edwardian, long.”
“What did you do after she vanished?”
"I looked towards the gate — the gate that lets you
into the grounds from the road — and coming in the gate
442
was a clergyman with a very high collar, and he vanished,
too!”
"Do you recall anything else about him?”
"He wore a rather out-of-date outfit, and a hat.”
“What time of day was it?”
"About 5 P.M.”
I thought about this ghostly encounter of two restless
spirits for a moment, before continuing my questioning of
the chief witness.
"Did they react to each other in any way?”
“I should say there was some bond between the two;
there was a connection.”
"Did you see anything else?”
"No, just the two figures.”
“Did your brother see anything?”
“No. But Canon Meissner, who lived at the house for
some time, saw the same girl in one of the rooms. She
appeared to him on a separate occasion.”
"How long ago?”
“About twenty years ago. He described her as a
young girl who appeared near his bed and then just
disappeared.”
“Disconcerting for a Canon, I’d say. What else can
you tell me about the haunted rectory?"
“Helen Meissner, his daughter, was in the dining
room one night, with the door open, alone, when the other
door, on the other end of the room, suddenly started to
vibrate as if someone were trying hard to push it open. It
opened by itself and the dog with her stood and stared at
whatever came through the door, its hackles rising, and
then it ran for its life.
“Then, too, Mrs. Meissner, the Canon’s wife, and
Helen heard footsteps on the backstairs one night. The
steps started on the bottom of the stairs and went right up,
past them, as they were standing on both sides of the
stairs; but they did not see anything. This was about fif-
teen years ago when Meissner was Rector and lived at the
house with his family.
“My sister-in-law, who is very sensitive, went
through the house only two weeks ago, and she claimed
that the back part of the house gave her a very uncomfort-
able feeling. She owned a house in Kent, England, that was
haunted and we both felt it. I suppose we are both psychic
to a degree, since I’ve on occasion felt things.”
“What sort of things?” I asked. I always like to get a
full picture of my witnesses to evaluate their testimony. If
they have had ghostly experiences prior to the one under
investigation, it would indicate mediumistic faculties in
them.
“My brother and sister-in-law had bought a house in
Kildare and I stayed there one night, and for no reason at
all, I sat up in bed from a deep sleep, and I clearly heard
both locks on the doors in the room click. But I was quite
alone.”
The haunted rectory at Carlingford
“To your knowledge, is there any record of any
unhappy incident in this house?” I asked, getting back to
the haunted rectory.
“No, it has a very happy atmosphere. Only when I
go into it sometime, I feel as if there were people in it, yet
it is obviously empty. It seems alive to me. Of course, I
have heard footsteps in the corridors when I was quite
alone in the house. That was mainly upstairs. It’s a passage
that runs up one stairway and around the house and down
the other staircase. The only thing smacking of tragedy I
know of was the coachman losing a child in the gatehouse
that burned down, but that was not in the house itself.”
“Is there any tradition or popular rumor that might
refer to the apparitions of the clergyman and the girl in the
red dress?”
“None whatever.”
Thus it was that all members of our party had no
foreknowledge of any event connected with the haunted
house, no names, or anything more than what Ernest
McDowell had just told us. Sybil, of course, was nowhere
near us at this point, since she was to join us only after the
preliminaries had been done with.
The Germans took it all down with their tape
recorders, and it was for their benefit that I made the point
of our total "innocence” as far as facts and names were
concerned.
"What is the house called now?” I asked.
“Mount Trevor,” Mr. McDowell replied. “It was
originally built by the Trevors, a very well-known country
family. They also built the town of Rostrevor, across Car-
lingford Lough.”
The Haunted Rectory
443
Empty now, the rectory was once witness to
great emotional events.
"Are there any chairs in the house now?” I finally
asked, since Sybil had to sit down somewhere for her trance.
McDowell assured me he had thought of it and brought
one chair — just one — to the otherwise empty house.
When we arrived at the house after a pleasant drive
of about fifteen minutes, Peter Rober gave me back my
camera, fully sealed now, and I took pictures at random
downstairs and upstairs, and Catherine joined me in taking
some shots also, with the same camera.
We entered the grounds, where the grass stood high,
and McDowell led us into the house by a side entrance, the
only door now in use, although I was immediately
impressed that a larger door facing the other way must at
one time have existed.
The house is pleasantly situated atop a knoll gently
sloping down towards the water of Carlingford Lough,
with trees dotting the landscape and sheep grazing under
them, giving the place a very peaceful feeling. In back of
the house lay a kitchen garden, beyond which the ruined
towers of ancient Carlingford Abbey could be seen in the
distance. Across the road from the garden gate was the
Catholic church house of Carlingford.
The hall was rather small; to the left, the staircase
mentioned in the ghostly accounts immediately led to the
upper story, while to the right of the door a short passage
took us into the large downstairs corner room, where we
decided to remain. Large windows all around gave the
room sufficient illumination, and there was a fireplace in
the rear wall. Next to it stood the lone chair McDowell had
mentioned.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
Sybil joined us now inside the house and I hurried to
get her first clairvoyant impressions as they occurred.
“Something connected with the period of 1836,” she
said immediately, poking about the rooms. "I have two
names. . .as we came in the name Woodward came to me,
and the other is Devine or Divine. Something like that.
Peculiar name, I think.”
“Please don’t analyze it,” I warned, "just let it come.
I’ll do the analyzing.”
“Woodward and Devine,” Sybil repeated. "These
names have some meaning in this house. Also, a hall of
imprisonment. Someone was imprisoned, I feel.”
We followed Sybil, who slowly walked from room to
room, Catherine helped me carry the tape recorder and
camera, Ernest McDowell following behind looking
excited, and three friends of his whose presence he felt
might be useful. They were two ladies sharing a house at
Ardee, both of them very psychic. Mrs. Bay John and Pat
MacAllister had brought a young ward named Julian with
them. I secretly hoped there weren’t any poltergeists lurk-
ing about under the circumstances!
Later, Mrs. MacAllister mentioned seeing a face as if
etched onto the wall in the very room upstairs where I took
some psychic pictures, though of course I did not know
they would turn out to be unusual at the time I took them.
I never know these things beforehand.
We were still on the ground floor and Sybil was
investigating the rear section, the oldest part of the house.
There were some iron bars outside the window of the
rather dank room, giving it a very heavy prison-like feeling.
It was the original kitchen area.
“Someone was made to stay upstairs,” Sybil said now,
“and I have gooseflesh on my forearms now.” We walked
up the stairs and I confirmed the latter observation.
Finally we found ourselves in a room about the mid-
dle of the upper story, and Sybil came to a halt.
“I feel I want to run away from this room,” she
observed. "It’s a panic-stricken feeling. Someone wants to
get away from here; the name Devine comes again here.
Someone is hiding here, and then there is imprisonment. Is
there a prison somewhere here? Several people are held.
This is away from the house, however.”
“Is there a presence here?” I asked as I always do
when we are at the center of uncanny activities.
“Yes, several. The period is 1836. The strongest
presence is someone in brown. A man. There is a connec-
tion with business. There are three people here, but of the
same period. There is no overlapping of periods here. The
main person hiding in this room or forcibly kept here went
from here and was hanged, with other people. This was a
man. Perhaps we should go downstairs now.”
We followed Sybil’s advice and repaired to the down-
stairs parlor.
“Father Devine. . .should not have left the church for
business,” Sybil suddenly mumbled. "Someone says that
about him. I feel him around, though.”
444
Now I placed Sybil in the one chair we had and the
rest of us formed a circle around her as best we could. It
was about the same time, 5 o’clock, as the time of the
haunting and I was prepared for anything.
Presently, Sybil showed all signs of deep trance. My
German friends were riveted to the floor, Mrs. Rober
clutching the microphone and Mr. Rober taking dozens of
pictures with his Rolleiflex camera. The tension mounted
as Sybil’s lips started to move, though no word came at
first through them. Gradually, I coaxed the spirit to take
firmer possession of my medium’s body and to confide in
us, who had come as friends.
"Who are you?” I said softly. The voice now emanat-
ing from Sybil was hesitant and weak, not at all like Sybil’s
normal voice.
"Aiken,” the voice murmered.
I could hardly hear her, but my tape recorder picked
up every breath.
“Aileen Woodward,” the ghost said.
"Is this your house?”
"We live here. . .where is he? Where is he? Robert!
“Whom are you seeking?”
“Devaine. . .Robert Devaine. . .speak slightly. . .my
husband. . .be quiet. . .where is he?”
I wondered if she wanted me to keep my voice down
so that I would not give her away to some pursuers.
“Where is Robert?" I asked, trying to reverse the line
of questioning.
"Where is he, where is he?” she cried instead,
becoming more and more upset and the tears, real tears,
streaming down Sybil's usually tranquil face.
I calmed her as best I could, promising to help her
find Robert, if I could.
"When did you first come to this house?” I asked
quietly, while the sobbing continued.
The faces around me showed the great emotions that
seemed to have been transferred from the ghostly girl to
the witnesses. Not a word was spoken.
At this point, the tape had to be turned over. Unfor-
tunately, it slipped out of our hands and it was several sec-
onds before I started to record again. During those
moments I tried to explore her family connections more
fully.
Who was Robert and who were his people? Who was
Robert’s father?
“In the Church,” she replied, quieter now.
"Does he like you?” I wanted to know.
There was a moment of quiet reflection before she
answered.
"No.”
"Why not?"
“The Church must not marry!”
“Is Robert a priest?”
“Shhh!” she said quickly. “Don’t speak!”
“I don’t quite understand. . .how does religion enter
the picture?”
“Changer,” she mumbled, indicating that someone
had changed his faith.
“Are you and Robert of the same religion?” I now
asked.
“Don’t ask it.”
“Are you Catholic?"
Utter silence was my answer.
I pleaded with her for more information so I could
help her locate Robert. In vain; she would not budge on
this question. Finally, she confused me with her enemies.
"You took him... I’m going for a walk now... fol-
low . . . down the hill . . . j ust a walk . . . to see if he
comes....”
“If I get you to see Robert again, will you promise to
do as I tell you?” I asked.
"I promise nothing,” the frightened ghost replied.
“You betray him. . .how do I know you’re a friend?”
“You have to trust me if I am to help, you.”
“I don’t trust.”
Now I gently told her the truth about herself, the
time that had come and gone since 1836 and why she
could not stay on in this house.
“Don’t speak so loud. . .you drive me mad. . .I’m
going for a walk in the garden. . .” she said, trying to
ignore the light of truth piercing her self-inflicted prison.
But it did not work. The door of reality had been opened
to her. In a moment she was gone.
Sybil reopened her eyes, confused at first as to where
she was. I then asked her to take some fresh air outside the
house, since the rain that had come down during part of
our seance had now stopped and the countryside was back
to its glorious Irish freshness.
With Sybil outside, I turned once more to the owner
of the house and asked whether he had ever heard the
names Woodward, Aileen, and Devine or Devaine before
in connection with the house or area.
"The only thing I know is that Canon Meissner told
me that this house was once occupied by a French family
named Devine. Since Canon Meissner had the house from
1935 onward, this must have been before his time.”
“The girl speaks of a clergyman, and you saw a cler-
gyman ghost, is that correct?”
“Yes,” McDowell nodded, “but he wore black, not
brown.”
In the time we had lost through the tape change, the
ghost had described herself as 16 years of age, wearing a
red dress, and the dates 1836 and 1846 both were given.
Sybil, of course, had no knowledge of McDowell’s experi-
ence with the girl in the red velvet dress.
I asked Mr. McDowell to look in the local records for
confirmation of some of the names and information that
had come through the medium. Offhand, none of it was
known to those present, so that confirmation would have to
await further research.
The Haunted Rectory
445
We returned to Bally mascanlon Hotel, where the
eager German journalist had made an appointment with a
local photographer so that he could get my films developed
while we were still on location, and if there was anything
on the negatives that had not been visible to the naked eye,
one could make immediate use of the information. I never
anticipated anything of this sort, but one can't know these
things in advance either. As it turned out, there were two
pictures in the batch, taken by Catherine and me with my
sealed camera, that showed the same mirror-like effects I
had observed on the photographs taken in June Havoc’s
haunted townhouse in New York and in the haunted trailer
of Rita Atlanta, near Boston. Wherever there is present in
a room a haunted area, represented by a magnetic field or a
cold spot sometimes, such an area occasionally shows up
on film with mirror-like effects; that is, reflections of
objects in the room occur that could not have occurred
under ordinary conditions, there being no mirror or other
reflecting surface near.
Peter Rober was clearly elated, showing his pleasure
about as much as his North German nature permitted him
to. There was still another picture that represented a puzzle
to us: in the haunted room upstairs where Helen Meissner
had seen the door open by its own volition, Catherine took
a picture in what seemed to both of us an empty room. We
clearly recall that the doors were both shut. Yet, to our
amazement, on the picture the door to the left is quite
plainly ajar!
Ernest McDowell suggested we talk to the Meissners
firsthand, and the following morning, Mr. and Mrs. Rober
and I drove across the border to Northern Ireland, where
the Meissners now live in a little town called Warrenpoint.
Mrs. Meissner turned out to be a friendly, talkative
lady who readily agreed to tell us what had happened to
them during their tenancy at the rectory.
"We lived there twenty-five years, and we left the
house in 1960,” she began her recollections. "We did not
notice anything unusual about the house at first, perhaps
because we were so glad to get the house.
“Part of the house was almost Queen Anne period,
the rest Georgian. We had two indoor maids and we took
our gardener with us, too. Everybody was happy. We did
lots of entertaining and life was very pleasant. Then I
noticed that local people never came to the rectory in the
evening. They always made an excuse. Finally, I was
informed that there was a ghost in the house. It was sup-
posed to have been the ghost of a sea captain who lived
here originally and was lost at sea. The older portion of the
house was where he had lived, they said. I never was able
to find out anything more than that about this sea captain,
however. I was a skeptic myself and went gaily about my
business. Then summer came, and I used to be outdoors as
late as one could. Several evenings, something white passed
me, something big, and yet I never heard a sound. 1
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
thought this very strange, of course, and wondered if it was
a white owl, But there was no sound of wings. Gradually I
got to rather expect this phenomenon.”
“Any particular time of day?” I interjected.
"At dusk. Outside. And then I saw it from the win-
dow. But it had no form, yet I knew it was white. I saw it
often, and never a sound.”
“After that, did you have any further adventures in
the house?” I asked.
“We had a visit from the sister of Ninette de Valois,
and she was very interested in the house because it was an
ancestor of hers who had owned it. He was a Colonel Stan-
nus. At the same time we had another visitor, a young man
from Dublin. The lady and her husband had come rather
late in the evening; they were staying at Rostrevor Hotel,
and they wanted to see over Carlingford Rectory, and we
thought it was rather late in the evening for that, so we
asked them to come the next day. At that time the young
man from Dublin was here also, but he and the lady had
never met.
“When he looked at the lady, he became suddenly
white as a sheet. I wondered if he was ill, but he said no,
so we moved on to a room that we always regarded as a
guest room. The young man from Dublin had often stayed
in that room before. But when we entered the room, the
lady exclaimed that she had been in that room before! Of
course she hadn't.
"The young fellow from Dublin still looked very
shaken, so I took him downstairs to one side and said,
What is wrong with you?
"Finally he told me.
“'It’s the most extraordinary thing,' he said to me.
‘That lady is the ghost.’
'“What ghost?’ I asked.
“'Often when I slept in that room,’ he explained, ‘I
have been awakened by the feeling of a presence in the
room. When I looked up, I saw the face of that lady!’
“What struck me as odd was that he felt something
strange immediately upon meeting her and she felt some-
thing equally strange about having been to that room
before when in fact she hadn’t.
“Later, at tea, she asked me if I believed in the trans-
migration of souls.”
The young man, whose name is Ronny Musgrave,
evidently was reminded by the lady’s appearance of the
ghost’s, I felt, but that would still not explain her reaction
to the room, unless she had clairvoyantly foreseen her trip
to Carlingford and was now realizing it!
“I’ve spent so much time in that house,” Mrs. Meiss-
ner continued, “but I never felt I was alone. My husband’s
experience was different from mine. He had fallen asleep.
He awoke, feeling that there was someone in the room. He
thought it was an evil presence and he made the sign of the
cross. Then it disappeared. I always thought the presence
was female. I’ve heard footsteps, too. But I never feared
this ghost. To me, it was pleasant.”
446
I tried to piece together the past history of the house.
Prior to 1932 when the Meissners moved in, there was a
rector named Aughmuty there; before that the Reverend
Bluett, before him his father-in-law, a Mr. Mailer, and that
brings us back to the nineteenth century, when the Stannus
family owned the place. It was just a private house then.
Mrs. Meissner did not recognize any of the names
obtained during the trance, incidentally.
While she went to fetch her octogenarian husband to
supplement some of the data for us. I had a talk with the
daughter, now the widowed Mrs. Thompson, who had
come over to the house to see us.
“We had a cocker spaniel,” she began, "and the dog
was with me in that upstairs room. There was a big mirror
there then, and as I looked into it, I saw the door at the far
end of the room open by itself, and then close again slowly.
The dog got up and snarled and growled, but I saw noth-
ing. That was the only experience that I had, but it was
enough for me.”
Canon Meissner is a lively and kind man who readily
answered my questions as best he knew. None of the
names rang a bell with him, as far as churchmen were con-
cerned, and as for private origins, he did not really have
the sources in his library. He recommended we take it up
with Trinity College in Dublin where there are extensive
records. The house had become a rectory about 1870 or
1871, he explained, and was directly purchased from the
Stannus family at that time. They had built the newer part
onto the already existing old portion.
I started to examine the two heavy books the Canon
had brought with him from his study.
No Devine or Devaine showed up in the lists of rec-
tors of Carlingford.
In The Alumni of Trinity College, London, Williams
and Norgate, 1924, on page 217, column I, I found the fol-
lowing entry: "Devine, Charles, admitted to Trinity,
November 4, 1822, age 20 [thus born 1802]; son of John
Devine, born County Louth.”
That, of course, was the right area, for Carlingford
was at that time the principal town in the county.
I further found a listing of “Robert Woodward, grad-
uated Trinity, November 5, 1821, aged 16, son of Henry
Woodward, M.A. 1832,” on page 94 of the same work.
It seemed extraordinary that we had located two
names given in trance by Sybil Leek, and that both names
were of the right period claimed and in the right location.
But the search was far from finished.
While I was trying to get some corroboration from
the local librarian at Dundalk — without success — the Ger-
man editors packed up and left for Hamburg. I left instruc-
tions with Ernest McDowell as to what I needed, and then
the three of us, my wife and I and Sybil, went on to the
western part of Ireland. There we parted company and
Sybil went to her home in the south of England while we
returned to New York.
The owner Edward McDowell, a painter,
examining the grounds
On August 2, 1966, Sybil had a trance-like dream at
her house at Ringwood, Hants. In this dream state she saw
herself walking back and forth between the rectory and the
ruined abbey. There was a young woman who had come
from some other place and had been waiting a long time
for a man to join her. He had been in India. The woman
was terribly upset and said that she had married the man
but it was not legal and she had to find a Catholic priest to
marry them because the whole thing was making her ill.
He did not want to be married by a priest because he was
a Protestant and his family would cut him off without any
money.
He had left her because of her insistence on being
married again, but she loved him and wanted to persuade
him to agree to being married by a priest. She had been in
England, and he told her to come to Ireland to Carlingford,
where he could meet her, but he had not turned up. She
had to find a priest who would keep the marriage secret,
and this was not easy, as everyone said the marriage had to
be written down in a book.
The woman claimed that "everything” could be
found in the Yelverton papers in Dublin. Sybil was sure
there was a court case called the Yelverton case about the
1840-50 period. But then things in the dream-like state got
a bit confused as she found herself drifting in and out of
the house, sometimes walking to the abbey, talking to a
priest, then back to the house, which at that time seemed
The Haunted Rectory
447
furnished; and the gateway Sybil saw at the back of the
house, not where it is now. The woman seemed to be stay-
ing with friends; she did not liye at Carlingford perma-
nently and indeed went on from there.
That was on August 2; on the third, Sybil again
"dreamt” exactly the same sequence, which again culmi-
nated in the search for the Yelverton case papers. But the
dream was more vivid this time; in the morning Sybil
found that she had gotten up in the middle of the night,
taken off her nightgown and put on a long evening dress,
and then gone back to bed in it. She had the distinct feel-
ing of wearing the same kind of clothes this girl wore in
the 1840s. The girl said in all her moving around she could
not get the right clothes to be married in and would have
to buy more. The girl seemed to have an accent and spoke
Italian and French in between a lot of crying and sniffling,
and she seemed familiar to Sybil.
The latter was only too logical, since Sybil had been
her instrument of communication, but we had not until
now discussed the details of the case or her trance with
Sybil; consequently she could not have known about the
religious problem, for instance.
That was a monumental week for this case, for on the
following day, and quite independently of Sybil's impres-
sions, Ernest McDowell had come across the needed cor-
roboration in a rare local chronicle. In a work entitled
County Families of the United Kingdom, 1800, the family
named Woodhouse, of Omeath Park, near Carlingford, was
listed.
Omeath is the next village after Carlingford and quite
close to it.
John Woodhouse, born October 6, 1804, married to
Mary Burleigh, June 10, 1834; nine children, the fourth of
which was Adeline Elizabeth. Now the Irish would pro-
nounce Adeline rather like Ad’lin, and what I had heard
from Sybil’s entranced lips sounded indeed like A’lin, or
Ad’lin!
The Woodhouse family claimed descent from the
Woodhouses of Norfolk, England; thus Sybil’s reference to
the girl having been to England might fit. Perhaps she had
gone to visit relatives.
Further in the same source, there is a listing also for
the family Woodward of Drumbarrow. A Robert Wood-
ward, bom June 20, 1805, is given, whose father was
Henry Woodward. Robert Woodward, according to the
source, married one Esther Woodward and had two sons
and three daughters. This marriage took place in 1835.
This is the same man also listed in the register of Trinity
College.
The similarity of the names Woodward and Wood-
house may have been confusing to the ghostly girl. One
was presumably her maiden name and the other that of her
husband's family.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the birth dates for Ade-
line. But if her father was married only in 1834, she could
not very well have married Robert in 1836 or even 1846. If
she was sixteen at the time as she claimed in trance, and if
she had been born somewhere between 1835 and 1845, we
get to the period of around 1850-60 as the time in which
her tragic liaison with Robert might have taken place. But
this is speculation.
What we do know concretely is this: nobody, includ-
ing Sybil Leek, ever heard of a man named Devine, a girl
named Adeline Woodhouse, a man named Robert Wood-
ward, before this investigation took place. These names
were not in anyone’s unconscious mind at the time of our
visit to Carlingford Rectory. Yet these people existed in the
very area in which we had been and at the approximate
time when the ghost had been active there in her lifetime.
How can that be explained by any other reasoning than
true communication with a restless departed soul?
What were the relationships between the girl in the
red velvet dress and her Robert, and how did the father fit
into this and which one was the clergyman? Was Devine
the clergyman who destroyed their marriage or did he help
them? It seems to me that it is his ghost Ernest McDowell
observed. Is there a feeling of guilt present that kept him
in these surroundings perhaps?
At any rate, the rectory has been quiet ever since our
visit and Ernest McDowell is thinking of moving in soon.
That is, if we don't buy the place from him. For the peace-
ful setting is tempting and the chance of ever encountering
the girl in the red velvet dress, slim. Not that any of us
would have minded.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
448
» 91
The Haunted Seminary
I FIRST HEARD OF the haunted room at Maynooth Col-
lege from Patrick Byrne, who also assured me it would be
difficult, if not impossible, to get permission to investigate
it. But a Ghost Hunter never says die, so, without further
attempting to set up a visit, 1 decided to read what there
was about the seminary itself, and then set out for it.
“Founded through the exertions of the Irish Hierar-
chy by an Act of the Irish Parliament in 1795, Maynooth
College became within a century one of the largest ecclesi-
astical seminaries in the world. From its small beginnings
with forty students and ten professors accommodated in a
converted dwelling-house, it has grown into a fair academic
city of nearly six hundred students and a teaching staff of
forty, with noble buildings, spacious recreation grounds
and one of the finest churches in Ireland. Between 9,000
and 10,000 priests have been trained here.
“Eamon De Valera, President of Ireland, was for-
merly attached to the teaching staff.
"Passing between the Geraldine Castle (begun by
Maurice Fitzgerald in 1 1 76) and the Protestant church with
its pre- Reformation tower, the avenue skirts Silken
Thomas’s Tree (sixteenth century) and affords a fine view of
the original college. In the center is the two-hundred-year-
old mansion of John Stoyte, where the first students and
professors labored, and behind it the buildings erected for
them in 1797-99.
“Spacious cloisters are a feature of the Pugin part of
Maynooth, and the cloister beginning at the College
Chapel leads through a long array of episcopal portraits
and groups of past students to the Library and St. Mary’s
Oratory.
“The Junior House buildings (1832-34) contain the
‘Ghost Room’ which has been enshrined in a maze of gory
legends since its conversion into an oratory (1860). They
are flanked by a very pleasant rock garden. Beyond, one
glimpses the towering trees of the College Park, stretching
to the farm buildings in the distance. Nearby a simple yew
glade leads to the Cemetery, where so many of the great
Maynooth figures of the past now rest, undisturbed by the
throbbing life around them as a new generation of
Maynooth students prepares to carry on their work.’’
My appetite was aroused. The following day we
started out by car towards Maynooth, which is a little west
of Dublin and easily reached within an hour’s driving time.
Our driver immediately knew what we were looking for,
having been with us before, so when we reached the broad
gates of the College, he pulled up at the gatekeeper’s lodge
and suggested I have a chat with him. Unfortunately, it
started to rain and the chat was brief, but the man really
did not know any more than second- or third -hand infor-
mation. We decided to see for ourselves and drove past the
ruined tower of the old Fitzgerald castle into the College
grounds. Walking around just like ordinary tourists, we
eventually made our way past the imposing main buildings
into the courtyard where, according to the gatekeeper, the
haunted dormitory was situated.
It was about four in the afternoon, and very few stu-
dents were in evidence, perhaps because it was vacation
time. The building called Rhetoric House was easy to spot,
and we entered without asking permission from anyone —
mainly because there was nobody around to ask. We real-
ized, of course, that women were somewhat of an oddity
here, but then this was a College and not a Trappist
Monastery, and mothers must have visited here now and
then, so I felt we were doing nothing sacrilegious by pro-
ceeding up the iron stairs of the rather drab-looking dormi-
tory. When we reached the second story — always I first
and Catherine and Sybil trailing me, in case they had to
beat a hasty retreat — we finally found a human being at
Maynooth. A young priest stood in one of the corridors in
conversation with another priest, and when he saw me, he
abruptly terminated it and came towards me, his curiosity
aroused as to what I was doing here. As he later explained
to me, some not-so-honest people had on occasion walked
in and walked out with various items, so naturally he had
learned to be careful about strangers. I dispelled his fears,
however, by introducing myself properly, but I must have
been slipshod in introducing my wife Catherine and Sybil
Leek, for the good father thought Sybil was Cathy’s
mother — not that Cathy was not honored!
When I asked for his own name, he smiled and said
with the humor so often found in Irish priests: “My name
is that of a character in one of James Joyce’s novels.”
“Bloom," I said, smilingly.
“Of course not.”
"Well then,” I said thoughtfully, “it must be
Finnegan.”
“You get ‘A’ for that. Finnegan it is.”
And it was thus that I became friendly with a charm-
ing gentleman of the cloth, Father Thomas A. Finnegan, a
teacher at Maynooth.
I cautiously explained about our interest in the
occult, but he did not seem to mind. To the contrary.
Leading the way up the stairs, he brought us into the
so-called haunted room.
The wall where the mysterious window had been was
now boarded up and a statue of St. Joseph stood before the
window. The rest of the room was quite empty, the. floor
shining; there was nothing sinister about it, at least not on
first acquaintance.
I took some pictures and filmed the area as Sybil
“poked around” in the room and adjacent corridor. Father
Finnegan smiled. It was obvious he did not exactly believe
in ghosts, nor was he afraid of them if they existed. He was
genuinely fond of Maynooth and respected my historical
interest along with the psychic.
The Haunted Seminary
449
‘“You’ve heard of the tradition about this room, of
course,” he said, “but I’m sorry I can't supply you with
any firsthand experiences here.”
“Do you know of anyone who has had any uncanny
feelings in this room?” I asked.
“Well, now, the room was closed in 1860, as you
know,” the priest replied, "and the people who slept in it
prior to that date would not be around now. Otherwise no
one has reported anything recently — the room is rarely
used, to begin with.”
Sybil seemed to sense something unpleasant at this
point and hurried out of the room, down the corridor.
"There are two good sources on this room,” Father
Finnegan said, as if he had read my thoughts. “There is
Denis Meehan’s book, Window on Maynooth, published in
1949, and a somewhat longer account of the same story
also can be found in Hostage to Fortune by Joseph O’Con-
nor. I’ll send you one or both books, as soon as I can get
hold of them.”
With that, Father Finnegan led us down the stairs
and gave us the grand tour of Maynooth College, along the
library corridors, the beautiful and truly impressive church
of St. Patrick, the garden, and finally the museum, opened
only about twenty years ago.
We thanked him and went back to our car. I then
told the driver to stop just outside the College gates on a
quiet spot in the road. Sybil was still under the sway of
what we had just seen and heard and I wanted to get her
psychic impressions while they were fresh.
“Where exactly were we?” Sybil asked. Despite the
priest’s tour she was somewhat vague about the place.
“We’re at Maynooth, in County Kildare,” I replied,
and added, “You’ve been in a haunted room on the third
floor of a certain dormitory.”
"It’s a strange place, Flans,” Sybil said. “The down-
stairs is typical of any religious place, peaceful — but when
we went upstairs I had a great desire to run. It was not
fear, and yet — I felt I had to run. I had a strange feeling of
an animal."
“An animal?” I repeated.
“A four-legged animal. I had the feeling an animal
had followed us down to what is now an oratory.”
"What did you feel in the room itself?”
"Fear."
“Any part of the room in particular?”
“Yes, I went straight to the statue.”
“Where the window used to be?”
"I felt I wanted to run. I had the feeling of an animal
presence. No human.”
“Anything else?”
“I developed a tremendous headache — which I gener-
ally do when I am where there has been a tragedy. It is
gone now. But I had it all the time when I was on that
floor.”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“Did you feel anyone went out that window?”
“Yes, for at that moment I was integrated into what-
ever had happened there and I could have gone out the win-
dow! I was surprised that there was a wall there.”
"Did you feel that something unresolved was still
present?”
“Yes, I did. But to me it was a case of going back in
time. It was a fear of something following you, chasing
you."
I thought of the account of the haunting, given by
one of the students — the only one who got away with his
life — who had seen “a black shape” in the room. Shades of
the Hounds of the Baskervilles!
Had someone brought a large dog to the room and
had the dog died there? We will never know for sure. Ani-
mal ghosts exist and to the novice such an image could
indeed be so frightening as to induce him to jump out a
window. Then, too, the College was built on old ground
where in the Middle Ages a castle had stood, replete with
keep, hunters — and dogs. Had something from that period
been incorporated into the later edifice?
When we returned to Dublin, I had the pictures
taken developed but nothing unusual showed on them.
The following week, Father Finnegan sent me a copy
of Window on Maynooth by Denis Meehan, a sometime
professor at the College who is now a Benedictine monk in
the United States, according to Patrick Byrne.
Here then, under the subtitle of “The Buildings of
Junior House,” is Father Meehan’s account of the ghost
room at Maynooth.
For the curious, however, the most interesting feature
of Rhetoric House will certainly be the ghost room. The
two upper floors are altogether residential, and the ghost
room is, or rather was, Room No. 2 on the top corridor.
It is now an oratory of St. Joseph. Legend, of course, is
rife concerning the history of this room; but unfortu-
nately everything happened so long ago that one cannot
now guarantee anything like accuracy. The incident,
whatever it may have been, is at least dated to some
extent by a Trustee’s resolution of October 23rd, 1860.
“That the President be authorised to convert room No.
2 on the top corridor of Rhetoric House into an Oratory
of St. Joseph, and to fit up an oratory of St. Aloysius in
the prayer hall of the Junior Students.”
The story, as it is commonly now detailed, for the
edification of susceptible Freshmen, begins with a sui-
cide. The student resident in this room killed himself
one night. According to some he used a razor; but
tellers are not too careful about such details. The next
inhabitant, it is alleged, felt irresistibly impelled to fol-
low suit, and again, according to some, he did. A third,
or it may have been the second, to avoid a similar
impulse, and when actually about to use his razor,
jumped through the window into Rhetoric yard. He
broke some bones, but saved his life. Subsequently no
student could be induced to use the room; but a priest
volunteered to sleep or keep vigil there for one night. In
the morning his hair was white, though no one dares to
relate what his harrowing experiences can have been.
450
Afterwards the front wall of the room was removed and
a small altar of St. Joseph was erected.
The basic details of the story have doubtless some
foundation in fact, and it is safe to assume that some-
thing very unpleasant did occur. The suicide (or
suicides), in so far as one can deduce from the oral
traditions that remain, seems to have taken place in the
period 1842-48. A few colorful adjuncts that used to
form part of the stock in trade of the story teller are
passing out of memory now. Modern students for
instance do not point out the footprint burned in the
wood, or the bloodmarks on the walls.
m 92
The Ghostly Sailor of Alameda
One NIGHT IN the early spring of 1965, the telephone
rang and a pleasant voice said, “I think I’ve got a case for
you, Mr. Holzer. I’m calling from Alameda, California.”
Before the young lady could run up an impressive
telephone bill, I stopped her and asked her to jot down the
main points of her story for my records. She promised this,
but it took several months to comply. Evidently the ghost
was not so unpleasant as she thought it was the night she
had to call me long-distance, or perhaps she had learned to
live with the unseen visitor.
It had all started four years before when Gertrude
Frost’s grandmother bought a house in Alameda, an island
in San Francisco Bay connected with the mainland by a
causeway and mainly covered by small homes — many of
which belong to people connected with the nearby naval
installations. The house itself was built around 1917.
After the old lady died, Miss Frost’s mother had the
house. Noises in the night when no one was about kept
Miss Frost and her mother and aunt, who shared the house
with her, from ever getting a good night’s sleep. It did not
sound like a very exciting case and I was frankly skeptical
since there are many instances where people think they hear
unnatural noises when in fact they merely ascribe super-
normal character to what is actually natural in origin. But I
was going to be in the area, and decided to drop in.
I asked Claude Mann, a news reporter from Oak-
land’s Channel 2, to accompany us — my wife Catherine
and my good friend Sybil Leek, who did not have the
faintest idea where Alameda was or that we were going
there. Not that Sybil cared — it was merely another assign-
ment and she was willing. The date was July 1, 1965, and
it was pleasantly warm — in fact, a most unghostly type of
day.
As soon as we approached the little house, we quickly
unloaded the camera equipment and went inside where two
of the ladies were already expecting us. I promptly put
Sybil into one of the easy chairs and began my work — or
rather Sybil began hers.
Although the house was in the middle of the island
and no indication of the ocean could be seen anywhere near
it, Sybil at once remarked that she felt the sea was con-
nected with the house in some way; she felt a presence in
the house but not associated with it directly.
As soon as Sybil was in deep trance, someone took
over her vocal cords.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Dominic. ...”
“Do you live in this house?”
"No house. . .water. ..fort. . .tower. ...”
“What are you doing here?”
“Have to wait. . .Tiana. ...”
"What does Tiana mean?”
"Tiana. . .boat. ..."
“Where does the boat go?”
"Hokeite. . .Hokeite. .
“What year is this?”
“1902.”
“What is your rank?”
“Mid-ship-man.” He had difficulty in enunciating.
The voice had a strangely unreal quality, not at all like
Sybil’s normal speaking voice but more like the thin voice
of a young man.
I continued to question the ghostly visitor.
“Are you serving on this boat?”
“Left here,” he replied. “I’m going to break. . .every-
thing up.”
"Why do you want to do that?”
“Those things. . .got to go. . .because they are untidy
...I shall break them up... they say I’m mad... I’m not
mad...”
“How old are you?”
"Thirty-one ”
“Where were you born?”
“I was born. . .Hakeipe. ...”
I was not sure whether he said “Hakeipe” or
"Hakeite,” but it sounded something like that.
"What state?” I had never heard of such a place.
“No state,” the ghost said, somewhat indignant
because I did not know better.
“Then where is it?” I demanded.
"In Japan,” the ghost informed me. I began to won-
der if he didn’t mean Hakodate, a harbor of some impor-
tance. It had a fair number of foreign people at all times,
being one of the principal seaports for the trade with
America and Europe. It would be pronounced “Hak-o-
deit," not too different from what I had heard through
Sybil’s mediumship.
The Ghostly Sailor of Alameda
451
“Break them up, break them up,” the ghost contin-
ued to mumble menacingly, “throw those little things. . .
into., .faces. ..I don’t like faces. . .people. ..."
“Do you realize time has gone on?”
“Time goes on,” the voice said sadly.
"What are you doing here?” I asked.
“What are they doing here?” the ghost shot back
angrily.
It was his land, he asserted. I asked if he had built
anything on it.
“The tower is here,” he said cryptically, "to watch
the ships. I stay here.”
“Are you American?”
“No, I’m Italian.”
“Are you a merchant sailor or Navy?”
“Navy. . .why don’t you go away?”
“What do you want here?”
“Nothing....”
I explained about his death and this evoked cold
anger.
“Smash everything. ...”
I decided to change the subject before the snarling
became completely unintelligible.
Claude Mann’s cameras were busily humming
meanwhile.
“Did you serve in the American Navy?”
“Yes.”
“Give me your serial number!”
“Serial. . .one. . .eight. . .eight. . .four. . .three.”
“Where did you enlist?”
“Hakkaite.”
It did not make sense to me, so I repeated the ques-
tion. This time the answer was different. Perhaps he had
not understood the first time.
“In ’meda,” he said.
Sailors call Alameda by this abbreviation. How could
Sybil, newly arrived here, have known this? She could not,
and I did not.
“Who’s your commanding officer?”
"Oswald Gregory.”
“What rank?”
“Captain.”
“The name of your ship.”
"Triana."
“How large a ship?”
“I don’t know. ...”
I asked about his family. Did he have a wife, was he
well? He became more and more reluctant. Finally he said:
"I’m not answering questions. ...”
“Your father’s name?” I continued.
“Guiseppe.”
“Mother?”
“Matilone....”
“Sister or brothers?”
“Four. ...”
"They live in Hokkaipe,” he added.
“Where did you go to school?”
“Hokkaipe Mission. ...”
He came to this place in 1902, he asserted, and was
left behind because he was sick.
"I wait for next trip. . .but they never came back. I
had bad headache. I was lying here. Not a house. Water.”
I then asked what he was doing to let people know
about his presence.
“I can walk — as well as anyone,” he boasted. “I play
with water, I drop things . . . . ”
I reasoned with him. His father and mother were
waiting for him to join them. Didn’t he want to be with
them? I received a flat “No.” He wasn’t interested in a
family reunion. I tried to explain about real estate. I
explained that the house was fully paid for and he was
trespassing. He could not have cared less.
I questioned his honesty and he did not like that. It
made him waver in his determination to break everything
up.
I spoke to him of the “other side” of life. He asked
that I take him there.
He now recalled his sisters’ names, Matild’ and
Alissi, or something that sounded like it.
"We’ve come to fetch you, Dominic.” I said, sug-
gesting he "go across.”
“You’re late,” he snarled.
“Better late than never,” I intoned. Who said I didn’t
have as much of a sense of humor as a ghost?
“I was never late,” he complained. “I can
walk . . . without you! ”
Gratitude was not his forte.
I requested that Sybil return to her own body now,
but to remain in trance so as to answer my questions on
what she could observe in that state.
Soon Sybil’s own voice, feeble at first, was heard
again from her lips.
I asked her to describe the scene she saw.
“I see a short, dark man,” she replied, “who can’t
walk very well; he was insane. I think he had fits. Fell
down. Violent man.”
“Do you see a house?”
“No, I see water, and a gray ship. Big ship, not for
people. Not for travelling. Low ship.”
“Do you see a name on the ship?”
“.. .ana. ..can’t see it properly.”
"What is this man doing here?”
"He had a fit here, and fell down and died, and
somebody left him here. Somebody picked the body
up. . .into the water. ...”
Sybil showed sign of strain and I decided to take her
out of trance to avoid later fatigue. As soon as she was
“back” to her own self, not remembering anything, of
course, that had come through her the past hour, turned
CHAPTER SIX: This House Is Haunted
452
to Miss Frost to find out what it was exactly that had
occurred here of an unusual nature.
“Always this uneasy feeling. . .causing nervousness
. . .more at night. . .” she explained, "and noises like small
firecrackers.”
Miss Frost is a woman in her thirties, pleasant and
soft spoken, and she holds a responsible position in San
Francisco business life.
"If you pay no attention to it,” she added, “then it
becomes more intense, louder.”
"Doesn’t want to be ignored, eh?” I said.
“Occasionally at night you hear footsteps in the liv-
ing room.”
“When it is empty?”
“Of course.”’
“What does it sound like?”
"As if there were no carpets. . .like walking on
boards. . .a man’s footsteps.”
"How often?”
“Maybe three times. . .last time was about three
months ago. We’ve been here four years, but we only
heard it about half a year after we moved in. On one occa-
sion there was a noise inside the buffet as if there were a
motor in it, which of course there isn’t.”
“Has anyone else had any experiences of an unusual
nature in this house?”
“A painter who was painting a small room in the rear
of the house suddenly asked me for a glass of water
because he didn’t feel well. Because of the noises.”
I turned to Miss Frost’s aunt, who had sat by qui-
etly, listening to our conversation.
"Have you heard these footsteps?”
“Yes,” she said. “I checked up and there was nobody
there who could have caused them. That was around two
in the morning. Sometimes around five or six also. They
went around the bed. We had the light on, but it
continued.”
With the help of Miss Frost, I was able to trace the
history of the area. Before the house was built here, the
ground was part of the Cohen estate. The water is not far
from the house although one cannot actually see it from the
house.
Originally Alameda was inhabited by Indians and
much of it was used as burial ground. Even today bones
are dug up now and again
Prior to Miss Frost, a Mr. Bequette owned the house,
but what interested me far more than Mr. Bequette was the
fact that many years ago a hospital occupied the land at
this spot. Nothing is left of the old hospital.
In 1941 , allegedly, a family lived at this house whose
son was killed in action during the war. A mysterious letter
reached Miss Frost in February of 1961 addressed to a B.
Biehm at her address, but she could not locate this man.
None of this takes us back to 1902 when Dominic
said he lived. A Japanese-born Italian sailor serving in the
U.S. Navy is a pretty unusual combination. Was Dominic
his family name?
I decided to query the Navy Department in the hope
that they might have some records about such a man,
although I had learned on previous occasions that Naval
records that far back are not always complete.
On December 29, 1966, I received this reply from
the office of the Chief of Naval Operations:
Dear Mr. Holzer:
In reply to your letter of 8 December, we have been
unable to find either DOMINIC or Oswald GREGORY in
the lists of U.S. Navy officers during this century. The
Navy Registers for the period around 1902 list no U.S.
Naval ship named TRIANA.
We have very little information on Alameda Island
during the early 1900’s. The attached extract from the
Naval Air Station history, however, may be of some use.
Sincerely yours,
F. KENT LOOMIS
Captain, USN (Ret.)
Asst. Director of Naval History
Captain Loomis enclosed a history of the Alameda
installations which seems to confirm the picture painted of
the area (prior to that installation) by the ghostly sailor.
The real story of the U.S. Naval Air Station,
Alameda, is how it has “arisen from the waters.” How it
was thrown up from the bottom of San Francisco Bay;
how it was anchored to the earth with grass roots; how
it was, by accident, the scene of some of the earliest
flights in America. This is the romance of Alameda.
The Navy Department first began to consider the site
now occupied by the air station toward the end of the
First World War. The intention was to utilize the site
as a destroyer base, but the war was over before the
plans could be perfected. The land then lapsed into
oblivion. It was a rather barren land. When the tide was
out it was odious and disagreeable looking. Since people
who boil soap are not fastidious concerning olfactory
matters, the Twenty Mule Team Borax Company
located the site of their first efforts near the “Mole”
which went to San Francisco’s ferries.
The main part of Alameda was very pretty, covered
with good rich “bottom land” and shade trees, from
which it had derived its name during the Spanish occu-
pation days. "Alameda” means “shade" or “shady lane."
In 1776 the land had been granted to Don Luis Per-
alta, a grizzled old man who immigrated from Tabac in
Sonora. His life as a soldier had been crowded with 40
years of service to His Majesty, the King of Spain, and
ten children. It was only a small part of the 43,000 acres
granted him by a grateful Spain.
He distributed his lands among his children when he
felt his time had come. Although the peninsula of
Alameda was in the most part fertile, the western tip of
it was nothing but barren sands and tidal flats.
The Ghostly Sailor of Alameda
453
In 1876, engineers cut a channel through the penin-
sula’s tip which linked San Leandro Bay with the main
bay, and Alameda became an island. Deep water was on
the way and dredging was begun to effect this end.
The inability of the U.S. Navy librarian to identify a
ship named the Triana did not stop me from looking fur-
ther, of course. Was there ever such a ship? A Captain
Treeana commanded one of the three ships of Christopher
Columbus and consequently there are towns named for
him in the land he and his shipmates helped discover.
Spelled nowadays Triana, one of them is in Alabama, and
in the city of Huntsville there is a Triana Boulevard. It
seems highly likely that so famous a captain’s name should
at one time or other have been chosen as the name of a
ship.
Meanwhile, back at the house, things remained quiet
and peaceful for 48 hours. Miss Frost was happy for the
first time in years.
And then the footsteps and other noises resumed.
Dominic wasn’t going to ship out, after all.
That was in July 1965. I made certain suggestions.
Close the door mentally; gently tell the ghost he must go,
over and over again. He was free now to do so — proof of
which was the fact that his footsteps, once confined to the
living room area, were now heard all over the house.
A year has gone by and I have had no news from
Alameda. Perhaps no news is good news and the ghostly
sailor roams no more.
# 93
The Ghost Clock
New England is full of ghosts. A young woman with
the improbable first name of Dixie-Lee, and the acquired-
by-marriage second name of Danforth, lived in the small
town of Milford, just over the border in New Hampshire.
She chanced to hear me on a Boston radio program, and
presto, there was a note in the mail about something pretty
eerie that had happened to her.
In 1954, when Dixie-Lee was seventeen, she took on
a two-week job as companion to an elderly lady by the
name of Mrs. William Collar. Mrs. Collar, then eighty-two
years old, had been a fine artist, and had lived a happy life
all over the world. Dixie-Lee found being a companion an
easy way to make some extra money. Mrs. Collar’s house-
keeper went home nights, and the elderly lady wanted
someone with her in the large, rambling house, at least
until she could find a full-time housekeeper who would
sleep in.
The Collars had met in France, both studying there,
and though they married against the wishes of their par-
ents, they had a wonderful and happy life together. When
Mr. William Collar died, things were never the same.
They had occupied a large double room on the second
floor, with a bed on either side, and a wash basin for each.
They truly lived close together.
After her husband’s death, Mrs. Collar moved out of
the room, and never slept in it again. She left everything as
it was, including a big grandfather clock, which was never
wound again after Mr. Collar's passing. Finally, in 1958,
she joined her Bill. She may have been able to prepare her-
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
self for it, for she was often heard talking to "her Bill”
when no one else could be seen in the room.
There was a fight over the will. The Collars had had
no children, and a niece inherited the house.
But let me get back to Dixie-Lee and 1954. The
young girl had moved into Mrs. Collar’s imposing white
house at New Ipswich, as the section was called, and given
a room on the second floor next to the large bedroom once
occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Collar. She had barely enough
time to admire the expensive antique furniture around the
house, when it was time to retire for the night.
Mrs. Dixie-Lee Danforth had come to Boston to
meet me, and I questioned her about what happened then.
“I went to bed,” she said, "and in the wee hours of
the morning I awoke to the faint sound of footsteps and
ticking of a clock. The sound of both kept getting louder —
louder — till it seemed to beat against my brain.”
At first she thought she was dreaming, but, biting
her own hand, she realized she was fully awake. Cold sweat
stood on her forehead when she realized that Mrs. Collar
was an invalid who could not walk. What was more, the big
clock had not worked for years. Suddenly, just as suddenly
as it had come, it ceased. Dixie-Lee lay still for a while in
sheer terror, then she turned on the light. Her bedroom
door was firmly closed, just as she had left it before going
to bed. She checked the door leading to what was once the
Collars’ big bedroom. It was shut tight, too. She ventured
out onto the narrow landing of the staircase leading to the
lower floor. It was shut off from the downstairs part of the
house by a hall door. That, too, was shut. She retraced her
steps and suddenly noticed a rope and pulley. She pulled it
and another door appeared.
“I opened it, heart in my mouth,” Dixie-Lee said,
“and was relieved to find a pretty, light bedroom behind it.
It was furnished with modern furniture, and seemed to me
much gayer and more peaceful than the rest of the house.
The room was empty.”
454
“What did you do then?” I wondered.
“First, I checked the big clock in my room. It was
not going. Just as dead as it had been all those years. I
looked around the house for other clocks. The only one in
going condition was downstairs in the room occupied by
Mrs. Collar, and I’d have to have had superhearing to hear
that one tick all the way up to the second floor through
three sets of closed doors and a heavy wooden floor!”
I readily agreed that was not very likely, and won-
dered if she had told anyone of her frightening experience
that night.
"I told the daytime housekeeper, with whom I was
friendly, and she laughed. But I refused to stay another
moment unless someone else stayed with me. She and her
young daughter moved in with me upstairs, and stayed the
full two weeks. I never heard the footsteps or the ticking of
the clock again while they were with me. But after I left,
housekeepers came and went. Nobody seemed to stay very
long at the big white house in New Ipswich. Possibly they,
too, heard the uncanny noises.”
I nodded and asked about Mrs. Collar. Could she
have gotten out of bed somehow?
“Not a chance,” Dixie-Lee replied. “She was a total
invalid. I checked on her in the morning. She had never
left her bed. She couldn’t have. Besides, the footsteps I
heard weren’t those of a frail old woman. They were a
man’s heavy footfalls. I never told Mrs. Collar about my
experience though. Why frighten her to death?”
“Quite so,” I agreed, and we talked about Dixie-Lee
now. Was she psychic to any degree?
Dixie -Lee came from a most unusual family. Her
great-grandmother knew how to work the table. Her grand-
father saw the ghost of his sister, and Dixie-Lee herself
had felt her late grandfather in his house whenever she vis-
ited, and she had numerous premonitions of impending
danger.
On at least one such occasion she had a feeling she
should not go on a certain trip, and insisted on stopping
the car. On investigation, she found the wheels damaged.
She might have been killed had she not heeded the
warning!
We parted. Mrs. Danforth returned to her somewhat -
more-than skeptical husband in Milford, and I took the
next plane back to New York.
But the haunted house in New Ipswich never left my
mind. I was due back in New England around Halloween,
1963, and decided to join Mrs. Danforth in a little trip up
to the New Hampshire border country. A friend of hers,
their children, a Boston -teacher friend of ours named Carol
Bowman, and my wife and I completed the party that
drove up to New Ipswich on that warm fall day. We
weren’t exactly expected, since I did not know the name of
the present owner of the house, But Mrs. Danforth had
sent word of our coming ahead. It turned out the word was
never received, and we actually were lucky to find anyone
in, luckier yet to be as cordially welcomed as we were by
the lady of the house, whom we shall call Mrs. F.
Mrs. Jeanette F. was a sophisticated, well-educated
lady whose husband was a psychiatrist, who was once also
interested in parapsychology. She asked that I not use her
full name here. A strange "feeling” of expecting us made
her bid us a cordial welcome. I wasn’t surprised to hear
this — in this business, nothing surprises me anymore.
The F.s had only had the house for a year when we
visited them. They had not intended to buy the house,
although they were on the lookout for a home in New Eng-
land. But they passed it in their car, and fell in love with
it. . .or rather were somehow made to buy the place. They
discovered it was built in 1789. That wasn’t all they dis-
covered after they moved in.
“I always had the feeling,” Mrs. F said, “that we
were only allowed to live here. . .but never really alone.
Mrs. Collar’s bedroom, for instance. I had the distinct feel-
ing something was buried there under the floorboards. My
sister-in-law slept upstairs. The next morning she told me
she had 'heard things.’ Right after we moved in, I heard
footsteps upstairs.”
“You too?” marveled Dixie-Lee, shooting a tri-
umphant side glance at me, as if I had doubted her story.
“Last winter at dusk one day, I heard a woman
scream. Both of us heard it, but we thought — or rather,
liked to think — that it was a bobcat. Soon thereafter, we
heard it again, only now it sounded more like a child
crying. We heard it on several occasions and it gave us the
willies.”
On another occasion, there had been five people in
the house when they heard the scream, followed by a
growl. They went out to look for a bobcat. . .but there
were absolutely no traces in the fresh snow, of either ani-
mal or human. There had also been all sorts of noises in
the basement.
“Something strange about this child crying,” Mrs. F.
continued. “When we moved in, a neighbor came to see us
and said when they saw we had a child, ‘You’ve brought
life back to the Collar house.’”
Dixie-Lee broke in.
“I seem to recall there was something about a child. I
mean that they had a child.”
“And it died?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. F. said. “But there were diaries
— they were almost lost, but one of Bill Collar’s best
friends, Archie Eaton, saved them. Here they are.”
Mrs. F. showed us the remarkable books, all written
in longhand. On cursory examination I did not uncover the
secret of the child.
There is a hollow area in the basement. We went
down to get impressions, and Dixie-Lee felt very uneasy all
of a sudden, and didn’t feel like joining us downstairs, even
The Ghost Clock
455
though moments before she had been the spirit of adven-
ture personified.
We returned to the ground floor and had some
coffee.
I decided to return with a medium, and hold a seance
next to the chimney down in the basement, underneath the
room where Mrs. F. felt the floorboards held a secret.
But somehow we were thwarted in this effort.
In December 1963, we were told that our visit would
have to be postponed, and Mrs. F. asked us to come later
in the winter. Too many living relatives in the house were
making it difficult to listen for the dead.
“Something happened yesterday,” she added, “that
will interest you. My housekeeper is a very bright and
trusted woman. She has never mentioned anything strange
about the house. Yesterday I was telling her about our
plans to sell the house. As I spoke, she was looking in the
# 94
The Ghost of Gay Street
Frank Paris and T. E. Lewis were puppeteers. Children
came to admire the little theater the two puppeteers had set
up in the high-ceilinged basement of their old house in
Greenwich Village, that old section of New York going
back to the 1700s. The house at Number 12 Gay Street
was a typical old townhouse, smallish, the kind New York-
ers built around 1800 when "the village” meant far uptown.
In 1924, a second section was added to the house,
covering the garden that used to grace the back of the
house. This architectural graft created a kind of duplex,
one apartment on top of another, with small rooms at the
sides in the rear.
The ownership of the house in the early days is hazy.
At one time a sculptor owned Number 12, possibly before
the 1930s. Evidently he was fond of bootleg liquor, for he
built a trapdoor in the ground floor of the newer section of
the house, probably over his hidden liquor cabinet. Before
that, Mayor Jimmy Walker owned the house, and used it
well, although not wisely. One of his many loves is said to
have been the tenant there. By a strange set of circum-
stances, the records of the house vanished like a ghost from
the files of the Flail of Records around that time.
Later, real-estate broker Mary Ellen Strunsky lived in
the house. In 1956, she sold it to the puppeteer team of
Paris and Lewis, who had been there ever since, living in
the upstairs apartment and using the lower portion as a
workroom and studio for their little theater.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
room next to me — I was standing in the kitchen. She was
looking into the dining room, when she turned pale and
interrupted me. She had seen a short, old woman in a long
gray dress walk through the dining room. Now I ques-
tioned her about anything she might have seen in the past.
She admitted she had seen figures on several occasions, but
was afraid to be ridiculed. Strangely enough, she wants to
buy the house despite these experiences. She calls it 'the
house that watches,’ because she always feels she is being
observed while she cares for the children, even when she
has them in the garden.”
In February 1964, we tried to fix a new date to visit
the house. My letters remained unanswered. Had the house
changed hands again?
But no matter who actually lived there. It seemed the
real owner was still Mrs. Collar.
None of this, incidentally, was known to me until
after the visit I paid the house in the company of my
medium for the evening, Berry Ritter.
It all started when a reporter from the New York
World-Telegram, Cindy Hughes, came to interview me, and
casually dropped a hint that she knew of a haunted house.
Faster than you can say journal- American, I had her
promise to lead me to this house. On a particularly warm
night in May 1963, 1 followed Miss Hughes down to Gay
Street. Berry Ritter knew nothing at all about the case; she
didn’t even know the address where we were going.
We were greeted warmly by Frank Paris, who led us
up the stairs into the upper apartment. The sight of the
elaborately furnished, huge living room was surprising.
Oriental figurines, heavy drapes, paintings, statuary, and
antiques filled the room.
In two comfortable chairs we found awaiting us two
friends of the owners: an intense looking man in his thir-
ties, Richard X., who, I later discovered, was an editor by
profession, and Alice May Hall, a charming lady of unde-
termined age.
1 managed to get Berry out of earshot, so I could
question these people without her getting impressions from
our conversation.
"What is this about the house being haunted?” I
asked Frank Paris.
He nodded gravely.
“I was working downstairs with some lacquer. It was
late, around 3 A.M. Suddenly, I began to smell a strong
odor of violets. My black spaniel here also smelled it, for
he started to sniff rather strangely. And yet, Ted, my part-
ner, in the same room with me, did not get the strange
scent at all. But there is more. People waltz up and down
the stairs at night, time and again.”
“What do you mean, waltz?"
456
“I mean they go up and down, up and down, as if
they had business here,” Frank explained, and I thought,
perhaps they had, perhaps they had.
"A weekend visitor also had a most peculiar experi-
ence here,” Frank Paris continued. "He knew nothing
about our haunted reputation, of course. We were away on
a short trip, and when we got back, he greeted us with —
‘Say, who are all these people going up and down the
stairs?' He had thought that the house next door was some-
how connected to ours, and that what he heard were people
from next door. But of course, there is no connection
whatever.”
“And did you ever investigate these mysterious foot-
steps?” I asked.
“Many times,” Frank and Ted nodded simultane-
ously, "but there was never anyone there — anyone of flesh -
and-blood, that is.”
I thanked them, and wondered aloud if they weren’t
psychic, since they had experienced what can only be called
psychic phenomena.
Frank Paris hesitated, then admitted that he thought
both of them were to some extent.
“We had a little dog which we had to have put away
one day. We loved the dog very much, but it was one of
those things that had to be done. For over a year after the
dog’s death, both of us felt him poking us in the leg — a
habit he had in life. This happened on many occasions to
both of us.”
I walked over to where Miss Hall, the gray-haired lit-
tle lady, sat.
"Oh, there is a ghost here all right,” she volunteered.
"It was in February 1963, and I happened to be in the
house, since the boys and I are good friends. I was sitting
here in this very spot, relaxing and casually looking toward
the entrance door through which you just came — the one
that leads to the hallway and the stairs. There was a man
there, wearing evening clothes, and an Inverness Cape — I
saw him quite plainly. He had dark hair. It was dusk, and
there was still some light outside.”
“What did you do?”
“I turned my head to tell Frank Paris about the
stranger, and that instant he was gone like a puff of
smoke.”
Paris broke in.
“I questioned her about this, since I didn’t really
believe it. But a week later, at dawn this time, I saw the
ghost myself, exactly as Alice had described him — wearing
evening clothes, a cape, hat, and his face somewhat
obscured by the shadows of the hallway. Both Alice and I
are sure he was a youngish man, and had sparkling eyes.
What’s more, our dog also saw the intruder. He went up
to the ghost, friendly-like, as if to greet him.”
Those were the facts of the case. A ghost in evening
clothes, an old house where heaven knows what might have
happened at one time or another, and a handful of psychic
people.
The ghost on Gay Street making an appearance
before the owner and late puppeteer, Frank Paris
I returned to Betty Ritter, and asked her to gather
psychic impressions while walking about the house.
“A crime was committed here,” the medium said,
and described a terrible argument upstairs between two
people. She described a gambling den, opium smokers, and
a language she could not understand. The man’s name was
Ming, she said. Ming is a very common Chinese word
meaning, I believe, Sun.
Betty also told Frank Paris that someone close to him
by the name of John had passed on and that he had some-
thing wrong with his right eye, which Paris acknowledged
was correct. She told Ted Lewis that a Bernard L. was
around him, not knowing, of course, that Lewis’ father was
named Bernham Lewis. She told Richard X. that he
worked with books, and it was not until after the seance
that I learned he was an editor by profession. I don’t know
about the Chinese and the opium den, but they are possi-
bilities in an area so far removed from the bright lights of
the city as the Village once was.
We went downstairs and, in the almost total dark-
ness, formed a circle. Betty fell into trance, her neck sud-
denly falling back as if she were being possessed by a
woman whose neck had been hurt.
“Emil,” she mumbled, and added the woman had
been decapitated, and her bones were still about. She then
came out of trance and we walked back up the stairs to the
The Ghost of Gay Street
457
The late medium Betty Ritter trying to contact the
restless one
The Gay Street house
oldest part of the house. Still “seeing” clairvoyantly, Betty
Ritter again mumbled “Emil,” and said she saw documents
with government seals on them. She also felt someone
named Mary Ellen had lived here and earlier some “well-
known government official named Wilkins or Wilkinson.”
Betty, of course, knew nothing about real-estate bro-
ker Mary Ellen Strunsky or Jimmy Walker, the former
New York Mayor, who had been in this house for so long.
It now remained for us to find those bones Betty had
talked about. We returned to the downstairs portion of the
house, but Betty refused to go farther. Her impression of
tragedy was so strong she urged us to desist.
Thus it was that the Ghost of Gay Street, whoever he
may be, would have to wait just a little longer until the
bones could be properly sorted out. It wasn’t half bad, con-
sidering that Frank Paris and Ted Lewis put on a pretty
nice puppet show every so often, down there in the murky
basement theater at Number 12 Gay Street.
# 95
The Ship Chandler’s Ghost
It IS A WELL-KNOWN FACT among ghost hunting experts
that structural changes in a house can have dire effects.
Take out a wall, and you’ve got a poltergeist mad as a wet
hen. I proved that in the case of the Leighton Buzzard
ghost in Ghosts I’ve Met. Take down the building, like the
studio building at New York’s 51 West Tenth Street, and
put up a modern apartment house, and you’ve got no ghost
at all. Just a lot of curious tenants. If the ghost is inside the
house before the changes are realized, he may bump into
walls and doors that weren’t there before — not the way he
remembered things at all.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
But move a whole house several yards away from the
shore where it belongs, and you’re asking for trouble. Big
trouble. And big trouble is what the historical society in
Cohasset, Massachusetts, got when they moved the old
Ship’s Chandlery in Cohasset. With my good friend Bob
Kennedy of WBZ, Boston, I set out for the quaint old
town south of Boston on a chilly evening in the fall of
1964.
When we arrived at the wooden structure on a corner
of the Post Road — it had a nautical look, its two stories
squarely set down as if to withstand any gale — we found
several people already assembled. Among them were Mrs.
E. Stoddard Marsh, the lively curator of the museum,
which was what the Ship’s Chandlery became, and her
associate lean, quiet Robert Fraser. The others were friends
and neighbors who had heard of the coming of a parapsy-
chologist, and didn’t want to miss anything. We entered
the building and walked around the downstairs portion of
458
it, admiring its displays of nautical supplies, ranging from
fishing tackle and scrimshaw made from walrus teeth to
heavy anchors, hoists, and rudders — all the instruments
and wares of a ship chandler’s business.
Built in the late eighteenth century by Samuel Bates,
the building was owned by the Bates family; notably by
one John Bates, second of the family to have the place,
who had died seventy-eight years before our visit. Some-
thing of a local character, John Bates had cut a swath
around the area as a dashing gentleman. He could well
afford the role, for he owned a fishing fleet of twenty-four
vessels, and business was good in those far-off days when
the New England coast was dotted with major ports for
fishing and shipping. A handwritten record of his daily
catch can be seen next to a mysterious closet full of ladies’
clothes. Mr. Bates led a full life.
After the arrival of Dorothy Damon, a reporter from
the Boston Traveler, we started to question the curator
about uncanny happenings in the building.
"The building used to be right on the waterfront, at
Cohasset Cove, and it had its own pier,” Mrs. Marsh
began, “and in 1957 we moved it to its present site.”
“Was there any report of uncanny happenings before
that date?”
“Nothing I know of, but the building was in a bad
state of disrepair.”
“After the building was brought to its present site,
then,” I said, "what was the first unusual thing you
heard?”
“Two years ago we were having a lecture here. There
were about forty people listening to Francis Hagerty talk
about old sailing boats. I was sitting over here to the left —
on this ground floor — with Robert Fraser, when all of a
sudden we heard heavy footsteps upstairs and things being
moved and dragged — so I said to Mr. Fraser, 'Someone is
up there; will you please tell him to be quiet?’ I thought it
was kids.”
“Did you know whether there was in fact anyone
upstairs at the time?”
“We did not know. Mr. Fraser went upstairs and
after a moment he came down looking most peculiar and
said, ‘There is no one there.’”
“Now, there is no other way to get down from
upstairs, only this one stairway. Nobody had come down
it. We were interrupted three times on that evening.”
I asked Robert Fraser what he had seen upstairs.
“There was enough light from the little office that is
upstairs, and I could see pretty well upstairs, and I looked
all over, but there was nobody upstairs.”
“And the other times?”
“Same thing. Windows all closed, too. Nobody could
have come down or gotten out. But I’m sure those were
footsteps.”
I returned to Mrs. Marsh and questioned her further
about anything that might have occurred after that eventful
evening of footsteps.
“We were kept so busy fixing up the museum that
we paid scant attention to anything like that, but this sum-
mer something happened that brought it all back to us.”
“What happened” I asked, and the lady reporter
perked up her ears.
"It was on one of the few rainy Sundays we had last
July,” Mrs. Marsh began, “You see, this place is not open
on Sundays. I was bringing over some things from the
other two buildings, and had my arms full. I opened the
front door, when I heard those heavy footsteps upstairs.”
“What did you do — drop everything?”
“I thought it was one of our committee or one of the
other curators, so I called out, 'Hello — who’s up there?’
But I got no answer, and I thought, well, someone sure is
pretty stuffy, not answering me back, so I was a little
peeved and I called again.”
“Did you get a reply?”
“No, but the steps hesitated when I called. But then
they continued again, and I yelled, ‘For Heaven’s sake,
why don’t you answer?’ and I went up the stairs, but just
as I got to the top of the stairs, they stopped.”
There was a man who had helped them with the
work at the museum who had lately stayed away for rea-
sons unknown. Could he have heard the footsteps too and
decided that caution was the better part of valor?
“The other day, just recently, four of us went into
the room this gentleman occupies when he is here, and the
door closed on us, by itself. It has never done that before.”
I soon established that Fraser did not hear the steps
when he was alone in the building, but that Mrs. Marsh
did. I asked her about anything psychic in her background.
“My family has been interested in psychic matters
since I was ten years old,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“I could have become a medium, but I didn’t care to. I
saw an apparition of my mother immediately after she
passed away. My brother also appeared to me six months
after his death, to let me know he was all right, I guess.”
“Since last July has there been any other manifes-
tation?”
“I haven’t been here much,” Mrs. Marsh replied. “I
had a lot of work with our costume collection in the main
building. So I really don’t know."
We decided to go upstairs now and see if Mr. Bates
— or whoever the ghost might be — felt like walking for us.
We quietly waited in the semi-darkness upstairs, near the
area where the footsteps had been heard, but nothing
happened.
“The steps went back and forth,” Mrs. Marsh reiter-
ated. “Heavy, masculine steps, the kind a big man would
make.”
She showed us how it sounded, allowing of course for
the fact she was wearing high heels. It sounded hollow
enough for ten ghosts.
The Ship Chandler’s Ghost
459
I pointed at a small office in the middle of the
upstairs floor.
"This was John Bates’ office,” Mrs. Marsh explained,
“and here is an Indian doll that falls down from a secure
shelf now and then as if someone were throwing it.”
I examined the doll. It was one of those early
nineteenth-century dolls that Indians in New England used
to make and sell.
"The people at the lecture also heard the noises,”
Mrs. Marsh said, “but they just laughed and nobody both-
ered thinking about it.”
I turned to one of the local ladies, a Mrs. Hudley,
who had come up with us. Did she feel anything peculiar
up here, since she had the reputation of being psychic?
“I feel disturbed. Sort of a strange sensation,” she
began, haltingly, “as though there was a ‘presence’ who
was in a disturbed frame of mind. It’s a man.”
Another lady, by the name of McCarthy, also had a
strange feeling as we stood around waiting for the ghost to
make himself known. Of course, suggestion and atmos-
phere made me discount most of what those who were
around us that night might say, but I still wanted to
hear it.
"I felt I had to get to a window and get some air,"
Mrs. McCarthy said. “The atmosphere seemed disturbed
somehow.”
I asked them all to be quiet for a moment and
addressed myself to the unseen ghost.
“John Bates,” I began, “if this is you, may I, as a
stranger come to this house in order to help you find peace,
ask that you manifest in some form so I know you can
hear me?”
Only the sound of a distant car horn answered me.
I repeated my invitation to the ghost to come forward
and be counted. Either I addressed myself to the wrong
ghost or perhaps John Bates disliked the intrusion of so
many people — only silence greeted us.
"Mr. Bates,” I said in my most dulcet tones, “please
forgive these people for moving your beautiful house
inland. They did not do so out of irreverence for your per-
son or work. They did this so that many more people
could come and admire your house and come away with a
sense of respect and admiration for the great man that you
were.
It was so quiet when I spoke, you could have heard a
mouse breathe.
Quietly, we tiptoed down the haunted stairs, and out
into the cool evening air. Cowboy star Rex Trailer and his
wife, who had come with us from Boston, wondered about
the future — would the footsteps ever come back? Or was
John Bates reconciled with the fact that the sea breezes no
longer caressed his ghostly brow as they did when his
house was down by the shore?
Then, too, what was the reason he was still around to
begin with? Had someone given him his quietus in that lit-
tle office upstairs? There are rumors of violence in the
famous bachelor's life, and the number of women whose
affections he had trifled with was legion. Someone might
very well have met him one night and ended the highly
successful career of the ship chandlery’s owner.
A year went by, and I heard nothing further from the
curator. Evidently, all was quiet at John Bates’ old house.
Maybe old John finally joined up with one of the crews
that sail the ghost ships on the other side of the curtain of
life.
m 96
The Ghost-Servant Problem
at Ringwood Manor
RlNGWOOD, IN THE SOUTH of England, has an American
counterpart in New Jersey. I had never heard of Ringwood
Manor in New Jersey until Mrs. Edward Tholl, a resident
of nearby Saddle River, brought it to my attention. An
avid history buff and a talented geographer and map
maker, Mrs. Tholl had been to the Manor House and on
several occasions felt “a presence.” The mountain people
who still inhabited the Ramapo Mountains of the region
wouldn’t go near the Manor House at night.
“Robert Erskine, geographer to Washington’s army,
is buried on the grounds,” Mrs. Tholl told me.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
The Manor House land was purchased by the Ogden
family of Newark in 1740, and an iron-smelting furnace
was built on it two years later. The area abounds in mine
deposits and was at one time a center of iron mining and
smelting. In 1762, when a second furnace was built, a
small house was also built. This house still stands and now
forms part of the haphazard arrangement that constitutes
the Manor House today. One Peter Hasenclever bought the
house and iron works in 1764. He ran the enterprise with
such ostentation that he was known as "The Baron.” But
Hasenclever did not produce enough iron to suit his back-
ers, and was soon replaced by Robert Erskine. When the
War of Independence broke out, the iron works were
forced to close. Erskine himself died "of exposure” in 1780.
By 1807, the iron business was going full blast again,
this time under the aegis of Martin Ryerson, who tore
down the ramshackle old house and rebuilt it completely.
After the iron business failed in the 1830s, the property
passed into the hands of famed Peter Cooper in 1853. His
460
son-in-law Abram S. Hewitt, one-time Mayor of New
York, lived in the Manor House.
Mrs. Hewitt, Cooper’s daughter, turned the drab
house into an impressive mansion of fifty-one rooms, very
much as it appears today. Various older buildings already
on the grounds were uprooted and added to the house, giv-
ing it a checkered character without a real center. The
Hewitt family continued to live at Ringwood until Erskine
Hewitt deeded the estate to the State of New Jersey in
1936, and the mansion became a museum through which
visitors were shown daily for a small fee.
During troubled times, tragedies may well have
occurred in and around the house. There was a holdup in
1778, and in the graveyard nearby many French soldiers
were buried who died there during an epidemic. There is
also on record an incident, in later years, when a cook was
threatened by a butler with a knife, and there were disas-
ters that took many lives in the nearby iron mines.
One of the Hewitt girls, Sally, had been particularly
given to mischief. If anyone were to haunt the place, she’d
be a prime candidate for the job. I thanked Claire Tholl for
her help, and called on Ethel Johnson Meyers to accom-
pany me to New Jersey. Of course, I didn’t give her any
details. We arranged to get to the house around dusk, after
all the tourists had gone.
My wife Catherine and I, with Ethel Meyers as pas-
senger, drove out to the house on a humid afternoon in
May 1965. Jim Byrne joined us at the house with Saturday
Review writer Haskell Frankel in tow.
We were about an hour late, but it was still light,
and the peaceful setting of the park with the Manor House
in its center reminded one indeed of similar houses gracing
the English countryside.
We stood around battling New Jersey mosquitoes for
a while, then I asked Catherine to take Ethel away from
the house for a moment, so I could talk to Mrs. Tholl and
others who had witnessed ghostly goings-on in the house.
‘Tve had a feeling in certain parts of the house that I
was not alone,” Mrs. Tholl said, “but other than that I
cannot honestly say I have had uncanny experiences here.”
Alexander Waldron had been the superintendent of
Ringwood Manor for many years, until a year before, in
fact. He consented to join us for the occasion. A jovial,
gray-haired man, he seemed rather deliberate in his report,
giving me only what to him were actual facts.
“I was superintendent here for eighteen years,” Mr.
Waldron began. "I was sitting at my desk one day, in the
late afternoon, like today, and the door to the next room
was closed. My office is on the ground floor. I heard two
people come walking toward me at a fast pace. That did
not seem unusual, for we do have workmen here fre-
quently. When the steps reached my door, nothing hap-
pened. Without thinking too much, I opened the door for
them. But there was no one there. I called out, but there
was no answer. Shortly after, two workmen did come in
from outside, and together we searched the whole building,
but found no one who could have made the sound.”
“Could anyone have walked away without being seen
by you?”
"Impossible. There was good light.”
“Did anything else happen after that?”
“Over the years we’ve had a few things we could not
explain. For instance, doors we had shut at night, we found
open the next morning. Some years ago, when I had my
boys living here with me, they decided to build a so-called
monster down in the basement. One boy was of high-
school age, the other in grammar school — sixteen and thir-
teen. One of them came in by himself one night, when he
heard footsteps overhead, on the ground floor. He thought
it was his brother who had come over from the house.
“He thought his brother was just trying to scare him,
so he continued to work downstairs. But the footsteps con-
tinued and finally he got fed up with it and came upstairs.
All was dark, and nobody was around. He ran back to the
house, where he found his brother, who had never been to
the manor at all.”
Bradley Waldron probably never worked on his
“monster” again after that.
There are stories among the local hill folk of Robert
Erskine 's ghost walking with a lantern, or sitting on his
grave half a mile down the road from the Manor House, or
racing up the staircase in the house itself.
Wayne Daniels, who had accompanied Mrs. Tholl to
the House, spoke up now. Mr. Daniels had lived in the
region all his life, and was a professional restorer of early
American structures.
“I have felt strange in one corner of the old dining
room, and in two rooms upstairs,” he volunteered. “I feel
hostility in those areas, somehow.”
It was time to begin our search in the house itself.
I asked Ethel Meyers to join us, and we entered the
Manor House, making our way slowly along the now-
deserted corridors and passages of the ground floor, follow-
ing Ethel as she began to get her psychic bearings.
Suddenly, Ethel remarked that she felt a man outside
the windows, but could not pin down her impression.
“Someone died under a curse around here,” she
mumbled, then added as if it were an afterthought, "Jack-
son White. . .what does that mean?”
I had never heard the name before, but Claire Tholl
explained that “Jackson White” was a peculiar local name
for people of mixed blood, who live in the Ramapo hills.
Ethel added that someone had been in slavery at one time.
Ethel was taken aback by the explanation of “Jackson
White.” She had taken it for granted that it was an indi-
vidual name. Jackson Whites, I gathered, are partly Ameri-
can Indian and partly black, but not white.
The Ghost-Servant Problem
at Ringwood Manor
461
We now entered a large bedroom elegantly furnished
in the manner of the early nineteenth century, with a large
bed against one wall and a table against the other. Ethel
looked around the room uncertainly, as if looking for some-
thing she did not yet see.
“Someone with a bad conscience died in this room,”
she said. "A man and a woman lived here, who were miles
apart somehow.”
It was Mrs. Erskine’s bedroom we were in. We went
through a small door into another room that lay directly
behind the rather large bedroom; it must have been a ser-
vant’s room at one time. Nevertheless, it was elegant, with
a marble fireplace and a heavy oak table, around which a
number of chairs had been placed. We sat down but before
I had time to adjust my tape recorder and camera, Ethel
Meyers fell into deep trance. From her lips came the well-
modulated voice of Albert, her control. He explained that
several layers of consciousness covered the room, that there
were blacks brought here by one Jackson, who came in the
eighteenth century. One of them seemed present in the
room, he felt.
“One met death at the entrance. . .a woman named
Lucy Bell, she says. She was a servant here.”
Suddenly, Albert was gone. In his stead, there was a
shrill, desperate female voice, crying out to all who would
listen.
“No. . .1 didn’t. . .before my God I didn’t. . .1 show
you where. . .1 didn't touch it. . .never. . .”
She seemed to be speaking to an unseen tormentor
now, for Ethel, possessed by the ghost, pulled back from
the table and cried:
“No. . .don't. . .don’t!” Was she being beaten or
tortured?
"He didn’t either!” the ghost added.
I tried to calm her.
“Ididn’ttouch...Ididn’t touch ...” she kept repeat-
ing. I asked for her name.
"Lucy,” she said in a tormented, high-pitched voice
completely different from Ethel Meyers’ normal tones.
“I believe you,” I said, and told the ghost who we
were and why we had come. The uncontrollable crying
subsided for the moment.
“He’s innocent too,” she finally said. "I can’t walk,”
she added. Ethel pointed to her side. Had she been hurt?
“I didn’t take it,” she reiterated. "It’s right there.”
What didn’t she take? I coaxed her gently to tell me
all about it.
“I’ve come as a friend," I said, and the word finally
hit home. She got very excited and wanted to know where
I was a since she could not see me.
“A friend, Jeremiah, do you hear?” she intoned.
“Who is Jeremiah?"
“He didn’t do it either,” she replied. Jeremiah, I
gathered, lived here, too, but she did not know any family
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
name — just Jeremiah. Then Ethel Meyers grabbed my
hand, mumbling “friend,” and almost crushed my fingers.
I managed to pull it away. Ethel ordinarily has a very fem-
inine, soft grip — a great contrast to the desperately fierce
clasp of the ghost possessing the medium!
“Don’t go!”
I promised to stay if she would talk.
“I have never stolen,” she said. "It’s dark. . .1 can’t
see now. . .where do I go to see always?”
“I will show you the way,” I promised.
“Marie.. .Marie. . .where are you?” she intoned
pleadingly.
“What is Jeremiah doing?”
“He is begging for his honor.”
“Where is he now?”
“Here with me.”
“Who is the person you worked for?” I asked.
“Old lady. . .1 don't want her. ...”
“If she did you wrong, should we punish her? What
is her name?”
“I never wished evil on anyone. . .1 would forgive
her. . .if she forgives me. She is here. . .1 saw her, and she
hates me....”
The voice became shrill and emotional again. I
srarted to send her away, and in a few moments, she
slipped out. Suddenly, there was an entirely different per-
son occupying Ethel’s body. Proudly sitting up, she seemed
to eye us, with closed eyes, of course, as if we were riff-raff
invading her precincts.
“What is your name?” I demanded.
“I am in no court of justice,” was the stiff reply in a
proper upper-middle-class accent. “I cannot speak to you. I
have no desire. It is futile for you to give me any advice.”
“What about this servant girl?” I asked.
“You may take yourself away,” the lady replied,
haughtily. “Depart!”
“What did the girl take?” I asked, ignoring her out-
burst of cold fury.
“I am not divulging anything to you.”
“Is she innocent then?”
This gave her some thought, and the next words were
a little more communicative.
“How come you are in my house?” she demanded.
“Is it your house?”
“I will call the servants and have you taken our by
the scruff of your neck,” she threatened.
“Will the servants know who you are?" I countered.
“I am lady in my own.”
“What is your name?”
“I refuse to reveal myself or talk to you!”
I explained about the passage of time. It made no
impression.
“I will call her. . .Old Jeremiah is under his own dis-
grace. You are friend to him?”
I explained about Ethel Meyers and how she, the
ghost, was able to communicate with us.
462
Ringwood Manor, New Jersey —
the late owner never left.
She hit the table hard with Ethel's fist.
“The man is mad,” the ghost said. “Take him away!”
I didn’t intend to be taken away by ghostly men-in-
white. I continued to plead with “the lady” to come to her
senses and listen. She kept calling for her servants, but evi-
dently nobody answered her calls.
“Jeremiah, if you want to preserve yourself in my
estimation and not stand by this girl, take this. . .”
Somehow the medium’s eyes opened for a moment,
and the ghost could "see.” Then they closed again. It came
as a shock, for "the lady” suddenly stopped her angry
denunciation and instead “looked” at me in panic.
“What is this? Doctor... where is he. ..Laura! Laura!
I am ill. Very ill. I can’t see. I can’t see. I hear something
talking to me, but I can’t see it. Laura, call a doctor. I’m
going to die!”
"As a matter of fact,” I said calmly, “you have died
already.”
“It was my mother’s.” The ghost sobbed hysterically.
“Don’t let her keep it. Don’t let it go to the scum! I must
have it. Don’t let me die like this. Oh, oh. . .”
I called on Albert, the control, to take the unhappy
ghost away and lead her to the other side of the veil, if
possible. The sobbing slowly subsided as the ghost’s
essence drifted away out of our reach in that chilly Geor-
gian room at Ringwood.
It wasn’t Albert’s crisp, precise voice that answered
me. Another stranger, obviously male, now made his
coughing entry and spoke in a lower-class accent.
“What’s the matter?”
“Who is this?” I asked.
The voice sounded strangely muffled, as if coming
from far away.
“Jeremiah. . .What’s the matter with everybody?”
The voice had distinct black overtones.
“I’m so sleepy,” the voice said.
“Who owns this house?”
"Ho, ho, I do,” the ghost said. "I have a funny
dream, what’s the matter with everybody?” Then the voice
cleared up a little, as he became more aware of the strange
surroundings into which he had entered.
“Are you one of these white trashes?” he demanded.
“What is the old lady’s name?” I asked.
“She’s a Bob,” he replied, enigmatically, and added,
“real bumby, with many knots in it, many knots in the
brain.”
“Who else is here?”
“I don't like you. I don’t know you and I don't like
who I don’t know,” the servant’s ghost said.
“You’re white trash,” he continued. “I seed you!”
The stress was on white.
“How long have you been living here?”
“My father. . .Luke.”
Again, I explained about death and consequences, but
the reception was even less friendly than I had received
from “the lady.”
Jeremiah wanted no truck with death.
“What will the old squaw say? What will she say?”
he wondered, "She needs me.”
The Ghost-Servant Problem
at Ringwood Manor
463
"Not really,” I replied. “After all, she’s dead, too.”
He could hardly believe the news. Evidently, the formida-
ble “squaw” was immune to such events as death in his
mind.
“What do you have against my mother?” he
demanded now. Things were getting confusing. Was the
"old lady” his mother?
“Lucy white trash too,” he commented.
“Was she your wife?”
“Call it that.”
“Can you see her?”
“She’s here.”
“Then you know you have died and must go from
this house?” I asked.
“’dominable treek, man, ’dominable treek,” he said,
furiously.
“This house is no longer yours.”
“It never was,” he shot back. “The squaw is here.
We’re not dead, Great White Spirit — laugh at you.”
“What do you want in this house?”
“Squaw very good,” he said. “I tell you, my mother,
squaw very good. Lucy Bell, white trash, but good. Like
Great White Spirit. Work my fingers down to the bone. 1
am told! I am thief, too. Just yesterday. Look at my back!
Look at my squaw! Red Fox, look at her. Look at my
back, look at it!”
He seemed to have spent his anger. The voice
became softer now.
"I am so sleepy,” he said. “So sleepy. . .my Lucy will
never walk again. . .angel spirit. . .my people suffer. . .her
skin should be like mine . . . help me, help my Lucy
I promised to help and to send him to his father,
Luke, who was awaiting him.
“I should have listened to my father,” the ghost
mumbled.
Then he recognized his father, evidently come to
guide him out of the house, and wondered what he was
doing here.
I explained what I thought was the reason for his
father’s presence. There was some crying, and then they all
went away.
"Albert,” I said. “Please take over the instrument.”
In a moment, the control’s cool voice was heard, and
Ethel was brought out of trance rather quickly.
“My hip,” she complained. “I don’t think I can
move.”
“Passing conditions” or symptoms the ghost brings
are sometimes present for a few moments after a medium
comes out of trance. It is nothing to be alarmed about.
I closed Ethel’s eyes again, and sent her back into
trance, then brought her out again, and this time all was
“clear.” However, she still recalled a scream in a passage
between the two rooms.
I wondered about the Indian nature of the ghost.
Were there any Indians in this area?
“Certainly,” Mr. Waldron replied. "They are of
mixed blood, often Negro blood, and are called Jackson
Whites. Many of them worked here as servants.”
The footsteps the superintendent had heard on the
floor below were of two persons, and they could very well
have come from this area, since the room we were in was
almost directly above his offices.
There was, of course, no record of any servants
named Jeremiah or Lucy. Servants’ names rarely get
recorded unless they do something that is most unusual.
I asked Mrs. Tholl about ladies who might have fit-
ted the description of the haughty lady who had spoken to
us through Ethel Meyers in trance.
"I associate this with the Hewitt occupancy of the
house,” she explained, “because of the reference to a pas-
sage connecting two parts of the house, something that
could not apply to an early structure on the spot. Amelia
Hewitt, whose bedroom we had come through, was
described in literature of the period as ‘all placidity and
kindliness.’ Sarah Hewitt, however, was quite a cut-up in
her day, and fitted the character of 'the lady’ more
accurately.”
But we cannot be sure of the identity of the ghost-
lady. She elected to keep her name a secret and we can
only bow to her decision and let it remain so.
What lends the accounts an air of reality and evi-
dence is, of course, the amazing fact that Ethel Meyers
spoke of “Jackson Whites” in this house, an appellation
completely new to her and me. I am also sure that the
medium had no knowledge of Indians living in the area.
Then, too, her selecting a room above the spot where the
ghostly steps had been heard was interesting, for the house
was sprawling and had many rooms and passages.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
464
m 97
The Phantom Admiral
I HAD NEVER HEARD OF Goddard College until I received
a letter from Jay Lawrence, a second -semester student at
Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. Mr. Lawrence
was serious about his interest in psychic phenomena and he
had some evidence to offer. He did more than ask me to
speak at the college on extrasensory perception; he invited
me to come and have a look at a ghost he had discovered
in Whitefield, New Hampshire, about two hours’ drive
from Goddard.
The haunted house in Whitefield belonged to the
Jacobsen family who used it as a summer home only. The
younger Jacobsen, whose first name was Erlend — they’re of
Norwegian descent — invited us to come stay at the house,
or at least have a look at it. The Goddard College boys
offered to pick us up in Boston and drive us up through
the scenic White Mountains to Whitefield.
We arrived at dusk, when the country tends to be
peaceful and the air is almost still. The house was at the
end of a narrow, winding driveway lined by tall trees, hid-
den away from the road. There was a wooden porch
around three sides of the wooden structure, which rose up
three stories.
We were welcomed by Erlend Jacobsen, his wife,
Martha, and their little boy Erlend Eric, a bright youngster
who had met the ghost, too, as we were to find out.
Inside the house with its spacious downstairs dining
room and kitchen, decorated in a flamboyant style by the
Jacobsens, we found Mr. and Mrs. Nelson, two friends of
the owners, and Jeff Broadbent, a young fellow student of
Jay Lawrence.
Sybil puttered around the house, indulging her inter-
est in antiques. I mounted my tape recorder to hear the
testimony of those who had experienced anything unusual
in the house. We went upstairs, where Sybil Leek could
not very well hear us, and entered a small bedroom on the
second floor, which, I was told, was the main center of
ghostly activities, although not the only one.
The house was called “Mis 'n Top” by its original
owner and builder. I lost no time in questioning Erlend
Jacobsen, a tall young man of thirty on the Goddard Col-
lege faculty as an instructor, about his experiences in the
old house.
“When my parents decided to turn the attic into a
club room where I could play with my friends,” Erlend
Jacobsen began, “they cut windows into the wall and threw
out all the possessions of the former owner of the house
they had found there. I was about seven at the time.
“Soon after, footsteps and other noises began to be
heard in the attic and along the corridors and stairs leading
toward it. But it was not until the summer of 1956, when I
was a senior in college and had just married, that I experi-
enced the first really important disturbance.
“1955, Erlend,” the wife interrupted. Wives have a
way of remembering such dates. Mr. Jacobsen blushed and
corrected himself.
“1955, you’re right,” he said. "That summer we slept
here for the first time in this room, one flight up, and
almost nightly we were either awakened by noises or could
not sleep, waiting for them to begin. At first we thought
they were animal noises, but they were too much like foot-
steps and heavy objects being moved across the floor over-
head, and down the hall. We were so scared we refused to
move in our beds or turn on the lights.”
But you did know of the tradition that the house was
haunted, did you not?” I asked.
“Yes, I grew up with it. All I knew is what I had
heard from my parents. The original owner and builder of
the house, an admiral named Hawley, and his wife, were
both most difficult people. The admiral died in 1933. In
1935, the house was sold by his daughter, who was then
living in Washington, to my parents. Anyone who hap-
pened to be trespassing on his territory would be chased
off it, and I imagine he would not have liked our throwing
out his sea chest and other personal possessions.”
“Any other experience outside the footsteps?”
“About four years ago,” Erlend Jacobsen replied,
“my wife and I, and a neighbor, Shepard Vogelgesang,
were sitting in the living room downstairs discussing inter-
pretations of the Bible. I needed a dictionary at one point
in the discussion and got up to fetch it from upstairs.
“I ran up to the bend here, in front of this room, and
there were no lights on at the time. I opened the door to
the club room and started to go up the stairs, when sud-
denly I walked into what I can only describe as a warm,
wet blanket, something that touched me physically as if it
had been hung from wires in the corridor. I was very
upset, backed out, and went downstairs. My wife took one
look at me and said, ‘You’re white.’ ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I
think I just walked into the admiral.”’
“I suppose he didn’t enjoy your bumping into him in
this fashion either,” I commented. “Anything else?”
“I was alone in the house, in the club room, which is
designed like a four- leaf clover — you can see into the sec-
tion opposite you, but you can’t see into the other two. I
was lying there, looking out the window at sunset, when I
heard someone breathing — rhythmically breathing in, out,
in, out.”
“What did you do?”
“I held my own breath, because at first I thought I
might be doing it. But I was not. The breathing continued
right next to me! I became terrified, being then only fifteen
years of age, and ran out of the house until my parents
returned.”
I asked him again about the time he touched the ghost.
How did it feel? Did it have the touch of a human
body?
The Phantom Admiral
465
The home of the ghostly Admiral in
New Hampshire
“Nothing like it. It was totally dark, but it was defi-
nitely warm, and it resisted my passage.”
"Has anything happened to you here recently?”
“About two-and-a-half weeks ago, I walked into the
house at dusk and I heard very faint crying for about fif-
teen or twenty seconds. I thought it might be a cat, but
there was no cat in the house, and just as suddenly as it
had started, the crying stopped. It sounded almost as if it
were outside this window, here on the second floor.”
“Is there any record of a tragedy attached to this
house?”
“None that I know of.”
“Who else has seen or heard anything uncanny
here?”
"My parents used to have a Negro maid who was
psychic. She had her share of experiences here all right.
Her name is Sarah Wheeler and she is about seventy-five
now. The admiral had a reputation for disliking colored
people, and she claimed that when she was in bed here,
frequently the bedposts would move as if someone were
trying to throw her out of bed. The posts would move off
the floor and rock the bed violently, held by unseen hands,
until she got out of bed, and then they would stop. She
was a Catholic and went to the church the next day to
fetch some Holy Water. That quieted things down. But the
first night of each season she would come without her Holy
Water and that was when things were worst for her.”
“Poor Sarah,” I said.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“She was psychic, and she had an Indian guide,”
Erlend Jacobsen continued. “I did not put much stock in
some of the things she told us, such as there being treasure
underneath the house, put there by the old admiral. But
eight or nine years ago, I had occasion to recall this. The
house has no cellar but rests on stone pillars. We used to
throw junk under the house, where wooden steps led down
below. I was cleaning up there with a flashlight, when I
saw something shiny. It was a cement block with a silver
handle sticking out of it. I chipped the cement off, and
found a silver bowl, with 'A.H.' engraved on it.”
I turned my attention to Mrs. Jacobsen. She had
three children, but still gave the impression of being a col-
lege sophomore. As a matter of fact, she was taking courses
at Goddard.
It was ten years to the day — our visit was on June 1 1
— that the Jacobsens had come to this house as newlyweds.
“We spent one night here, then went on our honey-
moon, and then came back and spent the rest of the sum-
mer here,” Martha Jacobsen said. “The first night I was
very, very frightened — hearing this walking up and down
the halls, and we the only ones in the house! There was a
general feeling of eerieness and a feeling that there was
someone else in the house. There were footsteps in the hall
outside our bedroom door. At one point before dawn, the
steps went up the stairs and walked around overhead. But
Erlend and I were the only ones in the house. We
checked.”
Imagine one’s wedding night interrupted by unseen
visitors — this could give a person a trauma!
“Two weeks later we returned and stayed here
alone,” Mrs. Jacobsen continued,” and I heard these foot-
steps severed times. Up and down. We’ve been coming
here for the last ten years and I heard it again a couple of
weeks ago.”
“Must be unnerving,” I observed.
“It is. I heard the steps overhead in the club room,
and also, while I was downstairs two weeks ago, the door
to the kitchen opened itself and closed itself, without any-
one being visible. Then the front door did the same
thing — opened and shut itself.
“Along with the footsteps I heard things being
dragged upstairs, heavy objects, it seemed. But nothing was
disarranged afterwards. We checked.”
“Any other events of an uncanny nature?” I asked as
a matter of record. Nothing would surprise me in this
house.
“About ten years ago, when we first moved in, I also
heard the heavy breathing when only my husband and I
were in the house. Then there was a house guest we had, a
Mrs. Anne Merriam. She had this room and her husband
was sleeping down the hall in one of the single rooms. Sud-
denly, she saw a figure standing at the foot of her bed.”
“What did she do?”
466
"She called out, ‘Carol, is that you?’ twice, but got no
answer. Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the figure
dissolved into thin air.
“She queried her husband about coming into her
room, but he told her that he had never left his bed that
night. When this happened on another night, she
attempted to follow the figure, and found her husband
entering through another door!”
“Has anyone else had an encounter with a ghost
here?” I asked.
"Well, another house guest went up into the attic
and came running down reporting that the door knob had
turned in front of his very eyes before he could reach for it
to open the door. The dog was with him,*and steadfastly
refused to cross the threshold. That was Frank Kingston
and it all happened before our marriage. Then another
house guest arrived very late at night, about five years ago.
We had already gone to bed, and he knew he had to sleep
in the attic since every other room was already taken.
Instead, I found him sleeping in the living room, on the
floor, in the morning. He knew nothing about the ghost.
‘I’m not going back up there any more,’ he vowed, and
would not say anything further. I guess he must have run
into the admiral.”
What a surprise that must have been, I thought,
especially if the admiral was all wet.
“Three years ago, my brother came here,” Mrs.
Jacobsen continued her report. "His name is Robert Gill-
man. In the morning he complained of having been awake
all night. A former skeptic, he knew now that the tales of
ghostly footsteps were true, for he, too, had heard them —
all night long in fact.”
Jeffrey Broadbent was a serious young man who
accompanied Jay Lawrence to the house one fine night, to
see if what they were saying about the admiral's ghost was
true.
They had sleeping bags and stayed up in the attic. It
was a chilly November night in 1964, and everything
seemed just right for ghosts. Would they be lucky in their
quest? They did not have to wait long to find out.
“As soon as we entered the room, we heard strange
noises on the roof. They were indistinct and could have
been animals, I thought at first. We went off to sleep until
Jay woke me up hurriedly around six in the morning. I dis-
tinctly heard human footsteps on the roof. They slid down
the side to a lower level and then to the ground where they
could be heard walking in leaves and into the night. Noth-
ing could be seen from the window and there was nobody
up on the roof. We were the only ones in the house that
night, so it surely must have been the ghost.”
Jay Lawrence added one more thing to this narrative.
"When we first turned out the flashlight up in the
attic, I distinctly heard a high-pitched voice — a kind of
scream or whine — followed by footsteps. They were of a
human foot wearing shoes, but much lighter than the nor-
mal weight of a human body would require.
Jerry Weener also had spent time at the haunted
house.
"In early March 1965, Jay and I came over and had
dinner at the fireplace downstairs. We decided to sleep
downstairs and both of us, almost simultaneously, had a
dream that night in which we met the admiral’s ghost, but
unfortunately on awakening, we did not recall anything
specific or what he might have said to us in our dreams. A
second time when I slept in the house, nothing happened.
The third time I came over with friends, I slept in the
attic, and I heard footsteps. We searched the house from
top to bottom, but there was no one else who could have
accounted for those steps.”
Erlend Eric, age eight going on nine, was perhaps the
youngest witness to psychic phenomena scientifically
recorded, but his testimony should not be dismissed
because of his age. He had heard footsteps going up and
down and back up the stairs. One night he was sleeping in
the room across the hall when he heard someone trying to
talk to him.
“What sort of voice was it?” I asked. Children are
frequently more psychic than adults.
“It was a man’s,” the serious youngster replied. “He
called my name, but I forgot what else he said. That was
three years ago.”
Miriam Nelson was a petite young woman, the wife
of one of Erlend Jacobsen’s friends, who had come to wit-
ness our investigation that evening. She seemed nervous
and frightened and asked me to take her to another room
so I could hear her story in private. We went across the
hall into the room where the figure had stood at the head
of the bed and I began my questioning.
“My first experience was when Erlend and I brought
a Welsh Corgi up here; Erlend’s parents were here, too. I
was downstairs in the library; the dog was in my lap. Sud-
denly I felt another presence in the room, and I could not
breathe anymore. The dog started to bark and insist that I
follow him out of the room. I distinctly felt someone there.
“Then on a cold fall day about four years ago, I was
sitting by the stove, trying to get warm, when one of the
burners lifted itself up about an inch and fell down again. I
looked and it moved again. It could not have moved by
itself. I was terrified. I was alone in the house.”
I had heard all those who had had an encounter with
the ghost and it was time to get back downstairs where the
Jacobsens had laid out a fine dinner — just the right thing
after a hard day’s drive. A little later we all went up the
stairs to the top floor, where Sybil stretched out on a couch
near the window. We grouped ourselves around her in the
haunted attic and waited.
“I had a feeling of a middle room upstairs,” Sybil
said, “but I don’t feel anything too strongly yet.”
Soon Sybil was in deep trance as we awaited the com-
ing of the admiral — or whoever the ghost would be — with
The Phantom Admiral
467
bated breath. The only light in the attic room was a garish
fluorescent lamp, which we shut off, and replaced with a
smaller conventional lamp. It was quiet, as quiet as only a
country house can be. But instead of the ghost speaking to
us directly and presumably giving us hell for trespassing, it
was Sybil herself, in deep trance “on the other side,’’
reporting what she saw — things and people the ordinary
eye could not perceive.
“I’m walking around,” Sybil said. “There is a man
lying dead in the middle room. Big nose, not too much
hair in front, little beard cut short now. There is a plant
near him.”
"Try to get his name, Sybil,” I ordered.
"I’ll have to go into the room,” she said.
We waited.
“He is not in here all the time,” she reported back.
"He came here to die.”
“Is this his house?”
"Yes, but there is another house also. A long way off.
This man had another house. Hawsley. . .Hawsley.”
Almost the exact name of the admiral, I thought.
Sybil could not have known that name.
“He went from one house to another, in a different
country. Something Indian.”
“Is he still here and what does he want?”
“To find a place to rest because. . .he does not know
in which house it’s in!”
“What is he looking for?”
"Little basket. Not from this country. Like a han-
dle. . .it's shiny. . .silver. . .a present. It went to the wrong
house. He gave it to the wrong house. He is very particular
not to get things confused. It belongs to Mrs. Gerard at
the other house. He usually stays in the little room, one
flight up. With the fern. By the bed.”
“But what about Mrs. Gerard? How can we send the
package to her unless we get her address?” I said.
“It’s very important. It’s in the wrong perspective, he
says,” Sybil explained.
“What did he have for a profession?” I tried again.
“He says he brought things. . .seeds.”
“What are his initials or first name?”
“A. J. H.”
Sybil seemed to listen to someone we could not see.
“He’s not troublesome,” she said. "He goes when I
get near to him. Wants to go to the other house.”
"Where is the other house?”
“Liang. . .Street. . .Bombay.”
“Does he know he is dead?”
"No.”
I instructed her to tell him.
“Any family?”
“Two families. . .Bombay.”
“Children?”
“Jacob. . .Martin.”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
It was not clear whether the ghost said Jacob or
Jacobsen.
“He is shaking himself,” Sybil now reported. “What
upset him? He worries about names. A. J. A. name on
something he is worried about. The names are wrong on a
paper. He said Jacobsen is wrong. It should be Jacob
Hawsley son.”
Evidently the ghost did not approve the sale of his
house by his executors, but wanted it to go to his son.
"Because of two houses, two families, he did not
know what to do with the other.”
“What does ‘A.’ stand for in his name?”
"Aaron. . .Aaron Jacob.”
“Does he have any kind of title or professional
standing?”
"A-something. . . A-D-M. . .can’t read. . .Administra-
tor A-D-M. . .it’s on the paper, but I can’t read the
paper.”
Still, she did get the admiral’s rank!
I promised to have the gift delivered to Mrs. Gerard,
if we could find her, but he must not stay in this house
any further.
“Who waters the plants, he asks,” Sybil said.
I assured him the plants would be taken care of.
"But what about the other house, who waters the
plants there?” the ghost wanted to know.
"How does he go there?” I asked in return.
"He sails,” Sybil replied. “Takes a long time.”
Again I promised to find the house in India, if I
could.
"What about a date?” I asked. “How long ago did all
this happen?”
“About 1867,” Sybil replied.
“How old was he then?”
“Fifty-nine.”
I implored the admiral not to cause any untidiness in
the house by upsetting its inhabitants. The reply via Sybil
was stiff.
“As a man with an administrative background, he is
always tidy,” Sybil reported. “But he is going now.”
"He is going now,” Sybil repeated, “and he’s taking
the ferns.”
I called Sybil back to her own body, so as not to give
some unwanted intruder a chance to stop in before she was
back in the driver's seat, so to speak.
None the worse for her travels in limbo, Sybil sat up
and smiled at us, wondering why we all stared at her so
intently. She remembered absolutely nothing.
Erlend Jacobsen spoke up.
"That basket she mentioned,” he said. “When my
parents first bought the house, there was hanging over the
dining room, on a chain, a stuffed armadillo, which had
been shellacked from the outside. It had straw handles and
had been turned into a basket. It was around the house
until about five years ago, but I have no idea where it is
468
now. For all we know, it may still be around the house
somewhere.”
“Better find it,” I said. "That is, if you want those
footsteps to cease!”
Just as we were leaving the house, the senior Jacob-
sens returned. Mr. Eric Jacobsen does not care for ghosts
and I was told not to try to get him to talk about the sub-
ject. But his wife, Josephine, Erlend’s mother, had been
pushed down the stairs by the ghost — or so she claims.
This is quite possible, judging by the way the admiral was
behaving in his post-funeral days and nights.
Our job in Whitefield seemed finished and we con-
tinued on to Stowe, Vermont, where we had decided to
stay at the famous Trapp Family Lodge. Catherine had
become interested in Mrs. Trapp’s books, and from The
Sound of Music, we both thought that the lodge would pro-
vide a welcome interlude of peace during a hectic weekend
of ghost hunting.
The next morning we rested up from the rigors of
our investigation and found the world around us indeed
peaceful and promising. The following morning we would
go down to Goddard College and address students and
teachers on the subject of ghosts, which would leave us
with a pleasant afternoon back at Stowe, before flying back
to Manhattan. But we had reckoned without the commer-
cial spirit at the lodge. Like most overnight lodgings, they
wanted us out of our rooms by 1 1 o’clock Sunday morning,
but finally offered to let us stay until two. I declined.
After my talk at the college, we were taken to one of
the women’s dormitories where uncanny happenings had
taken place. The college was situated on the old Martin
farm, and the manor had been turned into a most elegant
female students’ residence, without losing its former Victo-
rian grandeur. Reports of a dead butler still walking the old
corridors upstairs had reached my ears. Two students,
Madeleine Ehrman and Dorothy Frazier, knew of the
ghost. The phenomena were mainly footsteps when no one
was about. A teacher who did not believe in ghosts set foot
in the manor and later revealed that the name Dawson had
constantly impressed itself on her mind. Later research
revealed that a butler by that name did in fact live at the
manor house long ago.
Sue Zuckerman was a New Yorker studying at
Goddard.
“One night last semester,” she said, “I was up late
studying when I heard footsteps approaching my room.
After a few seconds I opened my door — there was nobody
there. I closed the door and resumed studying. I then heard
footsteps walking away from my door. I looked again, but
saw nothing.
“During this time for a period of about three weeks,
my alarm clock had been shut off every night. I would set
it for about 7:30, but when I woke up much later than
that, the alarm button was always off. I began hiding my
clock, locking my door — but it still happened.
“Back in 1962, I was toying with a Ouija board I had
bought more in fun than as a serious instrument of com-
munication. I had never gotten anything through it that
could not have come from my own mind, but that Friday
afternoon in 1962, I worked it in the presence of three
other friends, and as soon as we put our hands on it, it lit-
erally started to leap around. It went very fast, giving a
message one of us took down: ‘I am dead. . .of drink.’ ‘Are
you here now in the Manor?’ ‘One could speak of my pres-
ence here.’ There was more, but I can’t remember it now.
"Afterward, a strange wind arose and as we walked
past a tree outside, it came crashing down.”
I don’t know about strange “wind,” and Ouija boards
are doubtful things at times, but the footfalls of the restless
butler named Dawson must have been a most unusual
extracurricular activity for the co-eds at Goddard College.
m 98
The Ghosts in The Basement
Mary LIVES IN Atlanta, Georgia, a quiet woman who
speaks with a charming southern accent and is rather con-
servative in her way of life. Even her special talent of being
able to read the tarot cards for her friends used to be an
embarrassment to her because of her religion and because
of what the neighbors might say if they found out, not
to mention the fact that everyone would want a reading
from her.
At the time I met her she had two lovely daughters,
Katie, a 15-year-old, and Boots, who went to college. On
the day of Halloween, 1962, she and her girls had moved
into an attractive 18-year-old house in Atlanta. It stood in
a quiet suburban neighborhood amid other small homes of
no particular distinction. Not far from the house are the
tracks of a railroad which is nowadays used only for
freight. Famous old Fort McPherson is not far away; dur-
ing the Civil War one of the bloodiest engagements was
fought on this spot.
The house has two levels; at street level, there is a
large living room which one enters from the front side of
the house, then there are three bedrooms, and on the right
side of the house, a den leading into a kitchen. From one
of the bedrooms a stair secured by an iron railing leads into
the basement. There is a closet underneath the stairs. In
back of the house there is a large patio and there are also
outside stairs leading again into the basement. Only the
The Ghosts in The Basement
469
right-hand third of the basement area is actually used by
the family, a laundry room occupies most of the space and
a wall seals it off from the undeveloped “dirt” area of the
basement.
The house itself feel cozy and warm, the furniture is
pleasant and functional, and if it weren't for some unusual
events that had occurred in the house, one might never
suspect it of being anything but just another ordinary sub-
urban home.
Soon after they had moved in, Mary and her daugh-
ters knew there was something very odd about the house.
She would wake up in the middle of the night because she
heard someone digging down in the basement. She thought
this entirely out of the question, but when the noise per-
sisted night after night, she was wondering whether the
neighbors might be putting in a water pipe. After a while,
she decided to find out who was doing the digging. She left
her bed and went downstairs, but there was nothing to be
seen. There were no rats or mice which could have caused
the strange noise. There was no freshly turned up dirt
either. Their neighbors weren’t doing any digging. Even
more mysterious, Mary and her two daughters kept hearing
the noise of someone trying to break into the house, always
at two in the morning. And when they checked there was
never anyone there. They called the police but the police
failed to turn up any clues. Mary installed heavy bolts
inside the front and rear doors, but the day she returned
from an errand to an empty house she found the heavy
bolts ripped away by unseen hands.
At the time Mary was estranged from her doctor hus-
band, and she was afraid to discuss the strange phenomena
with him, since he put no stock into psychic phenomena
and might have taken advantage of the information to have
Mary declared in need of psychiatric treatment. Mary was
in the habit of taking afternoon naps but now her naps
kept being disturbed by an unseen person entering the
house, walking through it as if he or she knew it well, and
sometimes even running the water or flushing the toilet!
Often, when she was doing her laundry in the basement
she would clearly hear footsteps overhead then the sound
of drawers being opened and shut and water being run. But
when she checked, there was no one about and nothing had
changed.
At first she kept the disturbing news from her daugh-
ters but soon the discovered that the children had also
heard the strange noises. In addition, Katie had felt a pair
of hands on her during the night when she knew she was
alone in her room. Even in plain daylight such heavy
objects as books began to disappear and reappear in other
places as if someone were trying to play a game with them.
At that time Boots, the older girl, was at college and when
she came back from school she had no idea what her sister
and mother had been through recently in the house. So it
was a shock for her to hear someone using a typewriter in
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
the basement when they all knew that there was no one
there and no typewriter in the house. The family held a
conference and it was decided that what they had in the
house was a ghost, or perhaps several. By now they had
gotten used to the idea, however, and it did not frighten
them as much as before.
One night Katie was asleep when she awoke with the
feeling she was not alone. As she opened her eyes she saw
standing by her bedside a shadowy figure. Since her mother
was in the other bedroom, she knew that it could not have
been her.
Soon, Mary and her girl realized that they weren’t
dealing with just one ghost. On several occasions the quick
footsteps of a child were also heard along with the heavier
footsteps of an adult. Then someone seemed to be calling
out to them by name. One day in January 1968 when they
had gotten accustomed to their unseen visitors Mary awoke
to the sound of music coming from the kitchen area. She
investigated this at once but found neither a radio nor any
other reason for the music that could be accepted on a
rational basis. She returned to bed and tried to ignore
it. Just then two sets of footfalls reached her ears right
through the covers. One set of feet seemed to turn to
toward her daughter Katie’s room, while the other pair of
feet came right toward her bed, where they stopped. Some-
thing ice cold then seemed to touch her. She screamed in
fear and jumped from her bed and this apparently broke
the phenomenon and again there was no one about.
Mary began to wonder who was the person in the
household who made the phenomenon possible, because
she knew enough about psychic phenomena to realize that
someone had to be the medium. One night she received the
answer. She awakened to the sound of a voice coming from
her daughter Katie’s room. A female voice was saying a
phrase over and over and Katie was answering by repeating
it. She could clearly hear "golden sand,” spoken in a sweet,
kindly voice and her daughter Katie repeating it in a child-
ish voice totally different from her normal adult tone. Then
she heard Katie clap her hands and say, “Now what can I
do?” When Mary entered Katie’s room she saw her daugh-
ter fast asleep. When questioned the next day about the
incident, Katie remembered absolutely nothing. But the
incidents continued.
One day Katie saw a woman in her forties, and felt
someone fondling her hair. It seemed a kind gesture and
Katie was not afraid. By now Mary wondered whether she
herself might not be the person to whom the phenomena
occurred rather than just her daughter. She had always had
psychic ability so she decided to test this potential medi-
umship within her. Relaxing deeply in an effort to find out
who the ghost was and what the ghost wanted in the
house, Mary was able to hear with her inner voice the psy-
chic message sent out from the woman. Over and over
again she heard the phrase spoken within her — “I need
your help to cross the stream!” Several days later she heard
the same female voice whisper in her ear, “I need your
470
help!” “Where are you?” Mary said aloud. “In the base-
ment, in the dirt,” the voice answered. Soon Mary realized
there was another ghost in the house, this one male. Mary
woke from an afternoon nap because she heard someone
come through the front door. She sat up and yelled at the
unseen presence to go away and leave her alone. But a
man’s gruff voice answered her. “She can see me!" But
Mary did not see anyone. Still, she become more and more
convinced that the man was angry at her for having paid
attention to the female ghost and Mary wondered whether
the two of them had a connection. Mary called on sincere
friends to form a “psychic rescue circle,” that is to try to
make contact with the restless ghosts and, if possible, send
them away. It didn’t help. Soon after, Mary heard the
pleading voice again, “I need you. Come to the basement.”
Mary then went to the basement where she said a prayer
for the departed. Whether the prayer did it, or whether the
ghosts had finally realized that they were staying on in a
house that belonged to another time, there were no further
disturbances after that.
* 99
Miss Boyd of Charles Street,
Manhattan
One OF THE OLDEST and historically most interesting sec-
tions of New York City is Greenwich Village, where many
houses dating back to the early nineteenth, eighteenth, and
even seventeenth century still exist. The people living in
them sometimes have to share the appointments with an
unseen entity or even a seen one, but ghosts and old
houses seem to go together and those among the people
living in this part of New York whom I have interviewed
over the years because of ghostly manifestation have never
thought that there was anything remarkably horrible about
them. If anything they were curious about the person or
persons they shared their houses with.
Some years ago I had the pleasure of meeting a cer-
tain Miss Boyd down on Charles Street and the meeting
was mutually useful. Miss Boyd of course was a ghost. All
of this happened because Barrie, a friend, had taken an
apartment on Charles Street, and found that his ground
floor apartment contained a ghost. Halloween 1964, I vis-
ited the apartment in the company of medium Sybil Leek,
and I had no idea whom I might meet there apart from the
flesh -and -blood people then occupying the apartment.
There was a fire in the fireplace and an appropriate wind
howling outside, but it was novelist Elizabeth B., Barrie’s
friend, who set the proper mood. She explained that the
whole thing started when one of Barrie’s house guests,
Adriana, had been awakened in bed by a rather violent
push of her arm. At the same time she felt herself com-
pelled to burst into tears and wept profusely, although
there was no reason for it. Somehow she partook of another
person’s feelings, involving a great deal of sorrow. This
happened several nights a row. However, Adriana did not
tell Barrie about it. There really was no need to because
one night he arrived around 1 in the morning to find Adri-
ana practically drowning in her tears. When his house
guest left, he tried to dismiss the whole thing, but he, too,
felt a “presence” watching him all the time. On one occa-
sion, he saw a whitish mist, and was sure that someone was
looking at him.
Miss Boyd used to live here on Charles Street.
Sybil Leek felt that communication with the unseen
entity was possible. Gradually falling deeper and deeper
into a trance state, she made contact with the unhappy
woman who could not leave the spot of much suffering in
her own lifetime. “Her name is Boyd,” Sybil explained and
then the entity, the ghost herself, took over Sybil’s speech
mechanism and I was able to question her about her griev-
ances. Apparently Miss Boyd was looking for a document
having to do with ownership of the house; the year was
1866. The owner of the house was named Anussi. At that
point we had to end the seance.
We returned a few weeks later, and again Sybil Leek
made contact with the ghost. Picture my surprise when
Elizabeth B. informed me that she had done some research
on the house since our first meeting, and discovered that
the house had indeed belonged to a family named Boyd
ever since it had been bought by one Samuel Boyd in 1827!
Miss Boyd of Charles Street, Manhattan
471
T.J 1
Even the landlord named “Anussi” turned out to have
some basis in fact except that the name was spelled differ-
ently, Moeslin, According to the records, this man had
rented the house to Mary Boyd in 1866. But what about
the paper the ghost was trying to recover, the paper that
apparently caused her continued presence in the house?
“Find the paper, find the paper. This is my house,” the
ghost said, through the medium. The paper, it appeared,
was in the name of her father, Bill, and the landlord did
not have any right to the house according to the ghost.
That was the reason for her continued presence there.
I tried to explain that much time had gone by, and
that the matter was no longer of importance. I asked Miss
Boyd to let go of the house and join her equally dead rela-
tives on the other side of life. There was no doubt that
medium Sybil Leek had indeed brought through an
authentic ghost, because Elizabeth B. in discussing her
research had mentioned only the name Mary Boyd. But in
trance, the ghost speaking through the medium had identi-
fied herself proudly as Mary Elizabeth Boyd. When the
records were rechecked it was discovered that the person
living in the house in 1 868 was Mary E. Boyd. There was
also a William Boyd, evidently the father the ghost had
referred to, who had given her the paper proving her own-
ership and rights to the house.
I do hope that no one will encounter Miss Mary
Boyd again, for it would seem a pity that she has to hang
around such a long time just to prove that the house was,
after all, hers.
» 100
The Haunted Ranch at
Newbury Park, California
Mrs. H. IS a remarkable lady, who had spent most of her
life in the little town of Newbury Park, California, which is
north of Los Angeles. Newbury Park has a population of
about 1 5,000 people and its major claim to fame is its
Stagecoach Inn, which was once used as a stopover when
the stagecoach traveled between Santa Barbara and Los
Angeles, discontinued, however in 1915. The inn was
moved from its old location a few years ago and is now in
a more convenient place, while a major highway goes
through where it once stood. The land around Newbury
Park is mainly ranch land and the houses, consequently,
are ranch-style houses, low, spread out and usually painted
white or gray. The H.s live on part of what is known
locally as the Hays Ranch, which at one time consisted of
hundreds of acres of farm land. They own two-and-a-half
acres and a small but comfortable ranch house in the mid-
dle of it. Around 1920, it appears, there was a family living
in the house that had a small girl who accidentally
drowned in either a well or a cesspool on the property.
Other than that, Mrs. H. was not aware of any tragedies
having occurred in the immediate area of her house.
Mrs. H. had originally contacted me, explaining that
she had problems with ghosts, without going too much into
details. Now, I questioned her about the goings-on in the
house.
“There have been three occurrences that I have not
mentioned, over the past two months. The most recent was
a weird ‘singing’ ‘whistling’ noise which I heard a few
night ago. I am reasonably sure this was not my imagina-
tion, as my son David has told me of hearing such a noise
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
about two months ago while he was in the bathroom. He
was frightened, but no one else heard it and I could not
imagine what it could be other than a little air in the pipes.
But when I heard what I assume was the same noise it was
while I sat up alone in our living room-kitchen.
“The other thing that happened was the day I saw
the ghost. I knew from the voice that it was a boy of about
ten or twelve. But this day (in late January) while I was
washing the windows, I saw through the window pane
clearly standing by the fence a young boy and you could see
the fence through him ! It was in the morning and that side
of the house was shaded but the yard behind it was in bril-
liant sunlight. I wasn’t sure I could believe my eyes and
when I turned around he was gone.
“Another hard-to-explain event that happened was
one evening at least a month ago — maybe more — when my
husband and I were sitting in the living room and the
room was fairly quiet. We both heard a sound that could
only be called a whimpering near the door. I had heard this
several months before but no one else had.”
Apparently the H.’s children also had some experi-
ences in the house. "David told me about some misty
shapes he had seen, and said the other kids also saw them
some time ago, in their bedroom. He said it was dark in
the room and these ‘things’ were light. Near the ceiling he
saw three misty shapes and they seemed to be looking
down at the children. They were vague but he thought
they were people. He called me and when I came in and
opened the door they disappeared.”
“The ‘shapeless, horrible’ thing the kids saw was on
my mind for a while after that, and when I saw something
in there later on, I was not sure it was not subconscious
suggestion on my part and I never mentioned it to anyone,
but it was about three weeks later that it happened. The
children were insisting upon the door being left open and I
allowed it for several weeks after they saw this thing. The
night I saw something, the door was, therefore, open. I was
sitting across from the door by the windows and looked up
472
to see a misty, whitish shape in the doorway next to the par-
tition and partly over it — above floor level, some six feet I
would say.
“There hasn’t been much else happening around here
recently other than my hearing outdoors, apparently on the
hill behind the clothesline, a whimpering sound, quite
loud, that lasted for several minutes at a time.
"Also, yesterday afternoon, my daughter and I were
sitting on the patio and we both heard distinctly two car
doors slam on the other side of the house. She went to see
if the truck doors had slammed shut, but they were both
open and there were no cars out there.’’
Who the ghost or ghosts at Newbury Park are, I do
not know. It may well be that the H.s are simply picking
up memories from the past, at least in part. But the white
shapes floating into the room are hard to explain on that
basis. In an area which has been lived in for such a long
time as this area, tragedies are bound to occur without
being recorded. Perhaps someone from the past is still
around, wondering who the newcomers are in what used to
be his place.
» 101
The Narrowsburgh Ghost
Narrowsburgh, New York lies about four hours from
New York City on the Delaware River, where Pennsylva-
nia, New York, and New Jersey meet. This is a beautiful
and somewhat remote area of the country, with large, open
acreage and beautiful trees, and the houses, mainly farms,
can be very isolated. The house in question is directly on
the Delaware and had been owned by the parents of the
lady who contacted me originally to investigate it, Mrs. M.
of Long Island. Prior to the parents’ acquisition of the
house in 1942, it had been vacant for seven years and was
in a run-down condition. However, it has since been
restored and is used mainly on weekends by Mrs. M. and
her family. The house itself is about two-hundred years old
and much restructuring has gone on over the years. How-
ever, the foundation and the outside walls are intact and
are exactly as they were when the building was first
erected. On many occasions, the ghost of a woman has
been seen just outside the house as though she were about
to enter. This happens usually at the same hour, and with
some regularity. Both Mrs. M. and her husband have actu-
ally watched for her and seen her. Also, the sound of a
door closing by itself has been heard for years and Mrs. M.
has been awakened during the night many times with the
feeling that someone is watching her.
One night in 1971, Mrs. M., her husband and two
friends attempted a seance. For a few minutes, the room
seemed to change to what it once was and Mrs. M. found
The haunted ranch at Newbury Park
herself crying uncontrollably without reason. She had the
feeling that she was experiencing something that happened
to a woman in 1793. In addition to the woman in distress,
Mrs. M. felt a male presence as well, but from a different
time period.
I asked for additional information about the house
and learned that it was built in 1752 by Dutch settlers.
The deed itself goes back to 1861 . Narrowsburgh can be
reached over Route 97. In addition, Mrs. M. explained that
she had the increasing feeling that a skeleton may still be
buried in the basement, but has so far not tried to dig for
it. The M.’s children have also seen the apparition of the
man, and Mrs. M.'s mother has felt very uneasy in certain
parts of the house. Since they felt that the ghost was fright-
ening the children, they got in touch with me in the hope I
would visit and exorcise either one of the presences in their
house. I agreed to visit the house in the company of my
psychic friend, Ingrid Beckman, who had been an excellent
medium on a number of earlier occasions. We went
through the house, room by room, hoping that she would
pick up some of the puzzles of the past. Within moments,
Ingrid picked up the impressions of a man who was staying
on after death in the northeast bedroom. Ingrid felt that
the house once belonged to this man, perhaps fifty or sixty
years ago, and the reason for his continued presence was
that he didn’t realize he was dead and considered the peo-
ple he saw in his house as intruders. This is a common
misconception among ghosts.
The Narrowsburgh Ghost
473
We then went into the cellar, an area in which Mrs.
M. had felt some of the strongest vibrations. It was then
that we discovered a secret room, almost concealed by the
rough stones of the basement. What was this room used
for, I wondered? Today it is used as a coal bin. Ingrid felt
that someone was buried in that area. Now Ingrid got the
entire picture more clearly. “I feel it is a woman about
twenty-five years old and she was looking for some man to
come to her, but he didn’t show up and somehow she left
the room and went down here where she was entombed.
Whether she was murdered or went in there to hide, I can
not say. I feel there was a defense of the house and I sense
a man with a very long rifle. This happened a long time
ago. I think the woman died in this little room, either she
was hiding or she couldn’t get out and died there.”
The house in Narrowsburgh is privately owned, and
I doubt very much that visitors would be welcome.
* 102
The Ghost in the Pink Bedroom
The AREA AROUND Charlottesville, Virginia, abounds
with haunted houses, which is not surprising since this was
at one time the hub of the emerging young American
republic. There was a time when the American government
had its capital, if only briefly, in Charlottesville and prior
to the Revolution, the large landowners had built many
magnificent manor houses which still dot the area. Much
history and much tragedy has occurred in some of them,
so it is not surprising to find that the reports of strange
goings-on in the area are comparatively plentiful. One such
house is the property of Colonel Clark Lawrence and his
family, known as Castle Hill. It is considered one of the
historical landmarks of the area and while it is not open to
visitors, especially those looking for the ghost, it is conceiv-
able that prior arrangements with the owners could be
made for a student of history to have a brief visit. If this is
diplomatically handled, the chances of being allowed to
visit are good.
The main portion of the house was built by Dr.
Thomas Walker in 1765, but additions were made in 1820.
The original portion was made of wood, while the addi-
tions were of brick. These later changes executed under the
direction of the new owner, Senator William Cabell Rives,
gave Castle Hill its majestic appearance. Senator Rives had
been American ambassador to France and was much influ-
enced in his tastes by French architecture. This is clear
when one sees the entrance hall with its twelve-foot ceilings
and the large garden laid out in the traditional French
manner.
On the ground floor, to the rear, there is a suite of
rooms which has a decidedly feminine flavor. This is not
surprising since they were the private quarters of a later
owner, Amelie Rives, an author and poet whose body lies
buried in the family plot on the grounds.
In this suite there is a bedroom called the pink bed-
room, which is the center of ghostly activities. Whenever
guests have been assigned to sleep in this room, they
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
Castle Hill, Virginia
invariably complain of disturbances during the night.
Writer Julian Green, a firm skeptic, left the next morning
in great hurry. Amelie Rives herself spoke of a strange per- I
fume in the room, which did not match any of her own
scents. The ghostly manifestations go back a long time, but |
no one knows exactly who is attached to the room.
From the testimony of various guests, however, it
appears that the ghost is a woman, not very old, rather
pretty, and at times playful. Her intentions seem to be to
frighten people using the room. Curiously, however, a few
guests have slept in it without being aroused by uncanny
noises or footsteps. Legend has it that those the lady ghost I
likes may sleep peacefully in "her” bedroom, while those
she does not like must be frightened out of their wits.
I visited the bedroom in the company of sensitive
Virginia Cloud, who had been there many times before.
Curiously, I felt the vibrations of another presence, a fine,
almost gentle person, but I could not see anyone. Never-
theless, I realized that I was not alone in the room, and
Miss Cloud also felt that we were being observed by the
unseen former owner of the place.
474
During the Revolutionary War, British General
Banastre Tarleton and his troops occupied Castle Hill. The
then owner, Dr. Walker, served them breakfast on June 4,
1781, and in the course of his hospitality delayed them as
long as he could so that Jefferson, then in nearby Char-
lottesville, could make good his escape from the British.
Whether or not one of the ladies played any significant
part in this delaying action is not known, but I suspect that
there is involvement of this kind connected with the
appearance of the ghostly lady at Castle Hill. It was not
uncommon for the women of the Revolutionary period to
use their charms on the British, in order to further the
cause of the revolution. Several such instances are known,
and it must be said for the gallantry of the British officers,
that they did not mind the intrigues of the American Colo-
nial ladies at all.
The haunted “pink bedroom”
» 103
The Poughkeepsie Rectory Ghost
A FEW YEARS AGO Bishop James Pike made news by pub-
licly declaring that he had spoken with his dead son James
in a seance arranged on Canadian television with the late
medium Arthur Ford. Not much later he himself became
news when he died near the Dead Sea, having run out of
gas and water in the desert. A controversial figure both in
life and afterlife, Bishop James Pike, one-time Bishop of
California, and the author of a number of remarkable
books, was no stranger to psychic phenomena.
During my work with him, I got to know the Christ
Church rectory at Poughkeepsie pretty well. In 1947 Pike
had been offered the position of rector, and he spent sev-
eral years there. Christ Church is a large, beautiful, almost
modern Episcopal church. The altar with its candles indi-
cates what are generally called "high church” attitudes, that
is, closer to Roman Catholicism. The outside of the church
has remained turn -of- the -century, and so has the rectory
attached immediately the church itself. There is also a
small library between the rectory and the church.
I asked permission of the rector of Christ Church to
visit, and in July 1968 took medium Ethel Johnson Meyers
there. She relived practically the entire incident Bishop
Pike had reported to me privately earlier.
What had occurred during the two-and-a-half years
of James Pike’s residency at Poughkeepsie was not unusual
as hauntings go. To him it seemed merely puzzling, and he
made no attempt to follow up on it in the way I did when
I brought Mrs. Meyers to the scene. Pike had taken over
his position at Poughkeepsie, replacing an elderly rector
with diametrically opposed views in church matters. The
former rector had died shortly afterward.
Pike soon found that his candles were being blown
out, that doors shut of their own volition, and that objects
The haunted rectory in Poughkeepsie
overhead would move — or seemingly move — when in fact
they did not. All the noises and disturbances did not par-
ticularly upset Bishop Pike. However, on one occasion he
found himself faced with a bat flying about madly in the
library. Knowing that there was no way in or out of the
library except by the door he had just opened, he immedi-
ately closed the door again and went to look for an instru-
ment with which to capture the bat. When he returned and
cautiously opened the door to the library, the bat had dis-
appeared. There is no possible way by which the animal
could have escaped.
Those wishing to visit Poughkeepsie can do so freely,
although the rector may not be too keen to discuss psychic
phenomena.
The Poughkeepsie Rectory Ghost
475
* 104
The Ghost at West Point
So MUCH HISTORY has taken place at the Military Acad-
emy at West Point, which used to be a fortress guarding
the approaches of the Hudson River, it is no surprising
that ghostly apparitions should have also occurred from
time to time.
Four military cadets at the United States Military
Academy saw the apparition of a soldier dressed in eigh-
teenth century cavalry uniform, and according to the wit-
nesses, the apparition seemed luminous and shimmering.
Apparently, the ghost materialized out of the wall and a
closet in room 4714 and on one occasion also from the
middle of the floor. Once it ruffled the bathrobe of a cadet,
and on another occasion it turned on a shower!
As soon as the publicity drew the attention of the
guiding spirits (of the military kind) to the incident, room
4714 was emptied of its inhabitants. The room itself was
then declared off-limits to one and all. Ghosts, of course,
do not obey military authorities. Cadet Captain Keith B.,
however, was willing to discuss it intelligently. “There is
no doubt about it at all,” he said, “the room grew unnatu-
rally cold.” Two weeks before, he and another upperclass-
man spent a night sleeping in the room, their beds
separated by a partition. At about two in the morning
Cadet B’s companion began to shout. He jumped from his
bed and rounded the partition, but he could not see any-
thing special. What he did feel, however, was an icy cold
for which there was no rational explanation.
However, he and his companion weren’t the first ones
to encounter the ghost. Two plebes who occupied room
4714 before them also saw it. The second time the appari-
tion walked out of the bureau that stood about in the mid-
dle of the floor. He heard the plebes shout, and ran into
the room. One of the cadets who actually saw the appari-
tion was able to furnish a drawing. It is the face of a man
with a drooping moustache and a high, old-fashioned cap
surmounted by a feather. It is the uniform of a cavalry
man of about two hundred years ago.
West Point, where an unhappy plebe still walks
West Point has a number of ghostly legends, what
is now the superintendent’s mansion allegedly has a one-
hundred-fifty-year-old ghostly girl, a woman named Molly,
who in life was a sort of camp follower.
Another cadet was taking a shower, prior to moving
into the haunted room on the same floor and on leaving the
shower noticed that his bathrobe was swinging back and
forth on the hook. Since the door was closed and the win-
dow closed, there could be no breeze causing the robe to
move. The building in which this occurred stands on old
grounds; an earlier barrack stood there which has long
since been demolished. Could it be that the ghostly cavalry
man might have died there and been unable to adjust to
his new surroundings?
If you visit West Point, try to find the building that
contains room 4714. Company G-4 is quartered there, and
perhaps someone will help you find the way.
» 105
The Stenton House, Cincinnati
In ONE OF THE QUIETEST and most elegant sections of
old Cincinnati, where ghosts and hauntings are rarely whis-
pered about, stands a lovely Victorian mansion built
around 1850 in what was then a wealthy suburb of the
city.
CHAPTER SIX: This House Is Haunted
476
The house was brought to my attention some years
ago by John S. of Clifton, a descendant of one of the early
Dutch families who settled Cincinnati, and himself a stu-
dent of the paranormal. The owners at that time were the
Stenton family, or rather, of one of the apartments in the
mansion, for it had long been subdivided into a number of
apartments lived in by various people.
Soon after they had taken up residence in the old
house, the Stentons were startled by noises, as if someone
were walking in the hall, and when they checked, there was
never anyone about who could have caused the walking.
The haunted Stenton House — Cincinnati, Ohio
Then, two weeks after they had moved in, and always at
exactly the same time, 2:10 A. M., they would hear the noise
of a heavy object hitting the marble floor — of course there
was nothing that could have caused it.
Shortly thereafter, while Mrs. Stenton and her father
were doing some research work in the flat, someone softly
called out her name, Marilyn. Both heard it. What really
upset them was the sound of arguing voices coming from
the area of the ceiling in their bedroom: Mrs. Stenton had
the impression that there was a group of young girls up
there!
But the most dramatic event was to transpire a couple
of weeks later. Someone had entered the bedroom, and as
she knew she was alone, her family being in other parts of
the house, she was frightened, especially when she saw
what appeared to be a misty figure — as soon as she had
made eye contact with it, the figure shot out of the room,
through the French doors leading to a studio, and whilst
doing so, the misty shape managed to knock the Venetian
blinds on the doors, causing them to sway back and forth!
Shortly before I visited Cincinnati to deal with this
case, Mrs. Stenton had another eerie experience. It was
winter and had been snowing the night before. When Mrs.
Stenton stepped out onto their porch, she immediately
noticed a fresh set of footprints on the porch, heading away
from the house!
The house was built in 1850, originally as a large pri-
vate home; later it became a girls’ school and much later
became an apartment house of sorts. The Stenton ’s apart -
TheStenton House, Cincinnati
477
The study where footsteps were being heard
ment is the largest in the house, encompassing seven
rooms.
When I looked into the case I discovered some addi-
tional details. In 1880, a young man of the Henry family
had committed suicide in the house by shooting himself,
and after the family moved, the house could not be sold for
a long time. It became known as being haunted and was
boarded up. Finally, a girls’ school, the Ealy School,
bought it in 1900.
Other tenants had also encountered unusual phenom-
ena, ranging from "presences,” to noises of objects hitting
floors, and footsteps following one around when no one
was, in fact, doing so. Even the dog owned by one of the
tenants would under no condition enter the area of the dis-
turbances and would put up a fearsome howl.
But the item most likely to have an answer to the
goings-on came to me by talking to some of the oldsters in
the area: one of the young girls in the school was said to
have hanged herself upstairs, above the Stenton ’s apart-
ment. Was it her ghost or that of young Henry who could
not leave well enough alone?
» 106
The Ghost at El Centro
WHEN Mr. and Mrs. C. moved from France to Los
Angeles in the 1960s, they did not figure on moving into a
haunted house, but that is exactly what they did. With
their daughters, they took an old one-story house built in
the Spanish style, on El Centro Avenue, a quiet section of
the city.
One of the daughters, Lilliane had married shortly
before their arrival, and the second daughter, Nicole,
decided to have her own place, so it was Mr. and Mrs. C.
and their third daughter, Martine, who actually lived in the
house. The dining room had been turned into a bedroom
for Martine, leaving the master bedroom to the parents.
On her first night in the house, Mrs. C., who is very
psychic, had the distinct impression there was someone
observing her, someone she could not see. Martine, too,
felt very uncomfortable but the business of settling in took
precedence over their concern for the next few days.
However, strong impressions of a presence continued
night after night. They were never “alone.” There was a
noise in the kitchen, and Mrs. C. thought her husband had
gotten up in the middle of the night to get something — but
there he was, fast asleep in bed. Instead, a strange man was
standing between their two beds, and worse yet, she could
see right through him! She gave out a startling cry and the
apparition vanished instantly.
She discussed the matter with her daughters who had
lived in the apartment before their arrival: it then became
clear that the girls, too, had been bothered by ghostly man-
ifestations. They had tried to deal with it by lighting a can-
dle every night. But apparently it did not help at all.
During the following days, the hauntings continued.
The girls, too, had seen a male ghost between the beds.
The ghost house on El Centro, Los Angeles
But now the mother saw a woman’s apparition, and it was
decided to seek the help of a competent medium. This
turned out to be Brenda Crenshaw, who made contact with
the entities. She reported that the “problem” consisted of
the fact a young couple who had formerly occupied the
apartment, had committed suicide in it.
When the family checked this out with the appropri-
ate records, it turned out to be correct. But now what? The
idea of continuing to share the place with the ghost couple
was not at all appealing to them. Mrs. C. decided to pray
for the release of the ghosts and did so relentlessly for sev-
eral weeks. One night, there was the young man again, as
if to acknowledge her efforts. Then he vanished, and the
apartment has been quiet ever since.
m 107
The Ghostly Stagecoach Inn
Not FAR FROM Ventura, at Thousand Oaks, a few
yards back from the main road, stands an old stagecoach
inn, now run as a museum; between 1952 and 1965, while
in the process of being restored to its original appearance,
it also served as a gift shop under the direction of a Mr.
and Mrs. M. who had sensed the presence of a female
ghost in the structure.
The house has nineteen rooms and an imposing
frontage with columns running from the floor to the roof.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
There is a balcony in the central portion, and all windows
have shutters, in the manner of the middle nineteenth cen-
tury. Surrounded by trees until a few years ago, it has been
moved recently to a new position to make room for the
main road running through here. Nevertheless, its grandeur
has not been affected by the move.
During the stagecoach days, bandits were active in
this area. The inn had been erected because of the Butter-
field Mail route, which was to have gone through the
Conejo Valley on the way to St. Louis. The Civil War
halted this plan, and the routing was changed to go
through the Santa Clara Valley.
I investigated the stagecoach inn with Mrs. Gwen
Hinzie and Sybil Leek. Up the stairs to the left of the stair-
case Sybil noticed one of the particularly haunted rooms.
478
isWsi m
Ghostly Stagecoach Inn — Thousand Oaks,
California
She felt that a man named Pierre Devon was somehow
connected with the building. Since the structure was still in
a state of disrepair, with building activities going on all
around us, the task of walking up the stairs was not only a
difficult one but also somewhat dangerous, for we could
not be sure that the wooden structure would not collapse
from our weight. We stepped very gingerly. Sybil seemed
to know just where to turn as if she had been there before.
Eventually, we ended up in a little room to the left of the
stairwell. It must have been one of the smaller rooms, a
“single” in today’s terms.
Sybil complained of being cold all over. The man,
Pierre Devon, had been killed in that room, she insisted,
sometime between 1882 and 1889.
She did not connect with the female ghost. However,
several people living in the area have reported the presence
of a tall stranger who could only be seen out of the corner
of an eye, never for long. Pungent odors, perfume of a par-
ticularly heavy kind, also seem to waft in and out of the
structure.
Like inns in general, this one may have more undis-
covered ghosts hanging on to the spot. Life in nineteenth-
century wayside inns did not compare favorably with life in
today’s Hilton. Some people going to these stagecoach inns
for a night’s rest never woke up to see another day.
* 108
Mrs. Dickey’s Ghostly Companions
There are two Viennas I’ve been to: One, the better-
known city, is in Austria, and I was born there; the other
is in Virginia, right outside Washington, D.C., and it con-
sists mainly of old homes, lovely gardens, shady streets,
and a kind of atmosphere that makes one wonder if there
really is a bustling world capital nearby. Especially in the
spring, Vienna, Virginia, is a jewel of a place. You ride
down broad, shady roads, look at houses — even mansions
— that have been in the same hands perhaps for genera-
tions, see children playing in the streets as if there weren’t
any cars buzzing by.
I heard about Mrs. Dickey from a mutual friend in
Washington. Nicole d’Amercourt, who is now Mrs. Bruce
Jackson, had met her and heard about her disturbing expe-
riences with ghosts. Nicole thought that perhaps I could
help Mrs. Dickey either get rid of her ghosts, or at least
come to terms with them, I readily agreed, and on May 1 1 ,
1968, we drove out to Vienna.
When we arrived at the Dickey house, I was immedi-
ately impressed by the comparative grandeur of its appear-
ance. Although not a very large house, it nevertheless gave
the impression of a country manor — the way it was set
back from the road amid the trees, with a view towards a
somewhat wild garden in the rear. A few steps led up to
the front entrance. After Nicole had parked the car, we
entered the house and were immediately greeted by a
lively, petite young woman with sparkling eyes and the
aura of determination around her.
We entered a large living room that led to a passage
into a dining room and thence into the kitchen. In the cen-
ter of the ground floor is a staircase to another floor, and
from the second floor, on which most of the bedrooms are
located, there is a narrow staircase to a garret that contains
another bedroom.
The house was beautifully furnished in late colonial
style, and antiques had been set out in the proper places
with a display of taste not always met these days.
After I had inspected the house superficially from top
to bottom, I asked Mrs. Dickey to sit down with me so we
could go over the situation that had caused her to ask for
my help.
We sat in comfortable chairs in the downstairs living
room, and I began to question her about the house.
* * *
“Mrs. Dickey, how long have you lived here?”
“About two-and-a-half years. Myself and five chil-
dren live here now. And we have two young foreign stu-
dents living in with us now; they’ve been here about a
month."
“How many rooms are there in the house?”
“There are about twenty.”
Mrs. Dickey’s Ghostly Companions
479
“About twenty? You’re not sure?”
“Well, twenty. Real estate-wise we don't count the
bathrooms, but I do.”
"Yes, and the closets. Don’t forget the large closets.”
“I don’t count closets.”
“Did you know much about the house at the time
you moved in?”
“Not much. Although we were told, before we pur-
chased it, that it was haunted.”
“By whom? I mean told by whom, not haunted by
whom.”
"By several people. The real-estate woman mentioned
it, but laughed about it, and I was intrigued. She said the
house has quite a history, and there are many tales about
what went on here. After we moved in, more people told
us. I suspect they were trying to worry us a bit.”
"What sort of tales did you hear before you moved
in?”
“Just that the house was haunted.”
“No details?”
"No.”
“What was the first thing that made you think that
there was something to these tales?”
“I was about the last member of the family to be
aware that something was going on, but I had heard
repeated stories from the children. I was sleeping in one of
the children’s rooms upstairs one night, and was awakened
by heavy footsteps — not in the room but in the next room.
I wondered who was up, and I heard them walking back
and forth and back and forth. I finally went back to sleep,
but I was kind of excited. The next morning I asked who
was up during the night, and no one had been up.”
"Who was in the rooms in which the footsteps were
heard?”
“A six-year-old child was in one room, and my
daughter, then eighteen, was in the other.”
"In the room in which you thought the footsteps
occurred, was there only the six-year-old child?”
"Yes, but the wall was where the old staircase went
up. It’s now closed off, but the staircase is still there, and I
had the feeling it was either in the stairwell, or in the next
room. But it felt as if it were right beside me.”
“Have there been many structural changes in the
house?”
“Yes.”
“Did the steps sound like a man’s or a woman’s?”
"A man’s.”
“How long did it go on?”
“At least for ten minutes.”
“Didn’t it worry you that some burglar or a prowler
might be in there?”
“No. We have dogs, and I thought it was probably a
spirit."
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“Do you mean you just accepted it like that without
worrying about it?"
“I was a little frightened because I don’t want to be
touched, and I don’t want to look up and see someone look-
ing at me, but I don’t care if they walk around !”
“This was the first thing you heard. What was the
next thing?”
“I was sleeping in my son Douglas’ room again, and
I was having a very frightening dream. I don’t remember
what the dream was, but I was terrified. Suddenly I awoke
and looked at the wall. Before I had gone off to sleep, I
had noticed that the room had been sort of flooded with
panels of light, and there were two shafts of light side by
side, right directly at the wall. I sat right up in bed and I
looked up and there was a shadow of a head. I don’t know
whether it was a man’s or a woman’s, because there were
no features, but there was a neck, there was hair, it was the
size of a head, and it was high up on the wall. It could
have been a woman with short, bushy hair. It was so real
that I thought it was Joyce, my daughter, who was about
eighteen then. I said, ‘Joyce,’ and I started speaking to it.
Then I realized it was waving a little bit. I became fright-
ened. After about ten minutes of saying, ‘Joyce, Joyce, who
is it? Who is there?’ it moved directly sideways, into the
darkness and into the next panel of light, and by then I
was crying out, ‘Joyce, Joyce, where are you?’ I wanted
someone to see it with me.”
"You still couldn’t see any features?”
“No features at all.”
“No body?”
“No body.”
“Just a head?"
“Well, that’s where the shaft of light ended. It was
about that long, and it included the head and the neck, and
nothing else showed because that was the end of the light
on the wall. Then Joyce came in and I said, ‘Joyce, look
quickly,’ and it was still there. But as I stared at this thing,
it went out. It moved directly sideways and went.”
“Did she see it too?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her when she gets
here. She was quite excited. The next night we tried to get
the panels of light to get back on the wall again. But we
couldn’t ever get the two panels of light there, and we
don’t know what they were.”
“Do you think these panels of light had anything to
do with it? Were they from the moonlight or were they
part of this apparition?”
“That’s what I don’t know, but I would suspect that
it had to have something to do with the thing that was
there because we could never get the light back again.”
“Was there any change in the atmosphere? Any
chills?”
“I was extremely aware that there was something
there."
"Did you feel cold?”
480
"Yes.”
"What was the next event that happened after that?”
"In 1967 we decided to get a Ouija board. We had
some friends who knew this house well, and said, ‘You
ought to work a board and find out what was there.’ They
owned this house for about ten or fifteen years; their names
are Dean and Jean Vanderhoff.”
“Have they had any experiences here?”
“Oh yes, definitely.”
“When did they tell you about them”
‘‘After we noticed things.”
“They are not here today, so you can briefly sum up
what their experiences were.”
“Well, on several occasions they heard a woman talk-
ing in the kitchen when there was no other woman in the
house. They heard the voice, and they also heard the heavy
garage doors bang up and down at night, with great noise.”
“What did the woman say to them?”
“Nothing to them. They were upstairs in bed, but
they heard a woman talking. Also, very often they heard
everything in the kitchen being banged, and thought all the
china in the kitchen was being broken. A great clattering
and banging,”
“Now, you decided to tell the Vanderhoffs about your
experiences?”
"Yes. We worked the Ouija board the night after I
had seen this ‘thing’ on the wall. We immediately got the
names of people. There was a Martha and a Morgan, who
communicated with us.”
“What do they tell you?"
"Martha said that it was she who was appearing on
the wall, because one child in the next room had fallen out
of bed, and Martha loves children, and tried to help. And
Martha said dear things about me — that I have a big job,
and it’s hard for me to handle the children, and she’s here
to help.”
“Does she give you any evidence of her existence as a
person?”
“I think she and Morgan are brother and sister and
they’re both children of Sarah. And Sarah was the first wife
of Homer Leroy Salisbury who built this house in 1865.”
Did you know at the time you worked the board that
this was a fact, that they had children by these names?”
“No, but we had been told that Sarah is buried here
in the yard somewhere with two children. I’ve searched the
records and I can’t find the names of these children. I
don’t know for sure whether Martha and Morgan are these
two."
"But yet you do now know that there were such peo-
ple connected with this house.”
“There were two children and there was Sarah. But
we don’t know the names of the children.”
“But you do know there was a Sarah.”
“There definitely was a Sarah.”
“Now, when did you find that out? That there was a
Sarah?”
“Someone must have told me, and then I did find a
record about it.”
“Was it before or after the first Ouija board session?”
“No, we got Sarah, the name, on the board; we didn’t
know.”
“You didn’t know what it meant. It was afterwards,
then, that you discovered there was a Sarah connected with
this house. And she's buried on the grounds?”
“Yes.”
"Still is?”
"Some people say they know where, but we don’t.”
“You haven’t found it?”
“No. I’ve looked.”
"What about the house now?”
"Homer Leroy Salisbury built it in 1865, and struc-
tural changes were made in 1939, and there were some
since then. Last summer I decided that I would enlarge the
terrace because a lot of stones were here. We used all the
stones that were here and did it ourselves.
“It was the night after we started tearing it all out
and putting new footing down and all. It was the night
after, two of my children, Lelia and Doug, had an experi-
ence that we thought was because we were making this big
change. We worked the board every time we had some-
thing happen. But Martha and Morgan came and said they
were not unhappy with the terrace.”
“What was the next visual or auditory experience,
apart from the Ouija board?”
"I have had no other, except a month ago I felt, but
did not see, the apparition. That night, we had a big party
here. A twenty-two-year-old girl named Nancy Camp
offered to work the board. We had never met before. She
and I sat at the board and started working it.”
"And what happened?”
“The interesting thing was that immediately a new
spirit came. His name was Adam, and he gave his last
name — it began with a B, something like Bullock. He said
he’d been slaughtered in the 1800s by Beatrice. Beatrice
had killed both him and his daughter. He needed help. We
asked, ‘Would you appear?’ He agreed to appear to the two
of us only. So we went to the back room, closed the door,
and sat there.”
“Did you actually see him?”
“I didn’t, but Nancy did. I watched her as she saw
him. She knocked me over backwards and the chair went in
the air, then she knocked her chair down, threw the board
in the air, and became absolutely terrified, and finally ran
out the door.”
“Who was this Adam?”
“I don't know.”
“Was he connected with this house?”
"I don’t know. But he appeared again, and she
watched him for at least five minutes, and she described
him.”
Mrs. Dickey’s Ghostly Companions
481
“Since then, have you had any further disturbances?”
“Yes, I have. Since then it has been very difficult for
me to sleep in my room at night. I’m very much aware
that there’s something there, in my bedroom. I definitely
feel a presence.”
"Is it a man or a woman?”
"Well, we worked the board and we were told it was
Adam. I’d been compelled to look at the chaise lounge in
the corner, and I didn’t want to because I didn’t want to
be frightened. So I made myself not look at it, but I was
terribly drawn to it, and when we worked the board the
next day Sarah came and said, ‘Adam was in your room,
and I was in the chaise lounge, and I was there to protect
you.”'
"You said earlier a lot of history happened here. You
mean, on the grounds? The house is only a hundred years
old, but prior to that there was something here. Do you
know anything about it?”
“Many people have said there was a house, the Town
Hall, standing here that was occupied during the Civil
War. But it was riddled with bullets, and it was burned
down during the Civil War. This was a camping ground
for both the Union and the Confederate armies. Slaves are
buried in the yard — ten or twelve people have told me
that.”
“What about prior to the Civil War period?”
“I was told that there were tunnels here. This was a
dairy farm and there’s a tunnel from the barn, a walking
tunnel. There were said to be tunnels from the basement,
but we have found nothing.”
“Does this sum up your own firsthand experiences?”
"There is one more thing. This has happened to me
many times in my bedroom, while I was in bed. Early in
the morning I hear heavy footsteps, at least twelve of them,
walking, overhead. But there is no room to walk over my
bedroom!”
"You mean, on the roof?”
"No, in the attic.”
"Is it a male or female footstep?”
"I would think a man.”
“Are these similar to the footsteps you heard when
you were in your room and didn’t get up?”
“Yes.”
"Have you had experiences that I would call ESP
experiences before you moved to this house?”
“No, but I’ve got one more thing to tell you. On a
very hot Summer night in June of 1967 I couldn't sleep. I
woke up and went to my daughter’s empty room, which is
the little eleven-by-eleven top cupola. I had gone up there
because I thought it would be breezy, and I tried to sleep.
I was soon awakened by crying, whimpering, and moaning.
I got up and walked around a couple of times, and it
stopped. Then I went back to bed. About five times I had
to get up because I heard moaning and crying. Finally I
said to myself, 'Well, I’ve got two puppy dogs, it must be
a dog.’ I walked all the way down and went into the
kitchen, but the dogs were sound asleep. I went back to
bed in my own room. I had no sooner gotten into bed,
when the phone rang. My daughter, then eighteen, had
been in a very serious automobile accident. My husband
then slept with ear plugs, and he would never have noticed
the phone. I thought, I wouldn’t have even been down
here, had I not been awakened by the moaning and crying!”
“Was it your daughter’s voice you heard?”
“Yes — she said she had been left with the most
severely injured girl alone on the road, while the others
went for help, and that the girl was crying and they were
moaning; they were all crying and whimpering.”
"Who else has had experiences in this house?”
"A friend, Pat Hughes, saw a woman here one night.
Pat was here with a man named Jackson McBride, and
they were talking, and at 3 o’clock I left and went to bed.
At about 4 o’clock in the morning, Pat heard noises the
kitchen and thought that I had gotten up. She heard some-
one walking back and forth. Pat was over there, and said,
‘Come on in, Lucy, stop being silly. Come in and talk to
us.’ And this apparition walked in, and then Pat said, ‘It’s
not Lucy’ — she realized that the ghost looked similar to
me. It was tall and slim, had long dark hair, and had a red
robe on and something like a shawl collar, and her hand
was holding the collar. Pat was exited and said, ‘My God,
it’s not Lucy! Who is it?' She said to this man, ‘Come and
look,’ but he was afraid. Then Pat turned to go back and
try to communicate, but it had vanished! Later, they heard
a great rattle of things in the kitchen.”
“How long ago did that happen?”
“About six months.”
“Has anyone else seen or heard anything here?”
“One night, Joe Camp, Nancy Camp’s brother, saw a
shadowy woman in white. On two different occasion.”
“Anything else?”
“A year ago when we came home around 1 1 P.M. we
found two of the children still up and frightened. I’ve
never seen Douglas and Lelia so terrified.”
“And what did they tell you?”
"I’d like Lelia to tell it to you herself.”
I turned to Lelia, who was ten at the time, and
encouraged her to speak.
“I was sleeping in bed,” she began, “when I saw
something go past the window. I said, ‘Oh it’s nothing, it’s
probably just the trees.’ Then my brother saw it pass his
window. He came out and we just started running around
the house until mother came home.”
“What did it look like?”
“Sort of blurry — ”
“Did you see a face?”
"No. Grayish. Sort of fuzzy. And a crinkling noise.”
“And how long did it last?”
"About three or five minutes.”
CHAPTER SIX: This House Is Haunted
482
“We found a ring with three rubies in it, the night
after this woman in red appeared,” Mrs. Dickey interjected
at this point. “She found it in her room. A lovely gold
ring.”
“Was it there before?”
"We never saw it before. Do you believe in animal
ghosts?” Mrs. Dickey asked thoughtfully. “We had eleven
people here once, in the living room and we were working
the Ouija board one afternoon. Suddenly, and for no reason
at all, we heard a big horse run across the front porch! We
stared out the windows, but saw absolutely nothing. Still,
we heard it; every one of us heard it!”
But Lelia had something more to tell. “A year-and-a-
half ago we had a farewell party for my sister’s fiance — my
other sister, Joyce — and on the side of the porch there was
a coiled head.”
“A head?”
“A head. Face. Coiled — like coiled — in a lot of wires.
It had features too.”
“Male or female?”
“Man.”
“How long did it last?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“And how did it go away?”
“It just went — twee. Another time, my sister Joyce
and I went down into the basement because we thought
our father was there. We saw a coat hanging on the door,
and all of a sudden this coat just moved. But our father
wasn't down there.”
“Is there any particular area of the house that is most
involved in these activities? Or is it all over the house?” I
asked Mrs. Dickey now.
“Under the staircase!” Lelia volunteered.
“If you were to draw a straight line from the base-
ment to those upstairs rooms, what would you hit?”
“The basement, the stairwell, and the room upstairs,
definitely; if you had to draw.”
“To your knowledge, what was the upstairs’ use?
Who lived there in the old days? Were there small rooms
up there?”
“There were small rooms, yes.”
“Servants’ quarters?”
“I doubt it. I know there were servants’ houses
around here — this was more or less the manor house.
There were other slave quarters.”
“So these were just small rooms on the top floor.”
“Yes.”
“What about the little room under the cupola?”
“That’s where I had another experience,” Mrs.
Dickey exclaimed. "I was awakened at night, about 3
o’clock in the morning. Patty was out on a date, but I had
told her to get in early. I heard heavy footsteps going up
those old, tiny, narrow stairs to Patty’s room. I called out,
‘Patty, are you just getting in?’ She didn’t answer, and I
got annoyed. I thought, why isn’t she answering me and
why is she making so much noise. So I went racing up the
stairs and pulled down the covers, and she'd been sound
asleep for hours. Another girl was with her, and they were
both asleep, and I had frightened them. But the noise was
so loud and so apparent, you could hear the leaning on the
banister, every foot on the stair — ”
“Was it like the other footsteps, the male footsteps
that you heard?”
“Yes. Slow, methodical, steady, heavy footsteps.”
“Did it sound as if somebody had trouble walking
up?”
“No. Just walking up.”
“As it is, we have two personalities to deal with, a
woman and a man. Is there anything known about the
house involving tragedy?”
“Not that I know of; I haven’t been able to find it
out. I had a maid about two months ago and she said, ‘I
haven’t been in this place in years, but my uncle had been
riding on a horse, and the horse reared and threw him up
and hanged him in a tree.’ And she pointed the tree out to
me.”
“Because the horse got frightened?”
“Threw him up in the air and he was hanged to
death in the tree.”
“What about that door in the wall? What is the his-
tory of that door?”
“A seventy -year -old woman has come here repeatedly
to visit. She says she was born in this house; her name is
Susan Richmond. She told me that when guests came, and
the people in the house were in their aprons and wanted to
get upstairs quickly and change, they would scoot up
through the little door.”
“This staircase was here from the beginning? Where
does it lead to?”
“It's boarded over now, but it connected where the
stairs are upstairs.”
* * *
I finally questioned Joyce Dickey about her experi-
ences in the house. Joyce, twenty, had been in the house
with her mother from the beginning, two-and-a-half years
ago.
“You’ve had some experiences with your sister?”
“Yes. It was in the basement.”
“Have you had any spontaneous experiences?”
“I would sit in the dining room, and all of a sudden
it would get really cold. I could feel a presence. One night
we were listening to the record player when there was a
sound like a huge waterfall — right by the back entrance.
First, it sounded like water dripping down, and then it
became like a big waterfall.”
“You mean it sounded like it.”
“Yes, sounded like it.”
"Was there anything there?”
"No.”
Mrs. Dickey’s Ghostly Companions
483
“Your sister said something about a coat in the
basement.”
“When we had first moved in here, I had to go down
to the basement. My father’s coat was hanging on the door,
and it was kind of swinging. I just thought my father had
gone down into the basement. I opened the door and
started to go down. There was this figure, supposedly my
father, in front of me; I could just barely see a man’s fig-
ure, walking down in front of me. I got down and turned
on the light and looked around. My father wasn’t there.”
“But you saw a man?”
“Well — very faint.”
"Did you see his face?”
"No — it was just the back, going down in front of
me.”
"Anything else that I ought to know?”
"I thought the last seance we had stirred things up.”
“In which way?”
“The dogs were in the basement, and they started to
get upset, so I took them outside. One of them I couldn’t
get — she ran away, and I couldn’t get her into the kennel.
But I got the other two in, and came back into the house.
There was a noise in the kitchen, like somebody clinking
against the pots and pans, and banging around. In the
basement there was the sound of a man walking. Then the
sounds stopped, and then they started up again, and it was
dragging something along the basement floor — sounded
like a big sick of potatoes. And then the dogs started bark-
ing really furiously. This was last winter.”
"Did you hear the horse, out front here?”
“Yes, I did. We were working with the Ouija board,
when a huge horse just went clomping across the porch.”
“On the wood, you mean?”
“On the wood! He just went clomping — ! Like he
was trotting. On the porch.”
“And did you look to see if there was a horse?”
"Yes. It wasn’t one of our horses.”
"Where are your horses kept?”
“In the back.”
"There wasn’t any chance of one of them having got-
ten loose?”
“No. It was a big horse, and our little pony couldn’t
have made that much noise.”
I thought of the man who had been "hanged” by his
horse, then turned my attention to Patty Dickey. Patty was
almost eighteen.
"I haven’t really had any experiences,” she explained
and smiled somewhat embarrassed. "Only one time, when
my mother saw a figure in my little brother’s room. That
same night I woke up from a sound sleep and I felt some-
thing was in my room.”
* * *
CHAPTER SIX: This House Is Haunted
484
Despite their employing Oujia boards to make con-
tact with the spirits or alleged spirits in the house, I felt
that the Dickey family had indeed undergone some genuine
psychic experiences. I was more convinced of this as I real-
ized that the apparition and the auditory phenomena pre-
ceded any attempt to make contact with what was in the
house by means of a Ouija board. I have never held boards
of this kind in high esteem, and have on occasion warned
against their use by children or by those likely to be medi-
ums and not aware of it. Then, too, the information
gleaned from the use of these boards is not very reliable on
the whole. If anything tangible comes from their usage, it
generally can also be obtained by other means, such as
meditation, genuine mediumship, or automatic writing. But
at the time when I had arrived at the Dickey homestead,
the use of the Ouija board was already a matter of record,
and there was nothing I could have done about it.
“It is quite clear you have a ghost, or possibly two
ghosts, in this house,” I said to Mrs. Dickey as I prepared
to leave. "I will arrange to come back with a competent
medium sometime in the future, and we’ll have a go at it.”
Mrs. Dickey nodded enthusiastically. A small
woman, she belies the fact that she has five children, look-
ing more as if she were in her early twenties. Her enthusi-
asm was such that I tried to come back immediately, but
failed due to the fact that summer had come and I was off
to Europe, as I do every year.
* * *
It was therefore not until April 10, 1969 that I was
able to arrange for a return visit to Mrs. Dickey’s house.
The house, by the way, is called Windover, and stands on
Walnut Lane, appropriately called that because of the tall
old walnut trees on both sides of the street. We agreed that
I would come down in the company of Mrs. Ethel Johnson
Meyers, and on May 11, 1969, we arrived fully prepared
to encounter whatever ghosts in the house wished to be
talked to.
This time the living room downstairs was filled with
several other people. I had never seen them before, of
course, and I was later told that they were in some way
connected with the house and the hauntings in it; but I
suspect that they were more friends or curious neighbors
who wanted to be in on something special. At any rate,
they kept in the background and allowed Mrs. Meyers and
me to roam around freely so that the medium could get her
psychic bearings.
Ethel ascended the front steps like a bloodhound
heading for prey. Once inside, she casually greeted every-
one without wishing to be introduced any further. Appar-
ently she was already picking up something in the
atmosphere. Somewhat as an afterthought I started to
instruct her in the usual manner as to my desires.
‘What I would like you to do is — if in walking about
freely any impressions come to your mind, or if at any
point you feel like sitting in a chair, do so, and we will fol-
low you. And — if you have any feelings about the house —
this is a very old house. It will be a little difficult to differ-
entiate between what is naturally here and these fine
antiques, all of which have some emanations. Apart from
that, let me know if you get any response or vibrations.”
“Well, there are a lot of things here, all right. But
presently there is a tremendous amount of peace. Vitality
and peace at the same time. But I’ll have to get down
lower in order to pick up other things. There is a catalyst
around here, and I want to find that catalyst.”
Ethel had now entered the living room and stood in
the center.
“There’s a woman coming close to me. There is also
a man — I don't think he’s old — he has all this hair. The
woman is looking at me and smiling.”
* * *
At this point, I had to change tapes. While I busied
myself I with the recorder, Ethel kept right on talking
about the spectral man she felt in the atmosphere. As soon
as my tape I was in place, I asked her to repeat the last few
impressions so I could record them.
* * *
“Is this name of ‘Lewis,’ that you get, connected with
the man standing by the fireplace? Would you repeat that
description again: gold-buckled shoes, and he has his elbow
on the wooden mantelpiece?”
“Well, he has these tan short trousers on, tight-
fitting; definitely gold-colored or mustard-colored, cummer-
bund around here about so wide. . ..”
“What period would he belong to?”
“Oh, I think he has his hair tied in a queue back
here. It's grayish or he’s got a wig on.”
"Anything else?”
“He has got a blue jacket on that seems to come
down in the back.”
“Are there any buttons on that jacket?”
“Yes.”
"What color are they?”
“Silver.”
“Why is he here?”
“He looks contemplative, and yet I feel as if he wants
to grit his teeth.”
“Is this a presence, or is this an imprint?”
“I think it’s a presence.”
"He comes with the house?”
"I would say so.”
"Is there anything that is unfinished about his life?”
Ethel turned to the unseen man at the fireplace. “Tell
me what’s bothering you, friend. You have your eyes half-
closed and I can’t see the color of your eyes. Will you look
around at me?”
I reinforced her offer with one of my own. "You may
use this instrument to communicate if you wish. We come
as friends.”
Ethel reported some reaction now. “Oh! He’s looking
around at me. His eyes are sort of a green -hazel.”
“Any idea why he is here?”
"He just disappeared. Like, went through here.”
"Where did he go towards?”
"Went through here.” She pointed towards the old
staircase in back of the room, where most of the manifesta-
tions had occurred.
“Follow the way he went!”
"I can’t go through that wall!” She started walking
around it, however, and I followed her. “This room was
not there. Something is different,” she said suddenly and
halted.
“Different in which way?”
“Is this part later?”
“I am told that it is later. What is different about
that end of the house?”
Evidently she felt nothing in the more modern por-
tion of the house.
"All right, we’re going back to the older part of the
house.”
“You see, I couldn’t hear anything there. Here is a
man, with a lot of hair, sort of hangs down; has a drooping
mustache and a beard."
“What period does he belong to?”
“Oh, this is much later, I would say.”
I pointed towards the wall where so much had occur-
red: “Would you go to that wall over there. Just that area
generally, which is the oldest part of the house, I believe. I
would like you to see whether this impresses you in any
way.”
“This man I was just seeing is not around any of the
people here, like those that I saw a moment ago; not that
late.”
"Nothing contemporary?”
“No — there’s nothing contemporary about the man I
just saw there.”
“Another period from the first one?”
“That is right.”
“Two levels, in other words.”
“There is a woman’s voice, very penetrating; as I am
getting her, she is very slim.”
“What period does she belong to?”
“Around the same as the first man I saw. Do you
notice a coldness here? A difference in temperature? Some-
thing has happened right in here.”
"You mean in the corridor to the next room? It leads
us back to the entrance door. What do you suppose has
happened here?”
“There’s been an acc — I don’t want to say acc — I
don’t want to say anything but accident. There’s been an
accident, and a woman screaming about it."
“You are grabbing your neck. Why?”
“She went out of her body here.”
Mrs. Dickey’s Ghostly Companions
485
“Is she still here?”
“I would say she is. She’s the thin woman I speak
of."
“Who is the person that is most dominant in this
house at the moment?”
“I know that voice is terribly dominant, but the man
in there was very dominant also.” Ethel pointed towards
the front hall again. “Can I go further in here?”
I nodded and followed.
"She cannot come through here. It is blocked. This
was an opening, but there is something hanging there."
“What is hanging there?"
“I’m afraid it is the man I saw at the fireplace, in
there.”
“How did he die?”
“By the neck.”
“Is this the man you called Lewis?”
“I think it could be. It is strange — while I am in this
terribly depressed mood I can hear laughter and carrying-
on about something of great honor that has happened, and
it is being celebrated here. Somebody comes into this house
with the greatest feeling of triumph, as it were; that they’ve
conquered something. At the same time I'm pulled down
like mad over here.”
“When you say ‘conquered,’ are you speaking of a
military victory?”
“I don’t know yet, what it is. These are all impres-
sions. I have to get much lower.”
"I would suggest you find your way to a comfortable
chair, and let whatever might be here find you.”
But Ethel was not quite ready for trance. She kept on
getting clairvoyant impressions galore.
“So many people are trying to come in. A heavier-set
man, kind of bald, here. Now there’s another one. Now a
girl, hair caught across and down in curls. She doesn’t look
more than ten, twelve.”
“Is she connected with either the man or woman?”
“I would say around the earlier time, because she has
a long dress on, down to here. Laced shoes, with like rib-
bons tied here; you might call them ballet slippers. She has
a very pointed little chin, and the eyes are sort of wide, as
if they were seeing things. Then there is an older woman,
with her dark hair coming down and then as if it were
drawn up very high.”
"Does she give you any names?”
“Anne or Annette. I get a peaceful feeling around
this individual, with the exception that I seem to be com-
muning with someone that I can’t really touch."
“Would you mind explaining that?”
“Perhaps with a ghost that I can't touch.”
“Do you feel that they have something they wish to
tell us?”
‘“We’re not on speaking terms yet!”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“Well, perhaps Albert can catch them and tell us
what they are about. If Albert would like to be present — ”
But Ethel ignored my hint to let her control come
through in trance. Not just yet. She was still rattling off
her psychic impressions of this apparently very over-
crowded house, spiritually speaking.
“Funny — there’s a strange little dog, also, yonder. It
looks something like a Scotty, but isn’t. It has stiff hair.”
“Does it come with any of these three characters you
mentioned?”
“I think he belongs to the woman I just described. I
have a feeling that I am seeing her for the first time, and
that I heard her in the other room.”
"The voices you heard before?”
“I think so. She looks terribly sad here. I know some-
one runs out that way.”
“Why are they running out of the house?”
“I’m so reluctant to say that someone is hanging
there. ...”
We sat down, and Ethel closed her eyes. Patiently I
waited for her spirit control, Albert, to take over the con-
versation. Finally, after about two or three minutes of
silence, a familiar, male voice greeted me from Ethel’s
entranced lips.
"Hello.”
"Albert, are you in control?”
“There’s strain, but I seem to be doing it.”
“Do you have any information about this house,
Albert?” I asked as soon as I was sure he was in firm
control.
“You have come on a day very close to an anniver-
sary of something."
“Can you enlighten me as to details?”
"The one who relives this is Emma.”
“This Emma- -what is her problem?”
“She is quiet, but he is tight-lipped. Inadvertent
deception led to destruction of moral character. One person
made a quick decision, 'I would be myself if you would let
me free.’ Details cannot be brought into the light, even
though it was inadvertent. The attitude leading up to this
situation was, if you die, your secret dies with you.”
“But the other one can talk?”
“I will try to see if this other one will talk too,
because it is within him the secret lies. If he will talk, so
much the better. Because the other one knows not the
secret of the woman.”
“Can you give us the names?”
“There are two Ls. Leon is one. I cannot tell you
which it is now. There are two individuals, one who comes
to visit the other. One who has sat in this vicinity and
made his declaration. A declaration against an L., another
L.”
“What sort of declaration?”
“Opening up and giving publicly accounts that this
one living here would keep a secret.”
“What did the account deal with?”
486
‘‘When one holds them quietly to themselves and
desires not to give it, it is a law over here — you know this
— so I would like to have him speak, rather than the
woman, Emma, who is not completely aware of what was
going on between the two Ls.”
‘‘Is he willing to speak to us?”
“We are trying to get them to speak. However, he
made the decision to do away with the whole business by
destroying himself and take it with him. He was alone
when he did it. The other L. has departed. He will not
divulge his name.”
“Do you know his name?”
"1 do not. When it is held a secret, and it is here, 1
am not allowed to penetrate it until he will divulge it
himself.”
“Is he connected with this house as an owner?”
"I would say so.”
“A long time ago?”
"It looks to me, turn of century.”
"Which century?”
“Into eighteen hundred.”
“Did he build the house?”
"I believe so.”
“Then he would be the one that first lived here?”
“I believe this to be true. I am looking as hard as I
can, to see. There may have been transactions of another
builder and his taking it over before too long. Somehow
there is some unsavory business, in the past. He is a rep-
utable individual and cannot afford to allow some past
things to come into the light.”
“What was the disreputable business he was worried
about?”
“This is his secret.”
“Would you try to let him speak?”
"I will try to force him into the instrument. It is done,
you know, by a kind of shock treatment.”
* * *
Again, I had to change tapes at the very moment
when another person took over Ethel’s vocal apparatus.
After some painful and emotional groans, a hoarse
voice whispering "Emma!” came through her lips. I bent
closer to bear better.
“Do you want Emma? We’ll try to help. You may
speak. You’re fine.”
Ethel’s hand grasped at her throat now, indicating
sharp pain. I continued to calm the possessing spirit’s
anguish.
“Emma is here. What do you want? We’re your
friends. The rope is no longer there, it has been removed.
Put your tongue back in and speak. You have suffered, but
your neck is fine again. Tell me, how did it happen?”
“They’ll never know, they’ll never know!”
"What will they never know? You can trust us. We
have come to save you. You’ve been rescued. They’ve
gone. You’re safe. You’re among friends.”
Gradually, the voice became clearer, but still full of
anxiety.
“Rope.”
“No more rope. Did somebody try to hurt you? Tell
me, who was it?”
“Leon.”
"Who is Leon? Where would I find him?”
“I know — here — Emma.”
“You’re fine. . .it’s only a memory .. .you’re all
right.”
“Save me — from that — save me — ”
“Tell me what has happened?”
"Poor Emma.”
“Why poor Emma? Tell me about it.”
“Don’t call Emma, don’t call Emma. 1 don’t want to
see Emma.”
“All right, I’ll send her away. Who is she to you?”
“Oh — I love her.”
“Are you her husband? What is your name, sir? I am
a stranger here. I have come to help you.”
“What is the matter? Who calls on me?”
“I heard that you were suffering, and I felt I would
try to help you. What can we do?”
"I — I am guilty. I am guilty. Go away. Let me say
nothing.”
“Guilty of what?”
“It all comes alive. Alive, alive! Oh — no.”
“In telling me of your suffering, you will end it. You
will free yourself of it.”
“I thought it would be gone forever. Alackaday,
alackaday, I cannot crush it like the weeds of the fields. It
grows in my soul, and I cannot live anymore without the
seed.”
“What is it that you think you did that is so bad?”
“Oh — let it be, my own climate in which to live.”
“But I’d like to free you from it. You want to be
free.”
"Oh, alack, alack, I cannot.”
“Look, you cannot be free until you tell someone and
purge yourself.”
“But, Emma, Emma!”
"I will not tell her, if you wish me not to. You have
passed over, and you have taken with you your memories.”
“Over where have I gone?”
“You have gone.”
“Where have I gone? I was here — how do you say
so?”
“Yes, you are here, and you should not be. You have
gone into the better side of life, where you will live forever.
But you’re taking with you — ”
"With this, will this live forever?”
“No.”
“Oh, I want Emma. She must never know — ”
Mrs. Dickey’s Ghostly Companions
487
“There is only one way to do this. And you’ve got to
do it the way I suggest.”
“I will not go forever! I have lived, and I am living.”
“Is this your house?”
“Go and seek Emma to stay away.”
“All right. I will do that.”
“She comes always to cry.”
“Why is she crying?”
“Oh — I cannot stop her. Do not let me look on her."
“What have you done that you feel so ashamed of?”
“That is my own secret in my soul of souls. Must I
look upon it forever?”
“In telling me, I will take it from you.”
“Take me away from myself that I may die and be
oblivious forever.”
“Or be reborn into a free and happy world.”
“Beyond the life lies the deep dark pool in which
oblivion covers you forever. That is what I seek.”
“But you are still alive.
“I am going there, friend. They won’t let us live in
silence.”
“You have passed over. You are now speaking to us
through an instrument. ...”
“I am living always.”
“In spirit — but not in body.”
“In body, too. I am in a body.”
“Not yours.”
“Mine.”
“No. Lent to you, temporarily, so you may speak to
me. So we can help you.”
“No one lends me anything. Not even a good name.
The merciful God hates me. . .”
“Are these your hands? Touch them.”
“My hands?”
“That’s a watch you have on your hand — a woman's
watch.”
“A woman?”
"You are in the body of a woman, speaking to me,
through one of the great miracles made possible for you.”
“Body. My body.”
"Not your body. Temporarily. ...”
“Mine! How can you say, when the rope is still
here?”
“There’s no rope. It is a memory — an unhappy
memory.”
“Hang.”
“You’re quite free now.”
“I can’t get free from this!”
"Because you don’t wish to. If you wished, you
could.”
“I live! How can I get to that beyond?”
"If you leave your memories behind.”
"The silence of the pool, of the blackness.”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
"I’ve helped you so far. Touch your left ear gently
and I will prove it to you. You feel that there is an earring?
Women wear earrings; men do not.”
“Who did this to me?”
“Nobody did it to you. It isn’t you.”
"Makes talk so radical.”
“There are things that you don’t understand about
yourself, and I am here to teach you. You are free to go if
you wish.”
“Free, free! May I go then — into the blackness where
it is no longer memory?”
“Yes, I will send you there if you wish. But you’ve
got to be calm and listen to me. It’s no use being angry
and desperate.”
"Who shackles me so!”
“Nobody shackles you. This is a woman’s body, and
you are speaking through her voice.”
“Woman!”
“A lady who has been kind enough to help you.”
"Who does it to me — these outrageous things?”
“You have passed into another dimension, another
world, from which you are now speaking to us, by means
that you do not understand. We are here to help you, not
to make you unhappy. Would you like me to help you out
of here? It is up to you.”
"Out of here?”
“Into a better world, if you wish.”
"Better world? That is oblivion?”
"You’ve got to ask for it. It cannot be done without
your approval.”
"I ask for it. I ask for that. Give it to me, give it to
me.”
“Then do you obey the laws to lead you there? There
are certain laws. You have to follow them.”
"Take my Emma. Take her into the happy land.”
"All right. But in order for you to go, there is some-
thing you must do. Are you listening to me?”
“I hear. I hear.”
“You must leave behind your unhappy memories.”
"I can’t leave them. They are part of me.”
“You will give them to me, and I will take them
out.”
"But Leon — he will not leave me in peace.”
"Leon is dead. He cannot touch you.”
“Dead?”
“He’s gone.”
“Like that? Gone?”
“Yes. Many years have passed.”
“Dead?”
“Dead. You’re safe. Free.”
“She will not know.”
“No.”
“I can see light again, and happiness, forgetful that
he is gone?”
“He’s gone.”
“Then it will not be divulged.”
488
"You cannot be free from it until you divulge it to
me — only to me, and to no one else.”
“When I go into oblivion, I can give nothing to any-
one. Let me live my life.”
“Who is Leon? Who is he to you?”
“I must seal my lips. I must go my unhappy way."
“Then you will never be free.”
“I must go into oblivion. You promised. You take
away.”
“I don’t take away, but you promised to obey the
law. The law is you must tell the story and then forget it.”
“I tell it to my own soul. You are not God. And I
have no obligation to anyone but my own God!”
I decided to find another approach. Evidently the dis-
carnate spirit was a tough nut to crack.
“What year is this?”
There was only silence to the question.
"Who rules this country?”
“Thomas Jefferson.”
“No, Jefferson is dead. This isn’t Jefferson’s day.”
“Then I am dead.”
"You are!”
“Let me go in peace. Good day!”
“You're dead, and yet you’re alive. They all are alive,
too, over there.”
“Good day, my good friend. I cannot longer speak.
We do not exist on the same plane.”
“No, but we speak to each other through this lady. A
hundred and seventy years have gone by, my friend, a
hundred and seventy years. Do you understand? It is a
hundred seventy years later. It’s very difficult for you to
understand this. You have been staying in this house for a
long time for no reason, except to suffer. What happened
to you, happened a long time ago. And it is all in the past.
You are completely free. You needn’t go into oblivion. You
needn’t go any place if you don’t wish. You’re a free
person.”
"Ahh — and Emma?”
“She’s just as free as you are. You have nothing to
fear.”
"My hands are free. My mind is free. Let me go with
my own.”
“Not until you tell me who you are. This is part of
our deal, remember? If you’re a man of honor you must
obey the law.”
“Until I find myself a man of honor — ”
“You are.”
“If there is a heaven above, if there is a golden light,
and I am alive — these hundred and seventy years — man,
are you mad? You do not speak the truth. I cannot trust
you.”
“It is the truth. You’ll find out for yourself.”
“Let me go. I have been always free.”
“Very well then, tell the one who has brought you
what you want to be kept a secret, that he may take you
away from here.”
"Emma — where is she?”
“She’s over there waiting for you. They’re all over
there. Leon is over there, too.”
“God, no! Then I can’t go! He will talk!”
“Then why don’t you tell me? I can arrange it.”
“No, you cannot. If I go into my grave with the
secret, and my soul — ”
“ You are in your grave. You’ve been through the
grave. You’re out of it now. The secret is known."
“Then it is on my soul and it remains there.”
“You can't be free with it. You must get rid of it.”
“I have been told by those who have spoken to me
from pulpits that if I take my great burden to Him beyond,
I will never — ”
“You will not succeed unless you wish to."
Again, I changed my approach, since the personality
seemed unyielding.
“Is your name Lewis?”
“I will take that with me, too. I have pride, have
soul, and a sense of being, and it is coming back to me. I
thank you friend, for opening the ropes that bound me. I
am free. I feel it.”
“Then go. Go in peace.”
“Emma — I can look on you now.”
"Albert, help him across.”
“I can go with you now, Emma. I give you thanks,
my friend. But I still maintain my freedom of soul.”
"Albert, take him. Albert, please.”
Immediately, Albert’s crisp voice returned. "Yes,
yes.”
“Have you learned anything further?”
“I think he’s right, my good friend. Confessions are
not the best fate, and this is true.”
"How did he die, and why?”
“He did it himself.”
“It was suicide?”
“Yes it was.”
“Why?”
“To keep from revealing the truth.”
“What was so terrible about the truth?”
“That is his secret.”
“What period was this?”
“It was the turn of the century I believe.”
“Did he do anything wrong?”
“He has a guilt complex, that is quite certain.”
“Did he tie his own arms and hang himself?”
“He put a rope around his neck — he put a rope
around his hands in back of himself. . . ”
“Who is this Leon he keeps yelling about?”
“An individual, I believe, he harmed. I would say
that it was a ghost that taunted him.”
"You mean the man died before him?”
“That is right.”
“And Emma?”
Mrs. Dickey’s Ghostly Companions
489
“Emma saw the swaying body.”
“Emma was his wife.”
“That is right. There were three offspring.”
“Is the girl one of them — the teen-age girl that the
instrument saw?”
“I believe the granddaughter.”
"Are any of them still here?”
"I do not see them. Emma is also listening, has gone
with him.”
“Is anything buried in the garden?”
"Leon.”
"Did he kill Leon?”
"I would say so.”
“Oh, he killed him? For some reason?”
"Yes.”
"You haven’t got any idea what this is?”
“That would not divulge what had happened in their
youth.”
“What was this man’s background?”
“I think he was a man of considerable wealth.”
“He built this house?”
“That is right. Earlier. It could have belonged to
Leon; that is, the property.”
“Was he in any official position or just a business-
man?”
“Man of fortune; let’s put it this way. A gentleman.”
"He's a bit insane, isn’t he?”
“Well — when one lives for a hundred and seventy
years with a memory of guilt, plus your throat being
crushed by rope and your arms torn by the ropes that are
on the hands...”
“Yes, it must be uncomfortable. Well, be sure the
instrument is protected, and I suggest we bring her back.”
“I will release the instrument.”
"Thank you for coming.”
A moment later, Ethel was back as "herself,” remem-
bering nothing of the previous hour. I handed her the ring
that had so mysteriously appeared in the house and asked
her to psychometrize it.
“I would say that this belongs to an older woman. It
would be mother to the younger woman.”
“Do you get any additional information about this?”
“I would say an E. She’s the mother of a younger
woman, also with an E.”
“That younger woman — what about her? How does
she fit in?”
“The younger woman I think is the one I hear
screaming. I feel this woman may be sometimes even seen.
I want to rock, I want to rock. She says nothing, or does
nothing but just rock. The younger woman, the thin
woman, they seem concerned about each other.”
* * *
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
I turned to Mrs. Dickey to check out some of the
material. "Mrs. Dickey, to refresh my memory, who built
the house?”
“This structure was built in 1865 by Homer Leroy
Salisbury.”
“But before that?”
“The records for those years are destroyed; the books
are not in existence. But the basement foundation is very
much older. Revolutionary, perhaps. There are windows
down there, and doorways. It may have been originally the
first place that people lived in.”
“Is there any record of the owner of the land before
the turn of the eighteenth century?”
“Not that I know of.”
"Have you ever seen a person in the area in which
Mrs. Meyers felt the main disturbance?”
“I have not, but a friend has.”
"Who was the friend?”
“Pat Hughes.”
“What did she see or feel in that area?”
“She heard noises and footsteps, and saw a woman
walking into this room, right by this wall. Walked right in
and stood in the room.”
"What did the woman look like?”
"She had dark hair, fairly young, tall and slender,
with a red robe or long red dress on, and she had her hand
up at her throat."
"What about the man Mrs. Meyers described?”
"Adam comes here, and we think he's harmful. He
frightens us. Since I’ve seen you last, we’ve had something
happen that we never had before. Joyce and Patty and I
walked in here. It was a quiet day and we sat down on
these two couches. It was evening. We were just talking
quietly and had our minds on Joyce’s forthcoming wedding
when we heard the most enormous noise — just like the
whole house was crashing down. This wall over here
almost vibrated. We all jumped up and we couldn’t figure
it out.”
"There was nothing to cause it?”
"No. Again, during the night, a shattering noise woke
up everybody.”
Mrs. Jean Vanderhoff, who had formerly owned the
house, was among those present. Long after she had left
this house, she found herself working a Ouija board. To
her surprise, a personality contacted her through the board
— and not too gently, either.
"He said he had been hunting for me,” Mrs. Vander-
boff began.
“Now this is a character that came through your
Ouija board?”
“That came through the Ouija board.”
“Long after you moved out of here.”
“Yes, several months ago; this year. He said he had
been hunting for me for a long time because I had to take
him back — to bring him back to this house — and that I was
the only one that could do it.”
490
"What was his name?”
“Nat. And he said he was the master's servant, and
that he and his daughter were buried out behind the barn.
I asked him various and sundry questions, but mainly he
wanted to come back because his daughter was still here,
and I said, ‘Well, why are you causing these people all of
this trouble? You never caused us any.’ He replied, ‘Well,
you have never lain at the top and tasted the unhappiness.’
I said, ‘Are you telling me your room was in the tower?’
He said, ‘Yes,’ and he had to get back, because his daugh-
ter was still here. I said, ‘I wouldn’t consider taking you
back as long as you misbehave.’ He replied, ‘I will misbe-
have because I will drive them out."
“While you were living here, did you have any
experiences?”
“Only when we remodeled. We put in this bay win-
dow across here.”
“What happened when you remodeled?”
"At night there were the most tremendous noises,
and it sounded as though they were throwing the furniture
around, and every morning at 2 o’clock the garage doors
banged up and down. We had a friend sleeping in the back
room, and one morning I said, ‘What were you doing with
a girl in your room?’ And he said, ‘I had no girl in my
room.”1
“Do you remember who it was who slept in that
room — this friend?”
“Colonel Powell.”
“Did he know about anything unusual about the
house beforehand?”
“No, he said he had no one in his room. Then the
next night he heard all this racket out there and rushed out
to catch whatever it was, and the table had been moved in
the kitchen. He fell over this table and hurt his leg.”
“Interestingly,” commented Mrs. Dickey now, “we
got a communicator named Emma, that came through on
the board.”
“When? This is important.”
“Since you were here the last time. We never had
Emma before, but we don’t play with the board much any-
more because you said, leave it alone.”
“When was the first time the name Emma came to
you?”
“After your first visit. But we got no messages, we
just kept getting this name.”
“Prior to our visit today, has anybody discussed with
you the name Emma?”
"No.”
"Therefore, the Emma you got on the Ouija board is
separate from what we got here today.”
“There was a moment of silence, then Mrs. Dickey
resumed talking about the past of the house.
“Indians were around here a long time ago as this
was part of the Indian trail. Also, the foundations of the
older house are underneath the fireplace.”
“I see a door, where the man was,” Ethel said and
scowled. “He was standing about here, when I first saw
him, and he went through right about there. I think there
were two rooms here.”
“Is this correct?” I asked Mrs. Dickey.
“Correct,” she replied. “It was divided.”
Ethel suddenly seemed to be listening to something
or someone. “I don’t think you’ll get this disturbance, but
I keep hearing a sound like moaning, high moaning — ooh
— ooh.”
With Ethel leading us, we ascended the narrow stairs
to the top room.
“What do you think of this room?” I asked the
medium.
“I get a different person up here altogether. Male.
High forehead, hair parted, longish face, fairly good-sized
nose. Looks like an Irishman. Seems to have a beard on,
and then takes it off.”
“Is he connected with the other situation?”
“No, he’s dressed differently, I get the name Pat. I
think he went out with a heart condition.”
Ethel stopped at the desk in the corner.
"Somebody sat here and wrote.”
"Is a writer connected with this house?” I asked Mrs.
Dickey.
“I think you’re talking about Salisbury, the man who
built this house. He was tall, and lean, and very erudite.
He wrote a diary of his Civil War experiences.”
“The noise that came when you changed things about
the house, I think came from the Irishman, Pat.”
* * *
It was getting late in the day and I wanted to get
Ethel Meyers home in time for dinner, so we said good-by
and just caught the New York flight. Once in the air, I had
a chance to think over some of the things that had hap-
pened this eventful afternoon. For one thing, a whole array
of characters from the past had been identified, more or
less, by my medium. Most outstanding, in an evidential
sense, was the fact that the name Emma had been received
by those in the house prior to Ethel’s coming and the
trance session with her in which the name Emma was dis-
closed. Despite my misgivings about the use of the Ouija
board, I have always held that on occasion true psychic
material can come in this manner. Later, I was to learn
that Lucy Dickey was indeed a budding medium, and that
it was her presence in the house that made the Ouija board
work. It is possible that the young people living with her
might have added some psychic power to it, but the essen-
tial catalyst was Mrs. Dickey herself.
It is not remarkable but rather pleasing in a scientific
way that Ethel Meyers pinpointed immediately upon
arrival the area of the main disturbances. The staircase and
the door leading to an area that had been rearranged struc-
Mrs. Dickey’s Ghostly Companions
491
turally was indeed where the figure of the man had
appeared and where most of the noises had originated. We
had inspected the premises from the cellar to the top, espe-
cially around the area of the chimney, which roughly took
up the center of the house. There had been no rational
explanation for any loud noises in the area. Nothing was
loose, nothing could have caused a loud noise, rattling,
movement of objects, or anything of the kind, so elo-
quently and distinctively described by several witnesses.
* * *
The following day, Mrs. Dickey wrote me a note
thanking us for coming out. She promised to look into the
background of the house somewhat more thoroughly at the
Library of Congress.
“I believe I have exhausted the usefulness of the
Fairfax County Courthouse records. If I can help you in
any way, let me know. I will be happy to pick you up and
chauffeur you if Nicole is busy. I believe fully in your
work, and I like your approach. You leave behind a string
of grateful admirers. Your friend, Lucy.”
I thanked Lucy Dickey and instructed her to be alert
to any further manifestations, should they occur. With so
large a cast of spectral characters in the house, it was just
possible that we had not dislodged all of them. As a matter
of fact it was highly likely that we might have overlooked
one or the other.
When I returned from Europe I received another let-
ter from her, dated September 25, 1969. Mrs. Dickey
wrote: "I have noticed in the past few months a growing
sensitivity and psychic development in myself. Things are
happening to me I do not quite understand. Nothing fur-
ther has happened with our ‘friends’ in the house. No news
from them at all. The house remains for sale.”
Mrs. Dickey had previously mentioned her intent to
sell the house.
But we had not heard the last of ghostly Adam. On
December 9, 1969, I had an urgent report from Lucy
Dickey. There had been a party at the house for young
college-age friends of her daughter. One of the young men
had gone upstairs to one of the bathrooms. As he was
going about his business he turned to find a man staring at
him from behind. Terrified, he rushed downstairs. He had,
of course, never been told about the ghost or any details of
the specter’s appearance. Nevertheless, he described Adam
in every detail, from the white, full-sleeved shirt and black
baggy knicker-type pants on to the expression in his eyes.
But despite this frightening encounter, there was nothing
further to disturb Lucy’s peace in the house: no more
uncanny noises, no spectral appearances. Only one thing —
she had difficulty selling the house. The more she tried,
the less it worked. It was almost as if someone, unseen per-
haps, prevented the house from being sold — perhaps
because they had come to like Lucy and considered her a
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
channel of expression. To make things worse, her husband
was still in part of the house despite the fact that they had
obtained a divorce. Lucy was extremely unhappy about the
situation, and desired nothing more than to sell the house,
although she loved every inch of it.
Time went on, and finally a buyer for the house
showed up. Overjoyed, Lucy Dickey advised me of the fact
that ownership was soon to pass into other hands. She had
already taken an apartment in Washington and was ready
to move. Naturally, she had told the new owner, a Mrs.
Mary Jane Lightner, all about the ghosts in the house and
what the Dickeys and their predecessors had gone through
with them. Mrs. Lightner was not a believer in such things
as ghostly phenomena, but her curiosity was aroused since,
after all, this was now going to be her home. Together the
two ladies asked me to send them a good psychic to see
whether there was indeed anything left in the house or
whether perhaps all was quiet.
I advised them that a medium might very well relive
past impressions without this proving the continued pres-
ence of a ghost or ghosts. It is sometimes very difficult to
distinguish between an imprint from the past and actual
living spirit entities.
I sent them John Reeves, a teacher turned medium,
with whom I have lately been much impressed. On May
10, 1970, John Reeves went to Washington and saw
the two ladies at the house in Vienna. He knew nothing
whatsoever about the circumstances or about the ladies,
merely that he was to look at an old house and give his
impressions.
Immediately upon entering the downstairs of the
house, he went to the fireplace and disclosed that there had
been a murder and much violence in that area. He then
described a woman, thin, with straight hair in back, wear-
ing a long dark gray dress. He felt this was in the 1860s,
and that the woman was not the only spirit on the
premises. “A man killed his wife’s lover in this passage-
way,” John Reeves intoned, "and then he hanged himself.”
While the two ladies shuddered, the medium continued
describing what he felt had happened in the house. “I can
see blood drop from his mouth, on both sides of his
mouth.”
"How was the man killed?” Lucy wanted to know.
John Reeves pointed at a heavy set of black andirons.
"One of these andirons was used to kill,” he explained.
“Somehow these events put a curse on this house. There
may also be another separate murder in one of the rooms, ”
he added cheerfully.
Mrs. Lightner had heard quite enough. "Mrs. Dickey
must have told you,” she said to the medium. It seemed
impossible for John Reeves to come up with practically the
same story Ethel Johnson Meyers had come up with a year
ago, without some sort of collusion, she thought. Lucy
Dickey assured her that there was no such thing. John
Reeves knew nothing of either the house or Mrs. Meyers’
492
and my work in the house. While the ladies shook their
heads, Reeves left and went back to New York.
* * *
Were Adam and Lewis one and the same person?
We know that Leon was the name of the other man, whose
bones presumably still rot in the garden behind the barn.
The woman’s name was Emma. Adam — or Lewis,
whichever he was — no longer can claim that his secret is all
his. Thanks to John Reeves, and of course Ethel Meyers,
we know that his problem was one of the oldest problems
in the world. Cherchez la femme. A debt of honor had
apparently been paid and all was now quiet at Windover
down in Vienna, Virginia.
* * *
A short time ago I wanted to visit the White House
and make one more attempt to get into the Lincoln Bed-
room. There was some indication that I might get permis-
sion, and I called upon Lucy Dickey to come along and
serve as my medium for the occasion since she already
lived in Washington.
“Me? A medium?" she replied, taken aback. “Why, I
never thought of myself in that manner!”
I sensed a disturbed feeling in the way she put it.
Had I frightened her? Patiently I explained that her psy-
chic experiences at Windover made it plain that she had
mediumistic abilities. She didn’t have to be a professional
medium to be classified as psychic.
She breathed easier after that, but I couldn’t get her
to go with me into the Lincoln Bedroom. Even if I had
gotten permission, I am sure Lucy Dickey would have
avoided meeting Mr. Lincoln. And who is to blame her?
After all, she has had quite enough with Adam, Leo,
Emma, Martha, and Morgan.
» 109
The “Presence” on the
Second-Floor Landing
Somewhere between Washington and Baltimore is a
small community called Sykesville. It is a little bit closer to
Baltimore than in it is to Washington, and most of the
people who live there work in Baltimore. Some don’t work
at all. It is not what you might call a poor community but,
to the contrary, is one of the last remaining strongholds of
the rural hunting set whose main occupation and pride
were their farms and minor houses.
Howard Lodge was built there in 1774 by Edward
Dorsey. Tradition has it that it was named Howard Lodge
when Governor Howard of Maryland stayed in it during
the period in which the United States became independent.
Tax records seem to indicate that it was owned at one time
by relatives of Francis Scott Key, the author of our national
anthem. Key himself visited Howard Lodge and carved his
name in one of the upstairs window sills, but unfortu-
nately, the windows were later destroyed by storms.
The house consists of two stories and is made of
brick imported from England. The attic and roof beams
were made by hand from chestnut wood and are held fast
by pegs driven their full length. Today’s owners, Mr. and
Mrs. Roy Emery, have made some changes, especially in
the attic. At one time the attic was two stories high, but it
has been divided into storage rooms above the beams and
finished rooms below. At the turn of this century dormer
windows were installed by a previous owner, a Mrs. Mottu
of Baltimore. The oldest part of the house is the thick-
walled stone kitchen downstairs. On the ample grounds
there is an old smokehouse and a spring house, both dating
from the original period when the house was built. Sur-
rounded by tall trees, the estate is truly European in flavor,
and one can very well imagine how previous owners must
have felt sitting on their lawn looking out into the rolling
hills of Maryland and dreaming of past glory.
The house has been furnished in exquisite taste by its
present owners, the Emerys. Mr. Emery is an attorney in
Baltimore, and his wife, a descendant of very old French
nobility, saw service as a nurse in the late unlamented
French-Indochina campaign. The furnishings include
period pieces assembled with an eye towards fitting them
into the general tone of the house, and French heirlooms
brought into the house by Mrs. Emery. There isn’t a piece
out of key at Howard Lodge, and the house may well serve
as an example to others who would live in eighteenth -cen-
tury manor houses.
In 1967 I appeared on Baltimore television. Shortly
after my appearance I received a letter from Mrs. Emery,
in which she asked me to have a look at Howard Lodge
and its resident ghosts. It would appear that she had sev-
eral, and that while they were not malicious or mischie-
vous, they nevertheless bore investigation if only to find
out who they were and what they wanted.
* * *
Long before Mrs. Emery had heard of me, she had
invited two men, who were aware of the existence of
ghosts, to come to the house. They were not private inves-
tigators or apprentice ghost-hunters, to be sure — simply
two gentlemen interested in the supernatural. Barry and
Glenn Hammond ofWashington, D.C., coming to the
The “Presence” on the
Second-Floor Landing
493
house as friends, reported seeing a gentleman outside look-
ing towards the house. The gentleman in question was not
of this world, they hastily explained. They knew all about
such personalities since they were accustomed to distin-
guishing between the flesh-and-blood and the ethereal
kind. The Emerys had other guests at the time, so the two
gentlemen from Washington were not as much at liberty to
speak of the resident ghosts as if they had come alone.
While they were wandering about the house in search of
other phantoms, Mrs. Emery busied herself with her
guests. On leaving, however, the Hammonds happily
informed Mrs. Emery that Howard Lodge had not just two
ghosts — as the Emerys had surmised — but a total of five.
They left it at that and went back to Connecticut Avenue.
Jacqueline Emery was not particularly overtaken with
worry. She was born Countess de Beauregard, and as with
many old aristocratic families, there had been a family
specter and she was quite familiar with it while growing
up. The specter, known as the White Lady, apparently can
be seen only by members of the de Montrichard family,
who happened to be related to Mrs. Emery. No one knows
who the White Lady is, but she appears regularly when a
member of the family is about to die, very much as an
Irish banshee announces the coming of death. There may
be a relationship there since so many old French families
are also of Celtic origin.
* * *
In 1969 my wife and I met Mrs. Emery’s uncle, the
Baron Jean Bergier de Beauregard, who lives with his fam-
ily it Chateau de Villelouet in the heartland of France. The
Baron readily confirmed that many members of the Beaure-
gard family have indeed shown the ability of second sight,
and that psychic occurrences were not particularly upset-
ting to any of them. They took it in their stride.
Jacqueline Emery has inherited this particular talent
also. She frequently knows what is in the mail or what
phone calls are about to be made to her, and she is aware
of the future in many small ways, but she takes it as part
of her character. Nevertheless, it indicates in all the Beau-
regards a natural vein of psychic ability, and it is that psy-
chic ability that made the appearances at Howard Lodge
possible, in my view.
* * *
Jacqueline Emery herself has more than a casual
acquaintance with ESP. When I asked her to recall any inci-
dents of a psychic nature prior to coming to Howard
Lodge, she thought for a while and then reported a star-
tling incident that occurred to her in December of 1944,
when she was living in Germany.
* * *
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
For some reason I had gone to a village near Munich
with a woman who wanted to buy eggs and chicken and also
pick up some apples in the basement of a home she owned and
had rented to a family from either Diisseldorf or Koln. I
believe its name was Kaiserbrunn. A Mrs. Schwarz was
renting.
Mrs. Kolb, with whom I had come, wanted me to go to
the village with her, but for some reason I excused myself and
went in quest of Mrs. Schwarz. She was in the dining room,
busily writing letters. For some unknown reason I asked her
what she was writing. It was odd because, at twenty, I was
very shy. She then told me that she was sending farewell let-
ters to her husband and children. She had, I noticed then, in
front of her, some pills, which she said were poison. Upon my
asking her she unfolded the following story:
She feared that her husband, a university professor,
had been killed and their home demolished in a recent bombing
of either of the cities I mentioned above. One of her sons was
on the French front and hadn’t been heard of for quite a
period of time. Two other sons were on the Russian front, and
she had no news from them either.
Perhaps worst of all, her daughter Liitte Paschedag, her
two small children and their nurse, Schwester Margarethe,
had supposedly left Potsdam several days before to come and
stay with her and had not been heard from. News had been on
the radio of several trains from the direction of Berlin being
attacked and many deaths having ensued.
For some unexplained reason, I took her in my arms
(I’d never seen her before) and promised her that her daugh-
ter, the nurse and the children were very close to Kaiserbrunn,
that Hansel, the one on the French front would be home
within a week and stay for Christmas, that Professor Schwarz
would call her up during the week, that their home had only
been partly damaged, and that the two other sons and the son-
in-law would write. One, Wolfgang, would be home for
Christmas; the other was a doctor and I didn’t think he could
be spared for the holiday. Upon hearing me out, she fainted.
She came to and together we burned the pills and letters.
There was a knock at the door, it was Liitte, the two children
and the nurse. Hansel came the following week, Wolfgang
was home for Christmas. Professor Schwarz called up two
days after my visit, and the doctor wrote before Christmas.
She was kind enough to send Hansel to Munich to tell me and
invite me to be with them for Christmas, which I did.
* * *
On June 1 1 , 1969, 1 finally managed to come out to
Howard Lodge. Roy Emery picked me up in Baltimore and
drove me to his house. Present were not only his wife but
their two daughters, both college students. Ariane the
elder, is an avid reader of mine and wants to devote herself
to psychic studies if all goes well. Proudly, Jacqueline
Emery showed me about the house and around the grounds
while there was still enough light to see everything. While
we were walking I learned further details about Howard
Lodge. For one thing, it appeared that Jerome Bonaparte
494
had actually been to the house while he was courting Mrs.
Patterson, whom he later married. Not three miles away
from Howard Lodge was the estate of the Pattersons,
where Napoleon’s brother lived out his life in peace and
harmony. All around us was plantation country, and what
little was left of the old plantations could still be seen in
the area.
“We now have only two hundred acres,” Mrs. Emery
explained, "but when we bought the property it was part of
five hundred acres, and a hundred years ago it was about
seven or eight hundred acres. I imagine that in the begin-
ning it must have been about two thousand acres. That’s
what the plantations around here were like.”
Before I went into the matter of the hauntings prop-
erly, I wanted to learn as much as possible about the house
itself, its background, its structure, and since Mrs. Emery
already knew these facts I saw no reason not to discuss
them.
* * *
“Was this the plantation house, actually?” I asked.
"It must have been, yes. And it is a rather formal
house, which is typical of the English houses, with the hall
going all the way through the house, and two rooms deep
on either side. The kitchen must have been an addition
later, even though it is old.”
“There are four rooms downstairs?”
“There are more than that, but it is two rooms deep
on either side of the hall. You see, here you have the living
room and the music room, my husband’s library, and the
dining room. The dining room has been extended going
east-west because the hall doesn’t go all the way through to
the door; the partition has been removed.”
“And upstairs?”
“Upstairs, there are six bedrooms, and then the attic,
which I will show you, was a two-story one. Now we’ve
made it a third floor, with still a large attic on top.”
“So it’s actually a three-level house?”
"Well , we have the basement, we have this floor, the
second floor, the third floor, and the attic; that’s five
stories.”
“How long ago did you come here?”
“It will be ten years in December. We moved in here
in 1959. The house had been lived in by hillbillies, and
horribly mistreated. The kitchen, through which you came
in, had pigs, with litters. This room was used — the various
corners were used instead of bathrooms. It had a couch
that was full of rats. The rats were so used to people that
they didn’t move when you came in. It was full of flies and
fleas and rats and mice and smells, and chewing gum on
the floors. And Roy and I spent about a month, on our
knees, on this very floor, trying to remove all of this. All
the walls were covered with six to seven layers of wallpa-
per, which were removed, and then I painted. Of course
the hard part was removing the paper. Each time there had
been a draft in the room, due to some hole in the masonry
or something, they had put on another layer of wallpaper,
thus cutting off, or hiding, the problem, rather than doing
anything about it. And so forth!”
“Were they squatters or had they bought it?”
“They had bought it because they had had a farm on
what is now Friendship Airport. Needless to tell you, it
was a very nice thing to have. They bought this house
from a man who worked in a bank in Washington. They
bought it cash.”
“But they didn’t know how to live.”
“Oh, no! See, they used a house as you would
squeeze a lemon; after there was nothing left, they left and
abandoned the house — went to another one. The time had
come for them to leave; they had been here seven years,
and it was going to pot. The plumbing was completely
shot. The heating system was so dangerous that the electri-
cian said, ‘You really must believe in God’; and everything
about like that.”
“And you took it over then and restored it?”
“Yes, and everybody told us we were absolutely
crazy. We spent the first month, five of us, in one room. I
had disinfected that room, working in it for a month.”
“You have three children?”
“Yes. And Chris was only two. And — well, we are
still working on it.”
1 decided to come to the point.
“When was the first time you noticed anything
unusual anywhere?”
“It was when I became less busy with doing things in
the house. You know, when you are terribly busy you
don’t have time to realize what’s going on. Three years ago
I became aware of a man on the landing. I know it is a man,
though I have never seen him. I’m absolutely convinced
that he’s a man in either his late forties or early fifties, and
in addition, he’s from the eighteenth century because in my
mind’s eye I can see him."
“Was there anything for the first seven years of your
occupancy here?”
“I cannot recall. Except possibly some vague sensa-
tion about steps going from the second to the third floor.”
“Noises?”
“Oh yes, you always have the feeling somebody’s
going up the steps. Always. We’ve always taken it for
granted it was because it was an old house, but since we
have rugs I still hear steps.”
“Now, what were the circumstances when you felt
the man on the stairs? On the landing, I mean.”
“Well, 1 was going to my room, on the second floor,
and you have to go through the landing. This is the only
way to go to that room. And then suddenly I had to stop,
because he was there.”
"Did you feel cold?”
The “Presence” on the
Second-Floor Landing
495
"No, I just felt he had to move and he wasn’t going
to move, and eventually he did, but he wasn’t aware of me
as fast as I was of him.”
“What time of day was that?”
“Evening. It’s always dusk, for some reason. You see,
the landing has a southern exposure, which may have
something to do with it, and it’s always very sunny during
the day.”
“After this first experience, did you have more?”
“Oh yes, often. For quite a while he was constantly
there.”
“Always on that spot?”
“Always on the landing. You see, the landing has a
very good vantage point, because nobody can go upstairs or
downstairs without going through it.”
“Then would you say somebody might watch from
that spot?”
“You can see everything — originally the lane was not
what you came through, but at the front of the house.
From the landing you have a perfect command of the
entire lane.”
“After this first experience three years ago did you
ever see him, other than the way you describe?”
“No. Although I have to be very careful when I say
that because after a while, as you well know, it is difficult
to separate something you see in your mind from some-
thing you see physically. Because I feel that I could touch
him if I tried, but I never have. Even though I’m not
afraid of him, I still don’t feel like it.”
“Did you ever walk up the stairs and run into some-
thing?”
"A wall. Sometimes I feel that there is a partition or
something there.”
“Something that you have to displace?”
“Yes. But then I wait until it displaces itself, or I
move around it. But somehow I know where it is because I
can move around it.”
“Have you ever seen anything?”
"Often. On the landing.”
“What does it look like?”
“Fog. And I always think it’s my eyes.”
“How tall is it?”
“Frankly I have never thought about it, because I
will blink a few times. I’ve always thought it was me. You
see, it’s very foggy here, outside. But then I saw it in sev-
eral rooms.”
“Did you ever smell anything peculiar. .
“Yes, I often do. There are some smells in this house
and they often take me back to something, but don’t know
what.”
“Do you ever hear sounds that sound like a high-
pitched voice, or a bird?”
“Bird, yes. Very often.”
"Where do you hear that? What part of the house?”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“Never on this floor. Upstairs.”
“Have there been any structural changes in the
house?”
“I think the landing.”
“Only the landing? How was it affected?”
“We changed one partition, for it was much too
illogically altered to have been something that existed when
the house was built. The way we found it, it couldn't have
been that way because it was ridiculous. Anybody with a
hoop skirt, for instance, or a wide dress, could never have
managed the top of the steps onto the landing with the
partition the way it was there. We changed it, and I will
show you because the seam is in the floor. We were told
that the landing had been changed, and for some reason
everything is around that landing.”
“You mean changed back to what it was originally, or
changed?”
"We don’t know, because we don’t know how it
was.”
“Did you widen it or narrow it?”
“We widened it.”
"Now, since living in this house have you ever had
odd dreams? Have you felt as if a person were trying to
communicate with you?”
“Yes. Often.”
“Will you talk about that?”
“Only that I’m rather ashamed, that I usually try to
block it out.”
“Well, do you ever get any feeling of the
communicators?”
“Because I’m negative I don’t think there is any
actual communication, but I’ve often been aware of someone
even coming in the room where I am.”
“How does this manifest itself?”
“I’m aware of a shadow. With my eyes open.”
“This is on the second floor?”
“Yes.”
“At night?”
“Yes. And then, that night while I slept on the third
floor- I’m sure it's my man on the landing. He came up,
and why I got scared I don’t know because this man is
awfully nice, and there is nothing. . ..”
"What do you mean, he came up?”
“I heard him come up the stairs, and he came and
watched me.”
“Why did you sleep on the third floor that night?”
“Because Roy had turned on the air conditioner. I
cannot sleep with an air conditioner.”
“So you took one of the guest rooms. Does this room
have any particular connection with the landing?”
“You have to go through the landing because of the
steps going up and going down. Both end up on the
second-floor landing.”
“And he came up the stairs, and you felt him stand-
ing by your bed?”
496
“Yes. Watching — probably wondering what I was
doing there. But originally this was not a floor used for
bedrooms. We did that.”
"What was it used for?”
"It was a two-story attic, and we divided it in two by
putting in a ceiling, and I don’t believe it could have been
used except possibly, for servants.”
“When was the last time you had a sense of this
being?”
“In the fall.”
“Is there any particular time when it’s stronger?”
"Yes, in the summer.”
"Any particular time of day?”
"Dusk.”
"Is it always the same person?”
“Well, I always thought it was, but I never gave it
too much thought.”
“Is there more than one?”
“Yes.”
“When did you notice the second ‘presence’?”
"It was about two years ago, when Chris, my boy,
was moved up to the third floor, that I heard breathing. It
was in the master bedroom. I can show you exactly where
because the breathing came from the right side of the bed,
below, as if a child would have slept in a trundle bed or in
a low cradle or something, and that breathing came from
below me. The bed is fairly high.”
“On the second floor?”
“Yes. And it was very definitely a child, and I can
explain that very readily — there is not a mother in the
world who will not recognize the breathing of a child,
when it’s sick and has a fever.”
“Did your husband hear this?”
“No. He never hears anything of this.”
"But was he present?”
"No. He was in his library, downstairs.”
"Was this late at night?”
“No — I go to bed much earlier than Roy. It must
have been around eleven, or maybe midnight.”
“The first time you heard this, did you wonder what
it was?”
“Well, I knew what it was, or what it had to be,
since I couldn’t possibly hear my children breathe from
where I was. I was aware that it must be something which
had occurred in that very room before.”
“Did you ever hear any other noise?”
“Yes. That child cries, and there is pain.”
“How often have you heard it?”
"The breathing more often than the crying. The cry-
ing only a couple of times.”
“In the same spot?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a woman around? Do you have a feeling of
a woman when that happens?”
“Yes, and she would be on my side of the bed. And
this is the part that bothers me!”
“What do you mean?”
“Because I have the feeling her bed was where mine
is. I’m sure she slept on the right, because the child is on
the right.”
“The furniture in the bedroom is yours — you
brought this in yourself?”
"Oh yes, there wasn’t anything that belonged to this
house.”
I thought all this over for a moment, then decided to
continue questioning my psychic hostess.
“Was there anything else, other than what we have
just discussed?”
"Yes, the portrait of my ancestor that I brought back
from France. I was born in 1923, and she was born in
1787.”
“And what was her name?”
"I don’t remember her maiden name, but she was an
Alcazar. She married a Spaniard.”
“What is special about the portrait?”
“Of course, the eyes — you will find those eyes in any
well -painted portrait — they are eyes that follow you every-
where. But I wouldn’t refer to that because this is very
common in any museum or in any home where they have
family portraits. This is not so much that, but the moods
she goes through. She definitely changes her expression.
When she disapproves of someone she shows it. And every
once in a while, if you glance at her rapidly, she is not the
woman you now see in the portrait, but somebody else.”
“Does anyone other than you see this?”
“Yes, two other people — my English friend of whom
I talked of before, and another English friend who is mar-
ried to an American friend. They both saw it.”
“Have you ever felt anything outside the house, in
the grounds?”
“You think there is a branch that’s going to hit your
face, and yet there is no branch. I thought that people
always felt like that when they walked outside, but they
don’t. Also I can’t walk straight in the dark.”
“What do you mean?”
"I don’t know! I could walk on a straight line,
painted line, on the roof without the slightest difficulty, but
in the dark I never walk straight.”
“You have two dogs. Have they ever behaved
strangely?”
“All the time. They bark when there is absolutely
nothing there.” Mrs. Emery interrupted my thoughtful
pause.
* * *
“There is also something about a room on this floor,
Mr. Holzer.”
“The one we’re sitting in?”
The “Presence” on the
Second-Floor Landing
“No — the next one, where the piano is. Every night
before I go to bed I have to have a glass of orange juice.
And sometimes I’ll race downstairs — I’ll feel there is some-
body in that rocking chair and I’m afraid to go and check.”
"Do you have a feeling of a presence in that room?”
“Yes — oh yes, yes, very strong. Almost every day,
I'd say.”
“It’s that room, and the landing, then?”
“Yes.”
* * *
At this point I had to change tapes. I thought again
about all I had heard and tried to make the various ele-
ments fall into place. It didn’t seem to add up as yet — at
least not in the same time layer.
“To your knowledge,” I asked Mrs. Emery, "has
anything tragic ever happened here in the house?”
“We don’t know. This is the thing that is so disap-
pointing in this country, that so few records are kept. In
France you have records for six hundred years. But here,
past fifty years people wonder why you want to know.”
"Is there any legend, rumor, or tradition attached to
the house?”
“There are several legends. They also say that Gov-
ernor Howard, who gave his name to Howard County,
which until 1860 was part of Anne Arundel County, lived
in this house. But it’s extraordinary, at least to me it is,
coming from France, that people cannot be sure of facts
which are so recent, really.”
“What about the people who lived here before? Have
you ever met anybody who lived here before?”
“Yes. I met a man named Talbot Shipley, who is
seventy-eight and was born here.”
“Did he own the house at one time?”
“His parents did, and — he was the kind, you know,
who went, 'Oh! where you have that couch, this is where
Aunt Martha was laid out’; and, ‘Oh, over there, this is
where my mother was when she became an invalid, and
this was made into a bedroom and then she died in there’;
and, ‘Oh, Lynn, you sleep in that room? Well, this is
where I was born!' And that's the kind of story we got, but
he’s a farmer, and he would perhaps not have quite the
same conception of a house as we do. To him, a house is
where people are born and die. And perhaps to me a house
is where people live.”
“What about servants? Did you ever have a gardener
or anyone working for you?”
“Oh, I have people work for me once in a while. I
have discarded all of them because everything is below
their dignity and nothing is below mine, so it’s much easier
to do things myself!”
“Did they ever complain about anything?”
“I had a woman once who said she wouldn’t go to
the third floor. There is something else,” Mrs. Emery said.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“There are two niches on either side of where there must
have been a triangular porch, which would go with the
style of the house. They seem to be sealed. The man who
is remodeling the smokehouse into my future antique shop,
is dying to open them up and see what's inside them,
because really they don’t make any sense.”
“Do you have any particular feelings about the two
niches?”
“They are on each side of my desk on the landing,
but on the outside. As a matter of fact, I never thought of
that! It’s towards the ceiling of the landing but on the
outside.”
“What could possibly be in them?”
"I don’t know. We thought perhaps the records of
the house.”
“Not a treasure?”
“They say that during the Civil War people buried
things, and also during the Revolution, so there could be
treasures. Somebody found a coin — 1743 — on the lane.”
“An English coin?”
“Yes.”
“Who found it?”
“A young girl who came to see us. So we let her keep
it. And a window sill was replaced in the dining room, and
quite a few artifacts were found in that window sill. But-
tons and coins.”
* * *
After dinner I went with Mrs. Emery through the
house from top to bottom, photographing as I went along.
None of the pictures show anything unusual, even in the
area of the landing upstairs — but that, of course, does not
prove that there is not a presence there lurking for the
right moment to be recognized. Only on rare occasions do
manifestations of this kind show up on photographic film
or paper. It would have taken a great deal more time and
patience to come up with positive results.
I talked to the two girls, Ariane and Lynn, now in
their early twenties, and to Chris, the little boy, but none
of the children had had any unusual experiences as far as
the specter on the landing was concerned, nor were they
frightened by the prospect of having a ghost or two in the
house. It was all part of living in the country. I took a
good look at the portrait of the maternal ancestor, and
could find only that it was a very good portrait indeed.
Perhaps she didn’t disapprove of me, or at any rate didn’t
show it if she did.
But when I stood on the landing, on the spot where
most of the manifestations had taken place, I felt rather
strange. Granted that I knew where I was and what had
occurred in the spot I was standing. Granted also that sug-
gestion works even with professional psychic investigators.
There was still a residue of the unexplained. I can’t quite
put into words what I felt, but it reminded me, in retro-
spect, of the uneasy feeling I sometimes had when an air-
plane took a quick and unexpected dive. It is as if your
498
stomach isn’t quite where it ought to be. The feeling was
passing, but somehow I knew that the spot I had stepped
into was not like the rest of the house. I looked around
very carefully. Nothing indicated anything special about
this landing. The ceiling at this point was not very high,
since the available room had been cut in two when the
floor was created. But there was a sense of coziness in the
area, almost creating an impression of a safe retreat for
someone. Could it be then, I reasoned afterwards, that the
spectral gentleman had found himself his own niche, his
own retreat, and that he very much liked it? Could it not
be that he was pleased with the arrangement; that perhaps
when the Emerys created an extra floor out of part of the
old attic, they had unconsciously carried out the designs of
those who had lived in the house before them? Usually
hauntings are due to some structural change which does
not meet with the approval of those who had lived before
in the house. Here we might have the reverse: a later
owner doing the bidding of someone who did not have the
time or inclination to carry out similar plans. For it must
be recalled that a good house is never finished, but lives
almost like a human being and thrives on the ministrations
of those who truly love it.
It was quite dark outside by now. Nevertheless, I
stepped to the nearest window and peered out onto the
land below. A sense of calmness came over me, and yet a
certain restlessness as if I were expecting something or
someone to arrive. Was I picking up the dim vibrations left
over from a past event? I don’t fancy myself a medium or
even remotely psychic, but when I stood on the second
floor landing at Howard Lodge, there was a moment when
I, too, felt something uncanny within me.
A little later, Roy Emery drove me back to Baltimore
and dropped me off at my hotel. Coming back into town
was almost like walking into a cold shower, but twenty-
four hours later I had again grown accustomed to the
rough and materialistic atmosphere of big-city life. I had
promised the Emerys to come back someday with a trance
medium and see whether I could perhaps let the unknown
man on the landing have his say. In the meantime, how-
ever, I promised to look up the de Beauregards in France,
and Mr. and Mrs. Emery promised to keep me informed of
any further developments at Howard Lodge should they
occur.
I had hardly returned from Europe when I received
an urgent note from Mrs. Emery. On October 20, 1969,
she wrote of an incident that had just happened a few
weeks before my return.
A friend of mine recently lost her mother and I invited
her for the weekend. She was brought here by a mutual friend
who also spent the weekend. I was very tired that evening,
and shortly before midnight I had to excuse myself. Barbara
wanted to stay up and Don stayed with her, feeling that she
wanted to talk.
The following morning they told me that they had been
sitting in the living room, and that Barbara had turned off
the lights because she wanted to enjoy the country peace to the
utmost. They then both heard footsteps coming down the steps
and assumed that I’d changed my mind and had joined them.
They heard the steps cross the threshold and the loveseat
creaked under the weight of someone sitting there. Barbara
became aware that it was not I there with them, and she could
hear someone breathing very regularly. Holding her own
breath, she then asked Don if he could hear anything. He
had, and had also been holding his breath, to hear better.
Barbara and Don both commented on how friendly they felt
this presence to be. They are both absolutely convinced that
there was someone with them in that room.
It is perhaps a good thing that the unknown gentle-
man on the second -floor landing does not have to leave his
safe retreat to go out into the countryside and search for
whatever it is that keeps him on the spot. He would find
his beloved countryside vastly changed beyond a few miles.
As it is, he can remember it the way he loved it, the way
Howard Lodge still reflects it. And the Emerys, far from
being upset by the additional inhabitant in their old house,
consider it a good omen that someone other than flesh and
blood stands guard and peers out, the way a night watch-
man stands guard over precious property. It assures them
of one more pair of eyes and ears should there be some-
thing dangerous approaching their house. In this day and
age such thoughts are not entirely without reason.
As for the child whose breathing Mrs. Emery heard
time and again, we must remember that children died far
more often in bygone years than they do today. Child mor-
tality rates were very high because medicine had not yet
reached the point where many diseases could be prevented
or their death toll sharply reduced. A child then was a far
more fragile human being than perhaps it is today. Perhaps
it was one of the children belonging to a former owner,
who fell ill from a fever and died.
But the gentleman on the landing is another matter.
Since it was the lady of the house primarily who felt him
and got his attention, I assume that it was a woman who
concerned him. Was he, then, looking out from his vantage
point to see whether someone were returning home? Had
someone left, perhaps, and did part of the gentleman go
with her?
One can only surmise such things; there is no con-
crete evidence whatsoever that it is a gentleman whose lady
had left him. Without wishing to romanticize the story, I
feel that that may very well have been the case. It is per-
haps a bit distressing not to know how to address one’s
unseen guest other than to call him the “presence on the
second-floor landing.” But Mrs. Emery knows he is
friendly, and that is good enough for her.
The “Presence” on the
Second-Floor Landing
499
» 110
The Oakton Haunt
Oakton, Virginia, IS ONE OF those very quiet suburban
communities nestling fairly close to Washington, D.C.,
that has changed slowly but inevitably from completely
rural to slightly suburban during the last few years. Many
people who work in Washington have bought houses in
this community. The houses are fairly far apart still, and
the general character is one of uncrowded, rustic environ-
ment. When one drives through Oakton, one gets a rather
placid, friendly feeling. None of the houses look particu-
larly distinguished, nor do they look sinister or in any way
outstanding. It takes all of forty-five minutes to get there
when you leave the center of Washington, and you pass
through several other villages before reaching Oakton.
Thus, the community is well buffered from the main
stream of capital life, and not given to extremes of either
appearance or habit.
The house we were yet to know was owned by the
Ray family. Virginia Ray and her husband, Albert, had
come to friends of ours, Countess Gertrude d’Amecourt
and her daughter, Nicole, now Mrs. Jackson, when they
heard that I was amongst their friends. They had seen me
on television in Washington and knew of my interest in
hauntings. What they had seemed to fit into that category,
and it occurred to the Rays to ask whether I could not
have a look at their “problem.” On May 11, 1968 I was
finally able to do so.
* * *
Nicole Jackson drove us out to Oakton — by “us” I
mean my wife Catherine and myself. As yet we were not
able to bring a medium along, but then I wanted to find
out firsthand what exactly had happened that had disturbed
the Rays to such an extent that they needed my help. After
about forty-five minutes we arrived in a pleasant-looking
country lane, at the end of which the house stood. The
house itself was somewhat inside the grounds, and as we
drove up we noticed a large barn to the left. Later on, we
were to learn how important that barn was in the goings-on
at the house.
Mr. and Mrs. Ray and various children and relatives
had assembled to greet us. After some hand -shaking we
were led into the downstairs parlor and made comfortable
with various juices. It was a warm day for May, and the
refreshments were welcome. When the excitement of our
arrival had died down somewhat, I asked that those who
had had experiences in the house come nearer so I could
question them. The others I requested to keep back, so I
could get my bearings without interruptions. In a roomful
of people, young and old, this is an absolute necessity.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
Albert Bartow Ray is retired now, and gives the
impression of a man well set in his ways, happy to live in
the country, and not particularly disturbed by unusual
goings-on. His pleasant tone of voice, his slow way of
moving about, seemed to me indicative of an average per-
son, not in any way an occult buff or an hysterical individ-
ual likely to manufacture phenomena that did not really
exist.
Virginia Ray also gave a very solid impression, and
neither of the Rays was in any way frightened by what
they had experienced. It was simply a matter of knowing
what one had in one's house, and if possible getting rid of
it. But if I had not come, they would have lived on in the
house — at least, in May they felt that way.
They had been in this house for about six years at
the time of our visit. They liked it; they considered it a
comfortable old house. They knew nothing about its his-
tory or background, except that the timbers holding up the
house were old logs, and they had wooden pegs in them.
Even the rafters of the roof were made of logs. This indi-
cated that the house must have been built at least a hun-
dred years ago.
* * *
When I inspected the building I found it pleasant
and in no way eerie. The stairs leading to the upper story
were wide and the bedrooms upstairs friendly and inviting.
The land upon which the house stood was fairly substantial
— perhaps two or three acres or more. About the most
unusual thing outside the house was the large old barn,
somewhat to the left of the house, and a stone in front of
the house that looked not quite natural. Upon close inspec-
tion, I wondered whether perhaps it wasn’t an Indian
tombstone, or perhaps an Indian altar of sorts. It looked far
too regular to be completely shaped by nature. The Rays
had no idea as to how it got into their garden, nor did they
know anything particular about the history of the barn. All
they knew was that both barn and house were old and that
a long time before this the property had indeed been
Indian territory. But so was most of the land around this
area, so the fact that Indians lived there before is not terri-
bly surprising.
The Rays had bought the house in June 1962 from a
family named Staton. The Statons stayed on until October
of that year before the Rays could move in. After the series
of events that had caused them to seek my help had hap-
pened, the Rays quite naturally made some inquiries about
their house. Mrs. Ray tried to talk to neighbors about it,
but it was difficult to get any concrete information. The
former owner’s daughter, however, allowed that certain
things did happen at the house, but she would not go into
details.
Even before the Rays moved into the place, however,
their experiences with the uncanny began.
* * *
500
“I came up one day,” Mr. Ray explained, ‘‘and the
house was open. I locked the house up, and because the
house was still vacant I would come by here two or three
times a week and check it. Frank Pannell, a friend of mine
who works for the county and sells real estate on the side
called me one day and he says, would I meet him some-
place, he had a contract he’d like for me to read over. I
told him I would be here by 4:30, so he met me here. That
was in the first part of November. We walked down to the
lake — there’s a lake back here — we walked around and got
in the house just about dark. There were two lights over
this mantel that worked from a switch, and we had that
light on. I was reading the contract, and he was standing
here with me, when we heard something start to walk
around upstairs. It sounded like a person. So I looked at
Frank and said, ‘Frank, what is that?’ He said, ‘It’s some-
body up there.’ I said, ‘Couldn’t be, the house is locked.’
He said, ‘Just the same, there’s someone up there.’ We
went upstairs, but didn’t see anyone and came back down
again. I started to read the contract when we heard some-
thing walking around again. We went halfway up the steps,
when something seemed to walk right by our heads there.
We came down here, and Frank said he could hear voices.
“The next thing that occurred was that my son
Albert, Jr., and I came by here on a Friday after that fol-
lowing Thanksgiving. We had had some vandalism, kids
had shot some windows out with a .22-rifle. So we had
decided we’d spend the night here. We brought out some
camping equipment and slept in the dining room. About
8:30, he said, ‘Dad, wouldn’t you like a cup of coffee or
something?’ He took the car and drove up to Camp Wash-
ington. Well, while he was gone, I was lying here reading,
with a reading light on. All of a sudden I heard something
in the kitchen that sounded like somebody suffering — mak-
ing all kinds of noises. I got up and walked in, turned the
light on, and it stopped. We had a little fox terrier who’d
bark at any noise. When the noise started again I called
her and she came directly to me, but she never barked or
growled as if she were afraid. I stood it is long as I could,
then I got up and went into the kitchen again, but I didn’t
see anything. I went down to the basement. I went all over
the house. I went all over the yard. I went every place.
There was no one there.”
“Did it sound human?” I interjected.
"Well, sir, it sounded like somebody moaning. I felt
the hair standing up on the back of my neck.”
“And when your son came back?”
“We ate and went to sleep. I didn’t tell him about
the noise I’d heard. He woke me about 3 o’clock in the
morning telling me that he had been hearing noises. He had
heard something moaning — the same noise, apparently,
that I had heard.”
"Any other experiences prior to your actually moving
in?” I asked. Evidently these phenomena were not depen-
dent on human power source to manifest.
"My married daughter, Martha, then still in college,
came here one night with me to check the house. She went
upstairs, while I went in this room to check the thermostat.
It was extremely cold, and I wanted to make sure the fur-
nace would cut on and cut off. Suddenly she screamed and
ran down the stairs, and said, ‘Daddy, something bumped
into me!' We went up, and every time I’d take a step, she’d
take a step right behind me, almost stepping on me the
whole time. So we went all over the house and didn’t find
anything.
“A cousin named Martin was then stationed at Fort
Bel voir, and he would come up over the weekend. He was
having dinner with us, and we got to talking about it. He
laughed and said, 'Oh I don’t believe in anything like that.’
So he said to my son, ‘How about you and I spending the
night out there? We’ll show your dad he doesn’t know
what he’s talking about.’ So they came out. About 3
o’clock in the morning they called me from Camp Wash-
ington up here, and they were both talking over the phone
at the same time. I couldn’t understand what they were
saying, and finally I quieted them down. Martin kept say-
ing, ‘I believe it, I believe it!’ I said, ‘You believe what?’
And he said, ‘There’s something in that house.’ They could
hear ‘things’ walking around, and different noises. I was
living down in Sleepy Hollow then, and so I said, ‘I’ll meet
you there.’ They said, ‘We won’t meet you at the house.
We’ll meet you at the driveway.' I locked the house up.
Two weeks later, a group of boys — high school boys and
my son — decided to come by and spend the night. But
about 3 o’clock in the morning, there was a pounding on
the door, and when I opened the door, in burst these five
boys, all excited, all of them talking at the same time.
They had meant to stay overnight, but left about 2:30 in
the morning. They heard a lot of noise; they heard things
walking around. There was snow on the ground at the
time. But when they raised the blinds to the bay window,
there was a man — a big man — with a straw hat on, stand-
ing outside looking in at them. They loosened the cord and
the blind fell down. In a little while they got nerve enough
to look out again. They could see a man standing out at the
barn. They saw the white doors of that barn, and right in
front they could see the outline of a man standing. That
was too much. They ran out, got in the car, and drove
away just as fast as they could. I had to come out here and
lock the house up and turn all the lights out.
“That spring, 1964, there ’d been termites in the
house. I had a man working for me by the name of Omar
Herrington. Mr. Herrington dug a trench all around the
house and worked here for about four or five days. And we
put chlordane around the foundation, the house, the barn,
and garage. We removed the shrubs. I came out on a
Friday to pay him, just about 1 1 :30. As I drove up, he
said, ‘Mr. Ray, weren’t you out here a little earlier? I heard
you come in. I heard you walking around.’ I said, ‘I’m
The Oakton Haunt
501
sorry, it wasn’t me.’ ‘That’s funny,’ he replied. 'The other
day I heard something moaning like somebody in misery.”
"Did you ever see anything?” I asked Ray.
"Yes, on two occasions. One night in 1965 I stayed
in this room, in the downstairs part of the house, and after
watching television I went to sleep on the couch. My wife
went upstairs. About 2 o’clock in the morning, something
woke me up. I could hear some tingling noise. It sounded
like glass wind chimes. I sat up on the couch, and I could
see in the corner a bunch of little lights, floating in the air.
It looked like they were trying to take on the shape of
something. That’s the first time I really got scared. I
turned the light on, and it just faded away.”
“And what was the second occasion that you saw
something unusual?”
“That was in the bedroom upstairs, where my wife
and I sleep, two or three months later. I woke up, and 1
thought it was my son standing by my bed. I said, ‘Bar-
tow, what are you doing here?’ There was no answer. I
said it again; I could see the outline and face of a person! I
turned the light on, and there wasn’t anyone there. Then I
got up and went to my son’s room, and there he was,
sound asleep.”
“Did your wife see the apparition?”
“I don’t think so, but she kept telling me that there
was something out in the barn. The barn is about a hun-
dred and fifty feet away. I’m in the construction business,
and one day I was drawing up a set of plans for a private
school, working on the porch.
“All of a sudden, I heard a noise like tools being
handled, out in the barn, as if they were being thrown all
over the place! I went out and opened the door, but every-
thing was in place. I came back three times that afternoon. 1
heard noise, went out, and everything was in place. I have
three pigs, and I put them into the lower part of the barn.
Mr. Herrington would come by and feed the pigs every
morning. One morning he said, ‘If you don’t stop follow-
ing me around and standing back in the shadows and not
saying anything, I’m going to stop feeding those pigs.’ I
said, ‘Well, Mr. Herrington, I have not been standing out
here.’ He said, I know better, you were there!’”
“In digging around the house, have you ever found
anything unusual in the soil?” I asked.
Mr. Ray nodded. “Yes, I found some things — broken
old pottery, and in the garden I have found something that
I think may be a tombstone. It’s a black rock; weather-
beaten, but it was covered over with grass and the grass
kept dying at that spot.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I dug down to see what it was, but I left it there. I
pulled the grass off, and there’s a stone there, a square, cut
stone.”
“Did the phenomena begin after you found this
stone, or was it before?”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“Oh no, it started before that. It was two or three
years later that I found that stone.”
“Did it make any difference, after you found the
stone?”
"No, it didn’t seem to. Then, when my aunt, Alberta
Barber, was visiting us, she broke her ankle. I had to sleep
down here on a pallet beside her couch so that if she had
to go to the bathroom, I could help her. One night, about
1 o’clock, there was a knocking on the wall, and it woke
me up. She said, ‘What is it?’ I got up and turned the
lights on, and didn’t see a thing. On two occasions my
wife and I were dressing to go out for the evening, when
there was a loud knock on the porch door. Virginia said to
me, ‘Go down and see who it is.’ I went down, and there
wasn’t a soul. One time, not too long ago, I was sleeping in
the front left bedroom upstairs, and I felt something was
in there; I could hear someone breathing. I got up and
turned the light on and I didn’t see anybody. This was
about 3 o’clock. I had some papers in the car. I went out,
got the papers, and slammed the car door. At that moment
something went up the side of the storage shed. I don’t
know what it was.”
“It went up — which way?”
“I could hear the noise, and I saw something go up
on top of that shed and then take off. That sort of scared
me. I sat up and worked the rest of the night.”
“Any other unusual happenings?" I asked.
“A lot of times the switch to the furnace at the head
of the stairs is turned off, and the house starts to get cold.
Also, often, when I step out of the car and start to walk in
here, I’ve heard something walking behind me. Four or five
different people have had that experience.”
“Who were these other people who heard this person
walking behind them?”
“My son for one. Then Bob, a friend of our
nephew’s. Bob would go out and work on his car when he
got home, and he was late for dinner every evening. One
night he came home mad and said, ‘Why don’t you stop
coming out and walking up and down without coming in
where I’m working?’ We looked at him and assured him,
we hadn't been doing that."
“Did he see anyone?”
“No, he never saw anyone, but he could hear them
walk on the gravel, halfway between the barn and the
garage where he was working.”
“All right, thank you very much,” I said, and turned
to the Rays’ daughter, who had been listening attentively.
“Mrs. Bonnie Williams, what were your experiences
in this house?”
* * *
“When I was seventeen, three years ago, I was asleep
one night on this same couch. It was about 1 o’clock in the
morning, and I had just turned out the light, after reading
for a while. My parents were asleep upstairs. I was lying
there, and I wasn’t asleep, when I noticed a light right in
502
this comer. I didn’t pay any attention to it, but rolled over.
As I rolled over, I looked out the two windows which are
right above the couch, and there was no light outside. It
was a very dark night. So I became curious, and I rolled
back over and I looked at the light, and it was still there. I
sat up, turned on the light and there was nothing. So I
turned out the light and pulled the covers over my head.
About five minutes later, I thought, I’d look again. This
light was still here. It was a strange light, not a flashlight
beam but sort of translucent, shimmering, and pulsating.”
“What color was it?”
“It was a bright white.”
"Did it have any shape?”
“It seemed to; as it was pulsating, it would grow in
size. But when it started doing that, I got scared and I
turned on the light, and there was nothing.”
"Anything else?”
“This was at the time when Tommy Young, my
cousin, and Bob Brichard were here. Everybody was at the
dinner table, and my girlfriend, Kathy Murray, and I were
leaving the house as we were eating dinner over at her
house. We went out the back door, and we got about half-
way down the walk when we heard moaning. It seemed to
be coming from the bushes near the fence. I said, ‘Come
on,’ and we started walking along but after we had taken
about four steps, it started again. Well, when she heard it
the second time she took off running for the house, and I
decided I wasn’t going to stand there by myself, so I went
running into the house too.”
“Did it sound like a woman or a man?”
“A man.”
“Any other visual experiences?"
“No, but I’ve heard something upstairs many times
when I’m the only one home, sitting downstairs. There was
something walking around upstairs.”
“Well was there in fact someone there?”
“I went upstairs. There was nothing.”
“Did you ever feel any ‘presences’?” I asked.
“One night,” Bonnie replied, "at 1 o’clock in the
morning, we wanted to have a seance. Since you get the
feeling more often upstairs, we went up into my brother’s
room. We were sitting on the edge of the bed, my brother
was nearest to the closet, Jackie Bergin, my aunt, was next
to me, and I was on the other side. We were really concen-
trating for ‘it’ to appear. Then my brother spoke up and
said, ‘Do you see what I see?’ And there was a shimmering
light in the closet. It was very faint.”
I thanked Bonnie and questioned her mother, Mrs.
Virginia Ray, about her own experiences here.
* * *
“First of all,” she said seriously, “I believe that there
is a relationship between the barn and the house. The first
things I heard were the noises of tools or whatever being
knocked around in the barn. I heard it from inside the
house. Then I had a very peculiar experience one Sunday
afternoon. An acquaintance, Mrs. Ramsier, and I were
standing on the front porch talking when all of a sudden it
sounded as if the whole barn were collapsing. We both ran
out the door and got as far as the maple tree in the side
yard, but the barn was still standing. The noise took off
about at the level of the eaves, where the gable comes
down, and then travelled in a straight line over into the
woods, and got quieter as it went away into the woods.”
“I understand your mother also had an experience
here?”
“My mother, Mrs. Bonnie Young, was here last July
for my daughter Martha’s wedding. She didn’t believe any-
thing we had said previously about this. I got up and left
my room. I saw her light on and stuck my head in the
door. I had intended to say absolutely nothing to her about
what I had just experienced, but she said, 'Did you hear
the ghost?’ I asked her what she’d heard, and she said in
the bedroom immediately adjoining hers she heard all the
furniture moving around. She thought, what in the world is
Martha doing, moving all the furniture around in the mid-
dle of the night! Then the noise left that room and moved
to the side of the house, to this chimney, and then it
disappeared.”
"What was it, the thing that you yourself had heard
at the same time your mother experienced this?”
“I was asleep in Bonnie’s room, which does seem to
be a center of activities too — the barn and Bonnie’s room
are the centers. I became aware of a very loud noise — loud
and gathering in the distance. It was coming closer together
and getting louder and just moving towards the house. By
the time it got to the house it seemed to be in two forms.”
“What did it sound like?”
"Not like a boom; it was just a loud, gathering noise.”
“Was it high-pitched or low-pitched?”
"I would say nearer low than high.”
"Did you see any figure or any face of any kind?”
“Well, I didn’t see it, but I was conscious of this
noise coming into a configuration as it got to the window.
All of a sudden these two noises came right through the
window and up to my bed, and just went wrrp, rrr; hard-
sounding noises. They seemed to be two separate noises.
At this point I tried to get up enough courage to talk to it,
but I couldn’t. I was frightened by that time. I thought, I’ll
just go to sleep, but I couldn’t. Finally, I got up, when I
felt it had diminished, and left the room. Then I found out
about Mother’s experience.”
“Have you had any unusual dreams in the house?”
"Yes, but not in this house. I went down to visit my
mother once before she came up here. I woke up in the
middle of the night, with this very loud, distinct voice that
said, there is something wrong, pack up and move awayl I
didn’t know whether it was there or here."
“Was it a man or a woman?”
The Oakton Haunt
503
“I would say it was a man. I got up, walked the floor,
and decided to pay attention. I had not planned to leave
that day, but I told Bonnie about it and we went home that
day.”
“But it could have applied to this house.”
“Yes, even though Mother’s place is eleven hundred
miles away, in Florida. The first night after we moved into
this house, I went to bed. I had the feeling that a mouse
started at the tip of the bed and ran straight to the floor.
But my thought was — well, it wasn’t a mouse because it
didn't go anywhere else. 1 refused to worry about it. Then,
a week or ten days ago, in April [1968], my husband’s
brother, Gilbert Ray, was here. He came out of the bath-
room with the light off. He called to me, ‘Ginny, do you
mind coming here for a minute? Do you see anything over
there?’ I said, ‘Yes I do.' And written on the metal cabinet
above our washing machine in fluorescent light was the
word L-A-R-U, in one line. And below that was sort of a
smeared G, and an O. On the side of the cabinet there was
one small slash. And then, between the cabinet and the
window sill, in a narrow area about eight inches, there was
an abstract face — eyebrows, nose, and mouth, and the face
was sort of cocked on the wall. It was definitely there. We
washed it off. It seemed like fluorescent paint. Two or
three days afterward, in the bathroom, I did find on the
cap of a deodorant a tiny bit of fluorescent paint. We have
tended to say that it was somebody who did it, some phys-
ical person. But we have no idea who did it."
“Well, did anybody in the family do it?”
“They say no.”
“Were there any kids in the house?”
“No.”
“There is no logical reason for it?”
“We have no logical reason for it.”
“You saw the fluorescent light?”
“Three people saw it.”
* * *
So there had been something more than just noises. I
tried to put some meaning into the letters L-A-R-U-G-O,
assuming they were of supernormal origin for the moment.
It was a pity that the fluorescent paint was no longer avail-
able for inspection or analysis. It might have been ordi-
nary, natural fluorescent paint, of course. But then again,
the ectoplastic substance often found in connection with
materialization does have similar fluorescent qualities and
upon exposure to light eventually dissolves. What the Rays
had described was by no means new or unique. In pho-
tographs taken under test conditions in an experiment in
San Francisco and published by me in Psychic
Photography — Threshold of a New Science, I also have
shown similar writings appearing upon polaroid film. In
one particular instance, the word WAR, in capital letters,
appears next to the portrait of the late John F. Kennedy.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
The substance seems to be greenish-white, soap-like, soft
material, and there is a glow to it, although it is not as
strong a glow as that of commercial fluorescent material.
I questioned all members of the household again.
There was no doubt that no one had been playing tricks on
any of them by painting fluorescent letters or that anyone
from the outside could have gotten into the house to do so
without the Rays’ knowledge. Of that I became sure and
quite satisfied. Under the circumstances, the supernormal
origin of the writing was indeed the more probable
explanation.
Who, however, was Larugo, or did it mean Laru and
the word Go? I realized that I had to return to the house
with a competent medium, preferably of the trance variety,
to delve further into the personality causing the various
phenomena. That there was a disturbed entity in and
around the Ray house I was, of course, convinced. It would
appear also that there was some connection with the barn,
which, in turn, indicated that the disturbed entity was not
an owner but perhaps someone who just worked there.
Finally, the tombstone-like stone in the ground found by
the Rays indicated that perhaps someone had been buried
on the grounds of the house.
We walked over to the barn, which turned out to be
rather large and dark. Quite obviously it was not of recent
origin, and it was filled with the usual implements, tools,
and other paraphernalia found in country house barns.
There was a certain clammy chill in the atmosphere inside
the barn that I could not completely account for in view of
the warm weather outside. Even if the barn had been
closed off for several days during the day and night, the
wet chill of the atmosphere inside — especially the lower
portion — was far beyond that which would have been pro-
duced under such conditions.
* * *
Unfortunately, I could not return immediately with a
medium to investigate the matter further. Towards fall of
1968, word came to me through the mutual friends of the
Rays and ourselves that they would eventually move from
the house. Without knowing any of the details, I felt it was
imperative that I get in touch with Mrs. Ray.
I called her on October 31, apologizing for the seem-
ing connection between Halloween and their ghostly phe-
nomena, and inquired how matters stood in house and
barn. I also was able to tell Mrs. Ray that I would be at
the house on November 7 at noon with a medium, Mrs.
Ethel Johnson Meyers. This was good news to her indeed
for the phenomena had continued and had not been any
less since my first visit.
To begin with, Mrs. Virginia Ray was forced to sleep
with the hall light on and had done so for about five
months because of an increasing uneasiness at night. One
afternoon during the summer two small boys living in the
neighbourhood came to her door inquiring about the noises
that were going on in the barn. Mrs. Ray had been taking
504
a nap and had heard nothing, but the boys insisted that
something was going on in the barn. Together they investi-
gated, only to find everything in place and quiet. “We have
bats, swallows, and we were developing a colony of pigeons
in the barn,” Mrs. Ray explained, “the last of which we do
not want. My son, who is now twenty-one, was home on
vacation when he decided to use a rifle to get rid of the
pigeons. When he did so, an unusual spot of light came on
the walls of the barn. He took one look at it and declined
to spend any time in the barn after that.”
One of the most impressive experiences perhaps
occurred to the Rays’ new son-in-law, who had come to
spend the summer in June 1968. He had heard all the sto-
ries of the phenomena and didn’t believe any of them. One
night, he was awakened at about quarter to four in the
morning by the noise of loud knocking outside the screen.
Then the noise came on into the room, and he observed
that it was a high hum mixed in with what sounded like
the tinkling of a wind chime. The same night Mrs. Ray
herself was awakened by a sound that she at first thought
was high above her outside of the house, and which she
sleepily took to he the noise of an airplane. Then she real-
ized that the noise was not moving. Independent of the
son-in-law and Mrs. Ray, Mr. Ray had also heard a similar
noise at the same time.
Mrs. Ray’s mother came for a visit during the sum-
mer. During her stay, the hall lights were being turned off
— or went off by themselves — not less than four times in
one night. There was no faulty equipment to be blamed;
no other explanation to be found. Lights would go on and
off more frequently now, without hands touching them,
and the furnace again went off. Somebody or something
had turned the emergency switch.
I was all set to pay the Rays a visit on November 7,
1968. At the last moment I received a hurried telephone
call from Mrs. Ray. She informed me unhappily that the
new owners objected to the visit and that therefore she
could not offer the hospitality of the house again. They
would move from the house on December 2 and the new
owner had already started to take over.
“That’s nothing,” I said. "Perhaps I can get permis-
sion from them to pay a short visit.”
Mrs. Ray seemed even more nervous than at first. “I
don’t think so, but you could try,” she said, and supplied
me with the name and address of the new owner. And she
added, cryptically, “But he is a military man and I don’t
think he likes what you are doing.”
I wrote a polite letter requesting only that we com-
plete what we had started earlier, both in the interests of
parapsychology and the house itself. I included my creden-
tials as a scientist and teacher, and promised not to permit
any undue publicity to arise from the case. This is stan-
dard procedure with me, since it is not my intention to
cause the owners of haunted houses any embarrassment or
difficulty in the community. I assumed, quite rightly, that
whatever it was that caused the Rays to leave would not go
out with them but would remain tied to the house. There
is an overwhelming body of evidence to support this view.
Only once in a while, and in special cases, is a haunting
attached to one particular person in a house. Clearly this is
not the case in the Oakton haunt, and I had to assume that
the matter was not resolved.
I made some inquiries about the new owner, and dis-
covered that Colonel S. is a retired army officer, who had
served in nearby Washington for many years while his wife
was a teacher. Since there was very little time left before
my impending visit, I hoped that permission would come
through prior to November 7. The day before I received a
certified letter with return receipt request from Colonel S.
The letter was truly the letter of a military man: curt,
insulting, and full of non sequiturs. The colonel tried hard
to convince me that my work wasn’t worthwhile or that it
made no sense whatsoever. 1 realized that the man was
more to be pitied than scorned, so I took his letter, wrote
on it that I did not accept discourteous letters because they
would contaminate my files, and returned it to him. I have
heard nothing further from the colonel or his wife, and if
there is any phenomenon going on at his Oakton, Virginia,
house, he is handling it all by himself. He is most welcome
to it. Quite possibly, he is not even aware of it, for he may
be gifted with a lack of sensitivity that some people have.
On the other hand, one cannot be sure. It is quite possible
that the noises have since continued and will continue, or
that other, more stringent phenomena will follow them. I
don’t think that a disturbed spirit has any respect for the
opinion of a military man who wishes that spirits wouldn’t
exist.
* * *
On November 7 we did drive by the house and Mrs.
Meyers stepped out briefly and went as close to the
grounds as we could without entering the house proper or
without violating the colonel’s newly acquired property
rights. Happily, the public thoroughfares in Virginia may
be walked upon by parapsychologists and mediums with no
need to ask permission to do so. As Ethel faced the enclo-
sure of the house, she received the distinct impression of a
troubled entity. Without having been told anything at all
about the nature of the phenomenon or the location of it,
she pointed at the barn further back as the seat of all the
troubles. “It's down there, whatever it is,” Ethel said, and
looked at me. “But I would have to be closer to do any-
thing about it. All I can tell you is that someone is awfully
mad down there.” Under the circumstances, I asked her to
come back with me and let the matter rest.
* * *
Nothing further was heard from either the Rays or
anyone else concerning the house until April 20, 1969.
The Oakton Haunt
505
Mrs. Ray wrote us from her new address in McLean,
Virginia. "I feel like we have gone off and left the ‘pres-
ence.’ Mr. Ray is much less tense, as we all are to a
degree.” But that same day at 4 o’clock in the morning she
woke up with a start. Suddenly she knew what the troubled
entity wanted. Even though they had left the house, the
unfortunate one was able to reach out to her at the same
hour at which most of the audible phenomena had taken
place. Perhaps this was a last message from the haunt of
Oakton. Mrs. Ray hoped that it would indeed be the final
message, and that she would be troubled no more.
When she understood what the entity wanted, she
immediately set about to fulfill his wish. Quietly and with-
out fanfare she made arrangements with an Episcopal priest
to have the house exorcised. This, of course, was done
through prayer, in a very ancient ritual going back to the
early days of the Church. Sometimes it is effective, some-
times it is not. It depends upon the one who is being exor-
cised, whether or not he accepts the teachings of the
Church, and whether or not he is a believer in a Deity.
* * *
The Rays did not keep in touch any longer with the
new owners of their property, but once in a while word
came back to them about their former home. A friend who
hadn’t heard of their removal to McLean tried to visit
them. When the gentleman drove up to the gate, he real-
ized that something was different. The gates had always
been wide open, as had the hospitality and heart of the
Rays. Now, however, he found the gate was closed. A
somber, almost forbidding air hung around the Oakton
house. Sadly, the gentleman turned around and left. He
knew then without asking that the Rays had moved on.
A tombstone unmarked in the garden, a haunted
barn, and a scrawled message written by a desperate hand
from beyond the grave — do they indicate someone’s
unavenged death? So often I have heard “pray for me”
when a soul has passed over in anguish and, clinging stead-
fastly to the beliefs of the Church, wants the final benedic-
tion, even postmortem. Could it not be that the Oakton
haunt was resolved not by a parapsychologist and his
medium prying further into the tangled affairs of someone
long dead, but by the simple prayer of an Episcopal priest
doing so at a distance? If and when the house is again for
sale, we will know for sure.
» 111
The Restless Ghost of
the Sea Captain
When A New England SALT has a grievance, he can
sometimes take it to his grave. That is, if he were in his
grave. In this case the sea captain in question never really
passed away completely. He is still in what used to be his
house, pushing people around and generally frightening
one and all.
Spending time in this house is not easy. But I did,
and somehow survived the night.
Some of the best leads regarding a good ghost story
come to me as the result of my having appeared on one of
many television or radio programs, usually discussing a
book dealing with the subject of psychic phenomena. So it
happened that one of my many appearances on the Bob
Kennedy television show in Boston drew unusually heavy
mail from places as far away as other New England states
and even New York.
Now if there is one thing ghosts don’t really care
much about it is time — to them everything is suspended in
a timeless dimension where the intensity of their suffering
or problem remains forever instant and alive. After all,
they are unable to let go of what it is that ties them to a
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
specific location, otherwise they would not be that we so
commonly (and perhaps a little callously) call ghosts. I am
mentioning this as a way of explaining why, sometimes, I
cannot respond as quickly as I would like to when someone
among the living reports a case of a haunting that needs to
be looked into. Reasons were and are now mainly lack of
time but more likely lack of funds to organize a team and
go after the case. Still, by and large, I do manage to show
up in time and usually manage to resolve the situation.
Thus it happened that I received a letter dated
August 4, 1966 sent to me via station WBZ-TV in Boston,
from the owner of Cap’n Grey’s Smorgasbord, an inn
located in Barnstable on Cape Cod. The owner, Lennart
Svensson, had seen me on the show.
“We have experienced many unusual happenings
here. The building in which our restaurant and guest house
is located was built in 1716 and was formerly a sea cap-
tain’s residence,” Svensson wrote.
I’m a sucker for sea captains haunting their old
houses so I wrote back asking for details. Svensson replied
a few weeks later, pleased to have aroused my interest.
Both he and his wife had seen the apparition of a young
woman, and their eldest son had also felt an unseen pres-
ence; guests in their rooms also mentioned unusual hap-
penings. It appeared that when the house was first built the
foundation had been meant as a fortification against Indian
attacks. Rumor has it, Svensson informed me, that the late
506
sea captain had been a slave trader and sold slaves on the
premises.
Svensson and his wife, both of Swedish origin, had
lived on the Cape in the early 1930s, later moved back to
Sweden, to return in 1947. After a stint working in various
restaurants in New York, they acquired the inn on Cape
Cod.
I decided a trip to the Cape was in order. I asked
Sybil Leek to accompany me as the medium. Svensson
explained that the inn would close in October for the win-
ter, but he, and perhaps other witnesses to the phenomena,
could be seen even after that date, should I wish to come
up then. But it was not until June 1967, the following year,
that I finally contacted Svensson to set a date for our visit.
Unfortunately, he had since sold the inn and, as he put it,
the new owner was not as interested in the ghost as he was,
so there was no way for him to arrange for our visit now.
But Svensson did not realize how stubborn I can be
when I want to do something. I never gave up on this case,
and decided to wait a little and then approach the new
owners. Before I could do so, however, the new owner saw
fit to get in touch with me instead. He referred to the cor-
respondence between Svensson and myself, and explained
that at the time I had wanted to come up, he had been in
the process of redoing the inn for its opening. That having
taken place several weeks ago, it would appear that “we
have experienced evidence of the spirit on several occa-
sions, and I now feel we should look into this matter as
soon as possible.” He invited us to come on up whenever
it was convenient, preferably yesterday.
The new owner turned out to be a very personable
attorney named Jack Furman of Hyannis. When I wrote
we would indeed be pleased to meet him, and the ghost or
ghosts as the case might be, he sent us all sorts of informa-
tion regarding flights and offered to pick us up at the air-
port. Furman was not shy in reporting his own experiences
since he had taken over the house.
“There has been on one occasion an umbrella myste-
riously stuck into the stairwell in an open position. This
was observed by my employee, Thaddeus B. Ozimek. On
another occasion when the inn was closed in the early
evening, my manager returned to find the front door bolted
from the inside, which appeared strange since no one was in
the building. At another time, my chef observed that the
heating plant went off at 2:30 A.M., and the serviceman,
whom I called the next day, found that a fuse was removed
from the fuse box. At 2:30 in the morning, obviously, no
one that we know of was up and around to do this. In
addition, noises during the night have been heard by occu-
pants of the inn.”
I suggested in my reply that our team, consisting of
Sybil Leek, Catherine (my wife at the time), and myself,
should spend the night at the inn as good ghost hunters
do. I also requested that the former owner, Svensson, be
present for further questioning, as well as any direct wit-
nesses to phenomena. On the other hand, I delicately sug-
gested that no one not concerned with the case should be
present, keeping in mind some occasions where my investi-
gations had been turned into entertainment by my hosts to
amuse and astound neighbors and friends.
The date for our visit was scheduled for August 17,
1 967 — a car and two weeks after the case first came to my
attention. But much of a time lag, the way it is with
ghosts.
When we arrived at the inn, after a long and dusty
journey by car, the sight that greeted us was well worth the
trip. There, set back from a quiet country road amid tall,
aged trees, sat an impeccable white colonial house, two sto-
ries high with an attic, nicely surrounded by a picket fence,
and an old bronze and iron lamp at the corner. The win-
dows all had their wooden shutters opened to the outside
and the place presented such a picture of peace that it was
difficult to realize we had come here to confront a distur-
bance. The house was empty, as we soon realized, because
the new owner had not yet allowed guests to return — con-
sidering what the problems were!
Soon after we arrived at the house, Sybil Leek let go
of her conscious self in order to immerse herself in the
atmosphere and potential presences of the place.
"There is something in the bedroom. . .in the attic,”
Sybil said immediately as we climbed the winding stairs. "I
thought just now someone was pushing my hair up from
the back,” she then added.
Mr. Furman had, of course, come along for the
investigation. At this point we all saw a flash of light in the
middle of the room. None of us was frightened by it, not
even the lawyer who by now had taken the presence of the
supernatural in his house in stride.
We then proceeded downstairs again, with Sybil Leek
assuring us that whatever it was that perturbed her up in
the attic did not seem to be present downstairs. With that
we came to a locked door, a door that Mr. Furman assured
us had not been opened in a long time. When we managed
to get it open, it led us to the downstairs office or the room
now used as such. Catherine, ever the alert artist and
designer that she was, noticed that a door had been barred
from the inside, almost as if someone had once been kept
in that little room. Where did this particular door lead to, I
asked Mr. Furman. It led to a narrow corridor and finally
came out into the fireplace in the large main room.
"Someone told me if I ever dug up the fireplace,”
Furman intoned significantly, “I might find something.”
What that something would be, was left to our imag-
ination. Furman added that his informant had hinted at
some sort of valuables, but Sybil immediately added, “bod-
ies. . .you may find bodies.”
She described, psychically, many people suffering in
the house, and a secret way out of the house — possibly
from the captain’s slave trading days?
The Restless Ghost of the Sea Captain
507
Like a doctor examining a patient, I then examined
the walls both in the little room and the main room and
found many hollow spots. A bookcase turned out to be a
false front. Hidden passages seemed to suggest themselves.
Quite obviously, Furman was not about to tear open the
walls to find them. But Mrs. Leek was right: the house was
honeycombed with areas not visible to the casual observer.
Sybil insisted we seat ourselves around the fireplace,
and I insisted that the ghost, if any, should contact us
there rather than our trying to chase the elusive phantom
from room to room. “A way out of the house is very
important,” Mrs. Leek said, and I couldn’t help visualizing
the unfortunate slaves the good (or not so good) captain
had held captive in this place way back.
But when nothing much happened, we went back to
the office, where I discovered that the front portion of the
wall seemed to block off another room beyond it, not
accounted for when measuring the outside walls. When we
managed to pry it open, we found a stairwell, narrow
though it was, where apparently a flight of stairs had once
been. Catherine shone a flashlight up the shaft, and we
found ourselves below a toilet in an upstairs bathroom! No
ghost here.
We sat down again, and I invited the presence,
whomever it was, to manifest. Immediately Mrs. Leek
remarked she felt a young boy around the place, one hun-
dred fifty years ago. As she went more and more into a
trance state, she mentioned the name Chet. . .someone who
wanted to be safe from an enemy. . .Carson. . .
‘‘Let him speak,” 1 said.
"Carson. ..1858..., “Sybil replied, now almost
totally entranced as I listened carefully for words coming
from her in halting fashion.
“I will fight... Charles... the child is missing....”
“Whom will you fight? Who took the child?” I asked
in return.
"Chicopee... child is dead.”
"Whose house is this?”
“Fort. . .
“Whose is it?”
"Carson. ...”
“Are you Carson?”
“Captain Carson.”
“What regiment?”
"Belvedere. . .cavalry .. ,9th. . .
“Where is the regiment stationed?”
There was no reply.
“Who commanded the regiment?” I insisted.
“Wainwright. . .Edward Wainwright. . .commander.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Four years.”
"Where were you born?”
“Montgomery. . .Massachusetts.”
“How old are you now?”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
There was no reply.
"Are you married?”
“My son... Tom... ten
“What year was he born in?”
“Forty. ..seven...”
"Your wife’s name?”
"Gina...”
“What church do you go to?”
“I don't go.”
“What church do you belong to?”
“She is... of Scottish background. . .Scottish kirk.”
“Where is the kirk located?”
“Six miles...”
“What is the name of this village we are in now?”
"Chicopee.
Further questioning provided more information. We
learned that “the enemy” had taken his boy, and the
enemy were the Iroquois. This was his fort and he was to
defend it. I then began, as I usually do, when exorcism is
called for, to speak of the passage of time and the need to
realize that the entity communicating through the medium
was aware of the true situation in this respect. Did Captain
Carson realize that time had passed since the boy had
disappeared?
“Oh yes,” he replied. “Four years.”
“No, a hundred and seven years,” I replied.
Once again I established that he was Captain Carson,
and there was a river nearby and Iroquois were the enemy.
Was he aware that there were “others” here besides
himself.
He did not understand this. Would he want me to
help him find his son since they had both passed over and
should be able to find each other there?
“I need permission... from Wainwright....”
As I often do in such cases, I pretended to speak for
Wainwright and granted him the permission. A ghost, after
all, is not a rational human being but an entity existing in
a delusion where only emotions count.
“Are you now ready to look for your son?”
“I am ready.”
“Then I will send a messenger to help you find him,”
I said, “but you must call out to your son. . .in a loud
voice.”
The need to reach out to a loved one is of cardinal
importance in the release of a trapped spirit.
“John Carson is dead. . .but not dead forever,” he
said in a faint voice.
“You lived here in 1858, but this is 1967,” 1
reminded him.
“You are mad!”
“No, I’m not mad. Touch your forehead. . .you will
see this is not the body you are accustomed to. We have
lent you a body to communicate with us. But it is not
yours.”
Evidently touching a woman’s head did jolt the entity
from his beliefs. I decided to press on.
508
“Go from this house and join your loved ones who
await you outside. ...”
A moment later Captain Carson had slipped away
and a sleepy Leek opened her eyes.
I now turned to Furman, who had watched the pro-
ceedings with mounting fascination. Could he corroborate
any of the information that had come to us through the
entranced medium?
“This house was built on the foundations of an
Indian fort,” he confirmed, “to defend the settlers against
the Indians.”
“Were there any Indians here in 1858?”
“There are Indians here even now,” Furman replied.
“We have an Indian reservation at Mashpee, near here,
and on Martha’s Vineyard there is a tribal chief and quite a
large Indian population.”
We later learned that Chicopee Indians were indeed
in this area. Also there was an Indian uprising in Massa-
chusetts as late as the middle of the nineteenth century,
giving more credence to the date, 1858, that had come
through Mrs. Leek.
He also confirmed having once seen a sign in the
western part of Massachusetts that read “Montgomery” —
the place Captain Carson had claimed as his birthplace.
Also that a Wainwright family was known to have lived in
an area not far from where we were now.
However, Furman had no idea of any military per-
sonnel by that name.
“Sybil mentioned a river in connection with this
house,” I noted. Furman said, "And, yes, there is a river
running through the house, it is still here.”
Earlier Sybil had drawn a rough map of the house as
it was in the past, from her psychic viewpoint, a house sur-
rounded by a high fence. Furman pronounced the drawing
amazingly accurate — especially as Leek had not set foot on
the property or known about it until our actual arrival.
“My former secretary, Carole E. Howes, and her
family occupied this house,” Furman explained when I
turned my attention to the manifestations themselves.
“They operated this house as an inn twenty years ago, and
often had unusual things happen here as she grew up, but
it did not seem to bother them. Then the house passed
into the hands of a Mrs. Nielson; then Svensson took over.
But he did not speak of the phenomena until about a year
and a half ago. The winter of 1965 he was shingling the
roof, and he was just coming in from the roof on the sec-
ond floor balcony on a cold day — he had left the window
ajar and secured — when suddenly he heard the window
sash come down. He turned around on the second floor
platform and he saw the young girl, her hair windswept
behind her. She was wearing white. He could not see any-
thing below the waist, and he confronted her for a short
period, but could not bring himself to talk — and she went
away. His wife was in the kitchen sometime later, in the
afternoon, when she felt the presence of someone in the
room. She turned around and saw an older man dressed in
black at the other end of the kitchen. She ran out of the
kitchen and never went back in again.
“The accountant John Dillon’s son was working in
the kitchen one evening around ten. Now some of these
heavy pots were hanging there on pegs from the ceiling.
Young Dillon told his father two of them lifted themselves
up from the ceiling, unhooked themselves from the pegs,
and came down on the floor.”
Did any guests staying at the inn during Svensson 's
ownership complain of any unusual happenings?
“There was this young couple staying at what Svens-
son called the honeymoon suite,” Furman replied. “At 6:30
in the morning, the couple heard three knocks at the door,
three loud, distinct knocks, and when they opened the
door, there was no one there. This sort of thing had hap-
pened before.”
Another case involved a lone diner who complained
to Svensson that “someone” was pushing him from his
chair at the table in the dining room onto another chair,
but since he did not see another person, how could this be?
Svensson hastily explained that the floor was a bit rickety
and that was probably the cause.
Was the restless spirit of the captain satisfied with
our coming? Did he and his son meet up in the great
beyond? Whatever came of our visit, nothing further has
been heard of any disturbances at Cap’n Grey’s Inn in
Barnstable.
» 112
The Confused Ghost of
the Trailer Park
I MET RITA Atlanta when she worked in a Frankfurt,
Germany nightclub. That is when I first heard about her
unsought ability to communicate with spirits.
Later that year, after my return to New York, I
received what appeared to be an urgent communication
from her.
Rita’s initial letter merely requested that I help her
get rid of her ghost. Such requests are not unusual, but this
one was — and I am not referring to the lady’s occupation:
exotic dancing in sundry nightclubs around the more or
less civilized world.
What made her case unusual was the fact that “her”
ghost appeared in a 30-year-old trailer near Boston.
The Confused Ghost of the Trailer Park
509
The haunted trailer and owner — Rita Atlanta
Psychic manifestations inside the trailer
"When I told my husband that we had a ghost,” she
wrote, "he laughed and said, ‘Why should a respectable
ghost move into a trailer? We have hardly room in it our-
selves with three kids.’”
It seemed the whole business had started during the
summer when the specter made its first sudden appearance.
Although her husband could not see what she saw, Miss
Atlanta’s pet skunk evidently didn’t like it and moved into
another room. Three months later, her husband passed
away and Miss Atlanta was kept hopping the Atlantic
(hence her stage name) in quest of nightclub work.
Ever since her first encounter with the figure of a
man in her Massachusetts trailer, the dancer had kept the
lights burning all night long. As someone once put it, “I
don’t believe in ghosts, I’m scared of them.”
Despite the lights, Miss Atlanta always felt a pres-
ence at the same time that her initial experience had taken
place — between 3 and 3:30 in the morning. It would
awaken her with such regularity that at last she decided
to seek help.
In September of the previous year, she and her family
had moved into a brand-new trailer in Peabody, Massachu-
setts. After her encounter with the ghost Rita made some
inquiries about the nice grassy spot where she had chosen
to park the trailer. Nothing had ever stood on the spot
before. No ghost stories. Nothing. Just one little thing.
One of the neighbors in the trailer camp, which is at
the outskirts of greater Boston, came to see her one
evening. By this time Rita’s heart was already filled with
fear, fear of the unknown that had suddenly come into her
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
life here. She freely confided in her neighbor, a woman by
the name of Birdie Gleason.
To her amazement, the neighbor nodded with under-
standing. She, too, had felt "something,” an unseen pres-
ence in her house trailer next to Rita Atlanta’s.
"Sometimes I feel someone is touching me,” she
added.
When I interviewed Rita, I asked her to describe
exactly what she saw.
“I saw a big man, almost seven feet tall, about 350
pounds, and he wore a long coat and a big hat,” she
reported.
But the ghost didn’t just stand there glaring at her.
Sometime she made himself comfortable on her kitchen
counter, with his ghostly legs dangling down from it. He
was as solid as a man of flesh and blood, except that she
could not see his face clearly since it was in the darkness of
early morning.
Later, when I visited the house trailer with my highly
sensitive camera, I took some pictures in the areas indi-
cated by Miss Atlanta: the bedroom, the door to it, and the
kitchen counter. In all three areas, strange phenomena
manifested on my film. Some mirrorlike transparencies
developed in normally opaque areas, which could not and
cannot be explained.
When it happened the first time, she raced for the
light and turned the switch, her heart beating wildly. The
yellowish light of the electric lamp bathed the bedroom in
a nightmarish twilight. But the spook had vanished. There
was no possible way a real intruder could have come and
gone so fast. No way out, no way in. Because this was dur-
ing the time Boston was being terrorized by the infamous
510
The Confused Ghost of the Trailer Park
Psychic energy in the trailer
Boston Strangler, Rita had taken special care to doublelock
the doors and secure all the windows. Nobody could have
entered the trailer without making a great deal of noise. I
have examined the locks and the windows — not even Hou-
dini could have done it.
The ghost, having once established himself in Rita’s
bedroom, returned for additional visits — always in the early
morning hours. Sometimes he appeared three times a week,
sometimes even more often.
“He was staring in my direction all the time,” Rita
said with a slight Viennese accent, and one could see that
the terror had never really left her eyes. Even three thou-
sand miles away, the spectral stranger had a hold on the
woman.
Was he perhaps looking for something? No, he didn’t
seem to be. In the kitchen, he either stood by the table or
sat down on the counter. Ghosts don’t need food — so why
the kitchen?
"Did he ever take his hat off?” I wondered.
“No, never,” she said and smiled. Imagine a ghost
doffing his hat to the lady of the trailer!
What was particularly horrifying was the noiseless-
ness of the apparition. She never heard any footfalls or
rustling of his clothes as he silently passed by. There was
no clearing of the throat as if he wanted to speak. Nothing.
Just silent stares. When the visitations grew more frequent,
Rita decided to leave the lights on all night. After that, she
did not see him any more. But he was still there, at the
usual hour, standing behind the bed, staring at her. She
knew he was. She could almost feel the sting of his gaze.
Rita in working costume
One night she decided she had been paying huge
light bills long enough. She hopped out of bed, turned the
light switch to the off position and, as the room was
plunged back into semidarkness, she lay down in bed
again. Within a few minutes her eyes had gotten accus-
tomed to the dark. Her senses were on the alert, for she
was not at all sure what she might see. Finally, she forced
herself to turn her head in the direction of the door. Was
her mind playing tricks on her? There, in the doorway,
stood the ghost. As big and brooding as ever.
With a scream, she dove under the covers. When she
came up, eternities later, the shadow was gone from the
door.
The next evening, the lights were burning again in
the trailer, and every night thereafter, until it was time for
her to fly to Germany for her season’s nightclub work.
Then she closed up the trailer, sent her children to stay
with friends, and left with the faint hope that on her return
in the winter, the trailer might be free of its ghost. But she
wasn’t at all certain.
It was obvious to me that this exotic dancer was a
medium, as only the psychic can “see” apparitions.
■
511
m 113
The Ghost Who Would Not Leave
HARDLY HAD I FINISHED investigating the rather colorful
haunting in the New York State home of Newsday colum-
nist Jack Altschul, which resulted in my name appearing in
his column as a man who goes around chasing ghosts, than
I heard from a gentleman, now deceased, who was the
public relations director of the Sperry Company and a man
not ordinarily connected with specters.
Ken Brigham wanted me to know that he had a resi-
dent ghost at his summer home in Maine, and what was I
to do about it. He assured me that while the lady ghost he
was reporting was not at all frightening to him and his
family, he would, nevertheless, prefer she went elsewhere.
This is a sentiment I have found pervasive with most own-
ers of haunted property, and while it shows a certain lack
of sentimentality, it is a sound point of view even from the
ghost’s perspective because being an earthbound spirit
really has no future, so to speak.
All this happened in January 1967. I was keenly
interested. At the time, I was working closely with the late
Ethel Johnson Meyers, one of the finest trance mediums
ever, and it occurred to me immediately that, if the case
warranted it, I would get her involved in it.
I asked Mr. Brigham, as is my custom, to put his
report in writing, so I could get a better idea as to the
nature of the haunting. He did this with the precision
expected from a public relations man representing a major
instrument manufacturer. Here then is his initial report:
As a member of the public relations/advertising pro-
fession, I’ve always been considered a cynical, phleg-
matic individual and so considered myself. I’m not
superstitious, walk under ladders, have never thought
about the "spirit world,” am not a deeply religious per-
son, etc., but....
Eight years ago, my wife and I purchased, for a sum-
mer home, a nonworking farm in South Waterford,
Maine. The ten-room farmhouse had been unoccupied
for two years prior to our acquisition. Its former owners
were in elderly couple who left no direct heirs and who
had been virtually recluses in their later years. The
house apparently was built in two stages, the front part
about 1840, and the ell sometime around 1800. The ell
contains the original kitchen and family bedroom; a loft
overhead was used during the nineteenth century for
farm help and children. The former owners for many
years occupied only a sitting room, the kitchen, and a
dining room; all other rooms being closed and shuttered.
The so-called sitting room was the daily and nightly
abode. We never met the Bells, both of whom died of
old age in nursing homes in the area, several years
before we purchased the farm. They left it to relatives;
all the furniture was auctioned off.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
The first summer my wife and I set about restoring
the farmhouse. The old kitchen became our living room;
the Bells’ sitting room became another bedroom; the old
dining room, our kitchen. One bright noontime, I was
painting in the new living room. All the doors were
open in the house. Aware that someone was looking at
me, I turned toward the bedroom door and there, stand-
ing in bright sunlight, was an elderly woman; she was
staring at me. Dressed in a matronly housedress, her
arms were folded in the stance common to many house-
wives. I was startled, thinking she must have entered the
house via the open front door and had walked through
the front sitting room to the now-bedroom. Behind her
eyeglasses, she maintained a passive, inquisitive expres-
sion. For a moment or two, we stared at each other. I
thought, What do you say to a native who has walked
through your house, without sounding unneighborly?
and was about to say something like What can I do for
you? when she disappeared. She was there and then she
wasn’t. I hurried through the bedrooms and, of course,
there was no one.
Once or twice that summer I was awakened by a
sudden, chill draft passing through the second-floor
room we used as a master bedroom. One early evening,
while I was taking a shower, my wife called me from the
living room with near-panic in her voice. I hurried
downstairs as quickly as possible only to have her ask if
I intended to remain downstairs.
Before closing the house up for the winter, I casually
described the apparition to local friends without disclos-
ing my reasons, excusing the inquiry from a standpoint
I was interested in the previous owner. Apparently my
description was accurate, for our friends wanted to know
where I’d seen Mrs. Bell; I had difficulty passing it off.
My wife wasn’t put off, however, and later that
evening we compared notes for the first time. The night
she called me, she explained, she had felt a cold draft
pass behind her and had looked up toward the door of
the former sitting room (which was well-lighted). There,
in the door, was the clear and full shadow of a small
woman. My wife then cried out to me. The chill breeze
went through the room and the shadow disappeared.
My wife reported, however, that surprisingly enough she
felt a sense of calm. No feeling of vindictiveness.
Over the years, we’ve both awakened spontaneously
to the chill draft and on more than one occasion have
watched a pinpoint light dance across the room. The
house is isolated and on a private road, discounting any
possible headlights, etc. After a moment or so, the chill
vanishes.
A couple of times, guests have queried us on hearing
the house creak or on hearing footsteps, but we pass
these off.
The summer before last, however, our guests’ reac-
tion was different.
A couple with two small children stayed with us.
The couple occupied the former sitting room, which
now is furnished as a Victorian-style bedroom with a
tremendous brass bed. Their daughter occupied another
first-floor bedroom, and their son shared our son's bed-
room on the second floor. A night light was left on in
the latter bedroom and in the bathroom, thereby illumi-
nating the upper hallway, and, dimly, the lower hallway.
512
My wife and I occupied another bedroom on the second
floor that is our custom.
During the early hours of the morning, we were
awakened by footsteps coming down the upper hallway.
They passed our door, went into the master bed-
room, paused, continued into our room and after a few
minutes, passed on and down the staircase. My wife
called out, thinking it was one of the boys, possibly ill.
No answer. The chill breeze was present, and my wife
again saw the woman’s shadow against the bedroom
wall. The children were sound asleep.
In the morning, our adult guests were quiet during
breakfast, and it wasn't until later that the woman asked
if we’d been up during the night and had come down-
stairs. She’d been awakened by the footsteps and by
someone touching her arm and her hair. Thinking it was
her husband, she found him soundly sleeping. In the
moonlight, she glanced toward a rocking chair in the
bedroom and said she was certain someone had moved it
and the clothes left on it. She tried to return to sleep,
but again was awakened, certain someone was in the
room, and felt someone move the blanket and touch her
arm.
My wife and I finally acknowledged our “ghost,” but
our woman guest assured us that she felt no fright, to
her own surprise, and ordinarily wouldn't have believed
such "nonsense,” except that I, her host, was too
"worldly" to be a spiritualist.
At least one other guest volunteered a similar experi-
ence.
Finally I admitted my story to our local friends, ask-
ing them not to divulge the story in case people thought
we were “kooks." But I asked them if they would locate
a photograph of the Bell family. Needless to say, the
photograph they located was identical with my appari-
tion. An enlargement now is given a prominent place in
our living room.
Although this experience hasn’t frightened us from
the house, it has left us puzzled. My wife and I both
share the feeling that whatever [it is] is more curious
than unpleasant; more interested than destructive.
I was impressed and replied we would indeed venture
Down East. It so happened that Catherine, whom I was
married to at the time, and I were doing some traveling in
upper New Hampshire that August, and Ethel Johnson
Meyers was vacationing at Lake Sebago. All that needed to
be done was coordinate our travel plans and set the date.
Mr. Brigham, who then lived in Great Neck, New
York, was delighted and gave us explicit instructions on
how to traverse New Hampshire from Pike, New Hamp-
shire, where I was lecturing at the Lake Tarleton Club, to
our intended rendezvous with Ethel in Bridgton, Maine, at
the Cumberland Hotel. The date we picked was August
14, 1967. Ken and Doris Brigham then suggested we could
stay over at the haunted house, if necessary, and I assured
them that I doubted the need for it, being a bit cocksure
of getting through to, and rid of, the ghost all in the same
day.
* * *
Crossing the almost untouched forests from New
Hampshire to Maine on a road called the Kancamagus
Highway was quite an experience for us: we rode for a
very, very long time without ever seeing a human habita-
tion, or, for that matter, a gas station. But then the Indians
whose land this was never worried about such amenities.
Before we left, we had received a brief note from Ken
Brigham about the existence of this road cutting through
the White Mountains. He also informed me that some of
the witnesses to the phenomena at the house would be
there for our visit, and I would have a chance to meet
them, including Mrs. Mildred Haynes Noyes, a neighbor
who was able to identify the ghostly apparition for the
Brighams. Most of the phenomena had occurred in the liv-
ing room, downstairs in the house, as well as in the long
central hall, and in one upper-story front bedroom as well,
Mr. Brigham added.
At the time I had thought of bringing a television
documentary crew along to record the investigations, but it
never worked out that way, and in the end I did some film-
ing myself and sound recorded the interviews, and, of
course, Ethel Meyers’s trance.
When we finally arrived at the house in question in
Waterford, Maine, Ethel had no idea where she was
exactly or why. She never asked questions when I called on
her skills. Directly on arrival she began pacing up and
down in the grounds adjacent to the house as if to gather
up her bearings. She often did that, and I followed her
around with my tape recorder like a dog follows its master.
“I see a woman at the window, crying,” she suddenly
said and pointed to an upstairs window. "She wears a yel-
low hat and dress. There is a dog with her. Not from this
period. Looking out, staring at something.”
We then proceeded to enter the house and found
ourselves in a very well appointed living room downstairs;
a fire in the fireplace gave it warmth, even though this was
the middle of August. The house and all its furnishings
were kept as much as possible in the Federal -period style,
and one had the feeling of having suddenly stepped back
into a living past.
When we entered the adjacent dining room, Ethel
pointed at one of the tall windows and informed us that
the lady was still standing there.
“Dark brown eyes, high cheekbones, smallish nose,
now she has pushed back the bonnet hat, dark reddish-
brown hair,” Ethel intoned. I kept taking photographs,
pointing the camera toward the area where Ethel said the
ghost was standing. The pictures did not show anything
special, but then Ethel was not a photography medium,
someone who has that particular phase of mediumship. I
asked Ethel to assure the woman we had come in friend-
ship and peace, to help her resolve whatever conflict might
still keep her here. I asked Ethel to try to get the woman’s
The Ghost Who Would Not Leave
513
name. Ethel seemed to listen, then said, “I like to call her
Isabelle, Isabelle....”
“How is she connected to the house?”
“Lived here.”
I suggested that Ethel inform the woman we wanted
to talk to her. Earnestly, Ethel then addressed the ghost,
assuring her of no harm. Instead of being comforted, Ethel
reported, the woman just kept on crying.
We asked the ghost to come with us as we continued
the tour of the house; we would try and have her commu-
nicate through Ethel in trance somewhere in the house
where she could be comfortable. Meanwhile Ethel gathered
further psychic impressions as we went from room to
room.
“Many layers here. . .three layers. . .men fighting and
dying here. ...” she said. “Strong Indian influence also. . .
then there is a small child here. . .later period. . .the men
have guns, bleeding. . .no shoes. . .pretty far back. . .Adam
. . .Joseph. . .Balthazar. . .war victims. . .house looks differ-
ent. . .they’re lying around on the floor, in pain. . .some
kind of skirmish has gone on here."
I decided to chase the lady ghost again. We returned
to the living room. Ethel picked a comfortable chair and
prepared herself for the trance that would follow.
“I get the names Hattie. . .and Martin. . .not the
woman at the window. . .early period connected with the
men fighting. . .not in house, outside. . .Golay? Go-
something. . .it is their house. They are not disturbed but
they give there energy to the other woman. Someone by the
name of Luther comes around. Someone is called Mary-
gold. . .Mary. . .someone says, the house is all different.”
I decided to stop Ethel recounting what may well
have been psychic impressions from the past rather than
true ghosts, though one cannot always be sure of that dis-
tinction. But my experience has taught me that the kind of
material she had picked up sounded more diffuse, more
fractional than an earthbound spirit would be.
"Abraham. . Ethel mumbled and slowly went into
deep trance as we watched. The next voice we would hear
might be her guide, Albert’s, who usually introduces other
entities to follow, or it might be a stranger — but it certainly
would not be Ethel’s.
“It’s a man. Abram. . .Ibram. . she said, breathing
heavily. I requested her guide Albert’s assistance in calm-
ing the atmosphere.
Ethel’s normally placid face was now totally distorted
as if in great pain and her hands were at her throat, indi-
cating some sort of choking sensation; with this came unin-
telligible sounds of ah’s and o’s. I continued to try and
calm the transition.
I kept asking who the communicator was, but the
moaning continued, at the same time the entity now con-
trolling Ethel indicated that the neck or throat had been
injured as if by hanging or strangulation. Nevertheless, I
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
kept up my request for identification, as I always do in
such cases, using a quiet, gentle vocal approach and reas-
surances that the pain was of the past and only a memory
now.
Finally, the entity said his name was Abraham and
that he was in much pain.
“Abraham. . .Eben. . .my tongue!” the entity said,
and indeed he sounded as if he could not use his tongue
properly. Clearly, his tongue had been cut out, and I kept
telling him that he was using the medium’s now and there-
fore should be able to speak clearly. But he continued in a
way that all I could make out was “my house.”
“Is this your house?”
"Yes. . .why do you want to know. . .who are you?”
“I am a friend come to help you. Is this your house?"
“I live here...."
“How old are you?”
No answer.
"What year is this?”
“Seventy-eight. . .going on. . .seventy-nine. . . .”
"How old are you?”
“Old man. ..fifty-two....”
“Where were you born?”
"Massachusetts. . .Lowell. . ..”
“Who was it who hurt you?”
Immediately he became agitated again, and the voice
became unintelligible, the symptoms of a cut-out tongue
returned. Once again, I calmed him down.
“What church did you go to?” I asked, changing the
subject.
“Don’t go to church much. . he replied.
“Where were you baptized?”
“St. Francis... Episcopal.”
I suggested the entity should rest now, seeing that he
was getting agitated again, and I also feared for the
medium.
"I want justice. . .justice. . he said.
I assured him, in order to calm him down, that those
who had done him wrong had been punished. But he
would have none of it.
“They fight every night out there. . ..”
Again, I began to exorcise him, but he was not quite
ready.
"My daughter. . .Lisa. . .Elizabeth. ...”
“How old is she?”
“Thirteen. . .she cries for me, she cries for me, she
weeps. . .all the blood. . .they take her, too. . ..”
“Where is your wife?”
“She left us in misery. Johanna. . .don’t mention her
. . .she left us in misery.”
"What year was that?”
“This year. NOW....”
“Why did she leave you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
514
And he added, "I will go to find her. . .1 never see
her. .
“What about your father and mother? Are they
alive?”
“Oh no....”
“When did they die?”
"1776.”
The voice showed a definite brogue now.
“Where are they buried?”
“Over the water. . .Atlantic Ocean. . .home. ...”
"Where did your people come from?”
“Wales. . .G reenough. ...”
Further questioning brought out he was a captain in
the 5th regiment.
“Did you serve the king or the government of the
colonies?” 1 asked. Proudly the answer came.
“The king.”
When I asked him for the name of the commanding
officer of the regiment he served in, he became agitated and
hissed at me. . .”1 am an American citizen. . .I’ll have you
know!”
“Are you a patriot or a Tory?”
“I will not have you use that word,” he replied,
meaning he was not a Tory.
I went on to explain that time had passed, but he
called me mad; then I suggested I had come as a friend,
which elicited a bitter reply.
"What are friends in time of war?”
I explained that the war had long been over.
“The war is not over. . .1 am an American. . .don’t
tempt me again....”
Once again I pressed him for the name of his com-
manding officer and this time we received a clear reply:
Broderick. He was not infantry, but horse. We were finally
getting some answers. I then asked him for the names of
some of his fellow officers in the 5th regiment.
“All dead..,” he intoned, and when I insisted on
some names, he added, “Anthony. . .Murdoch. . .Surgeon
. . .my head hurts!”
“Any officers you can remember?”
“Matthew. ...”
I asked, what battles was he involved in.
“Champlain. . .Saint Lawrence. . .it’s bad, it’s
bad. ...”
He was showing signs of getting agitated again, and
time was fleeting.
I decided to release the poor tortured soul, asking
him whether he was ready to join his loved ones now.
Once again he relived the wars.
“He won’t come home again. . .Hatteras. . .fire. . .I’m
weary.”
I began to exorcise him, suggesting he leave the
house where he had suffered so much.
"My house. . .my tongue. . Indians,” he kept
repeating.
But finally with the help of Ethel’s spirit guide (and
first husband) Albert, I was able to help him across.
Albert, in his crisp voice, explained that one of the female
presences in the house, a daughter of the spirit we had just
released, might be able to communicate now. But what I
was wondering was whether a disturbed earthbound spirit
was in the house also, not necessarily a relative of this man.
Albert understood, and withdrew, and after a while, a
faint, definitely female voice began to come from the
medium’s still entranced lips.
“Ella. . . ” the voice said, faintly at first.
Then she added that she was very happy and had a
baby with her. The baby’s name was Lily. She was Ella,
she repeated. When I asked as to who she was in relation
to the house, she said, “He always came. . .every day. . .
William... my house....”
“Where is he? You know where he went?"
There was anxiety in her voice now. She said he left
St. Valentine’s Day, this year. . .and she had no idea what
year that was.
Who was William? Was he her husband?
This caused her to panic.
“Don’t tell them!” she implored me. The story began
to look ominous. Willie, Ella, the baby . . .and not her
husband?
She began to cry uncontrollably now. "Willie isn’t
coming anymore. . .where is he?”
What was she doing in the house?
“Wait for Willie. . .by the window. . .always by the
window. I wait for him and take care of Lily, she is so
sweet. What I can do to find Willie?”
I began to exorcise her, seeing she could not tell me
anything further about herself. Her memory was evidently
limited by the ancient grief. As I did so, she began to
notice spirits. “There is my Papa. . .he will be very angry
. . .don’t tell anyone. . .take me now. . .my Papa thinks we
are married. . .but we have no marriage. . .Willie must
marry me. ...”
She cried even harder now.
“Andrew... my husband....”
Once again I asked Albert, the guide, to lead her out-
side, from the house. It wasn’t easy. It was noisy. But it
worked.
“She is out,” Albert reported immediately following
this emotional outburst, “but her father did find out.”
“What period are we in now?”
"The eighteen-something.”
“Is there anything in the way of a disturbance from
the more recent past?
“Yes, that is true. An older lady. . .she does not want
to give up the home.”
Albert then went on to explain that the woman at the
window who had been seen had actually been used in her
lifetime by the earlier entitles to manifest through, which
The Ghost Who Would Not Leave
515
created confusion in her own mind as to who she was.
Albert regretted that he could not have her speak to us
directly. Andrew, he explained, was that more recent
woman’s father. Both women died in this house, and since
the earlier woman would not let go, the later woman could
not go on either, Albert explained.
“We have them both on our side, but they are closer
to you because their thoughts are on the earth plane, you
can reach them, as you are doing.”
After assuring us and the owners of the house that all
was peaceful now and that the disturbed entities had been
released, Albert withdrew, and Ethel returned to herself as
usual, blissfully ignorant of what had come through her
mediumship.
Two of the ladies mentioned earlier, who had been
connected with the house and the phenomena therein, had
meanwhile joined us. Mrs. Anthony Brooks, a lady who
had been sleeping in one of the bedrooms with her hus-
band two years prior to our visit had this to say.
“I had been asleep, when I was awakened by ruffling
at the back of my head. I first thought it was my husband
and turned over. But next thing I felt was pressure on my
stomach, very annoying, and I turned and realized that my
husband had been sound asleep. Next, my cover was being
pulled from the bed, and there was a light, a very pale
light for which there was no source. I was very frightened.
I went upstairs to go to the bathroom and as I was on the
stairs I felt I was being pushed and held on tightly to the
banister.”
I next talked to Mrs. Mildred Haynes Noyes, who
had been able to identify the ghostly lady at the window as
being the former resident, Mrs. Bell. Everything she had
told the Brighams was being reiterated. Then Ken Brigham
himself spoke, and we went over his experiences once more
in greater detail.
"I was standing in front of the fireplace, painting,
and at that time there was a door to that bedroom over
there which has since been closed up. It was a bright
morning, about 1 1 o’clock, the doors were open, windows
were open, my wife Doris was upstairs at the time, I was
alone, and as I stood there painting. I glanced out and
there, standing in the doorway, was a woman. As I was
glancing at her I thought it peculiar that the neighbors
would simply walk through my house without knocking.
“She stood there simply looking at me, with her arms
folded, a woman who was rather short, not too heavy,
dressed in a flower-print housedress, cotton, she had on
glasses and wore flat-heel Oxford shoes, all of this in plain
daylight. I did not know what to say to this woman who
had walked into my house. I was about to say to her, What
can I do for you? thinking of nothing more to say than
that, and with that — she was gone. I raced back to the hall,
thinking this little old lady had moved awfully fast, but
needless to say, there was no one there. I said nothing to
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
anyone, but several weeks later, during the summer, both
my wife and I were awakened several times during the
night by a very chilly breeze coming into the bedroom.
That was one of the bedrooms upstairs. Neither of us said
anything but we both sat up in bed and as we did so, we
watched a little light dance across the wall! We are very
isolated here, and there is no light from the outside what-
soever. This continued for the next year.”
At this point it was decided that Mrs. Brigham
would tell her part of the story.
“The first summer that we had the house,” Mrs.
Doris Brigham began, "I was sitting here, about five in the
afternoon, my husband was upstairs, and my son was out-
side somewhere. I was alone and I was aware that someone
was here, and on this white doorway there was a solid
black shadow. It was the profile of a woman from top to
bottom, I could see the sharp features, the outline of the
glasses, the pug in the back of her head, the long dress and
shoes — all of a sudden, the shadow disappeared, and a cold
breeze came toward me, and it came around and stood in
back of my chair, and all of a sudden I had this feeling of
peace and contentment, and all was right with the world.
Then, all of a sudden, the cold air around my chair, I
could feel it moving off. Then, practically every night in
the room upstairs, I was awakened for several years in the
middle of the night, by a feeling of someone coming into
the room. But many times there would be the dancing
lights. We moved into another bedroom, but even there we
would be awakened by someone running their fingers up
my hair! Someone was pressing against me, and the same
night, a neighbor was in the house, and she told us the
same story. Footsteps of someone coming up the stairs. A
feeling of movement of air. A black shadow on the ceiling,
and then it disappeared. Often when the children were
sick, we felt her around. It was always strong when there
were children in the house.
I wondered whether she ever felt another presence in
the house, apart from this woman.
Mrs. Brigham replied that one time, when she did
not feel the woman around, she came into the house and
felt very angry. That was someone else, she felt.
I decided it was time to verify, if possible, some of
the material that had come through Mrs. Meyers in trance,
and I turned to Ken Brigham for his comments.
“It has been one of the most astounding experiences I
have ever had,” he began. "There are several points which
no one could know but my wife and myself. We did a con-
siderable amount of research back through the deeds of the
house. This only transpired a few weeks ago. I had been
excavating up out front, preparing some drains, when I
came across some foreign bricks, indicating that there had
been an extension to the house. This is not the original
house, the room we are in; there was a cottage here built
for Continental soldiers, at the end of the Revolutionary
War.
516
These cottages were given to Massachusetts soldiers,
in lieu of pay, and they got some acres up here. This house
has been remodeled many times, the most recent around
1870. The town here was formed around 1775; the deeds
we have are around 1800. Several things about the house
are lost in legend. For example, down there is a brook
called Mutiny Brook. There was a mutiny here, and there
was bloodshed. There were Indians, yes, this was definitely
Indian territory. At one time this was a very well settled
area; as recently as 1900 there were houses around here.”
I realized, of course, that this was no longer the case:
the house we were in was totally isolated within the coun-
tryside now.
“The original town was built on this hill, but it has
disappeared,” Mr. Brigham continued, and then disclosed a
strange coincidence (if there be such a thing!) of an actual
ancestor of his having lived here generations ago, and then
moving on to Canada.
"We only just discovered that at one time two broth-
ers with their families decided to share the house and
remodel it,” Brigham continued his account. “But one of
them died before they could move in. Much of what Mrs.
Meyers spoke of in trance is known only locally.
“What about the two women Mrs. Meyers
described?” I asked. "She mentioned a short, dark-haired
woman.”
“She was short, but had gray hair when I saw her,”
Mr. Brigham said. “A perfectly solid human being — I did
nor see her as something elusive. We only told our son
about this recently, and he told us that he had heard foot-
steps of a man and a woman on the third floor.”
“Anything else you care to comment on?”
“Well, we have the names of some of the owners
over a period of time. There were many, and some of the
names in the record match those given by Ethel Meyers,
like Eben.”
“When Mrs. Meyers mentioned the name Isabelle,”
Mrs. Brigham interjected, “1 thought she meant to say
Alice Bell, which of course was the former owner’s name —
the woman at the window.”
“One thing I should tell you also, there seems to
have been a link between the haunting and the presence of
children. One of the former owners did have a child,
although the neighbors never knew this,” Ken Brigham
said. “She had a miscarriage. Also, Lowell, Massachusetts,
is where these Continental soldiers came from; that was the
traditional origin at the time. Maine did not yet exist as a
state; the area was still part of Massachusetts. One more
thing: both Mr. and Mrs. Bell died without having any
funerals performed. She died in a nursing home nearby, he
in Florida. But neither had a funeral service.”
“Well, they had one now," I remarked and they
laughed. It was decided that the Brighams would search
the records further regarding some of the other things that
Ethel had said in trance, and then get back to me.
Mr. Brigham was as good as his word. On August
21 , 1967, he sent me an accounting of what he had further
discovered about the house, and the history of the area in
which it stands. But it was not as exhaustive as I had
hoped even though it confirmed many of the names and
facts Ethel had given us in trance. I decided to wait until I
myself could follow up on the material, when I had the
chance.
Fortunately, as time passed, the Brighams came to
visit my ex-wife Catherine and myself in August of the fol-
lowing year at our home in New York, and as a result Ken
Brigham went back into the records with renewed vigor.
Thus it was that on August 20, 1968, he sent me a lot of
confirming material, which is presented here.
Ethel Meyers’s mediumship had once again been
proved right on target. The names she gave us, Bell, Eben,
Murdoch, Blackguard, Willie, Abraham, why there they
were in the historical records! Not ghostly fantasies, not
guesswork. . .people from out of the past.
August 20, 1968
Dear Hans,
It was good hearing from Cathy and we did enjoy
visiting with you. I presume that about now you’re
again on one of your trips, but I promised to forward to
you some additional information that we’ve gathered
since last summer. Enclosed is a chronology of the his-
tory of the house as far as we’ve been able to trace back.
Early this summer (the only time we made it up to
Maine) we spent hours in the York, Maine, Registry of
Deeds, but the trail is cold. Deeds are so vague that we
can’t be certain as to whether or not a particular deed
refers to our property. We are, however, convinced by
style of building, materials, etc., that the back part of
our house is much older than thought originally — we
suspect it goes back to the mid-1700s.
Although I haven't included reference to it, our read-
ing of the town history (which is extremely garbled and
not too accurate) indicates that one of the Willard boys,
whose father had an adjoining farm, went off to the
Civil War and never returned, although he is not listed
as one of the wounded, dead, or missing. If memory
serves me right, he was simply listed as W. Willard
(“Willie”?). Now, the “ghost” said her name was
“Isabel”; unfortunately, we can find no records in the
town history on the Bell family, although they owned
the house from 1851 to 1959 and Eben Bell lived in the
town from 1820-1900! This is peculiar in as much as
nearly every other family is recounted in the Town His-
tory of 1874. Why? Could “Isabel” be a corruption of
the Bell name, or perhaps there was an Isabel Bell.
Checking backwards in a perpetual calendar it seems
that during the mid- 1800s Tuesday, St. Valentine’s Day,
occurred on February 14, 1865, 1860, and 1854; the first
seems most logical since the others do not occur during
the Civil War — which ended on [May] 26, 1865!*
Some of my other notes are self-explanatory.
Another question of course concerns the term "Black-
guard” for our particular road and hill. An archaic term
The Ghost Who Would Not Leave
517
that connotes "rude” — note also that the map of 1850
does not show a family name beside our house. . .this
could be because the property was between owners, or it
could be that the owners were "rude” — which also could
account for the lack of reference in Town History to the
Bell family. It1 s an interesting sidelight.
Now, to more interesting pieces of information for
you: 1) we’ve finally decided to sell the house and it’s
just like losing a child. . .I'm personally heartbroken,
but I’m also a realist and it is ridiculous to try to keep it
when we can’t get up there often enough to maintain it.
We have a couple of prospective buyers now but since
we’re not under pressure we want to make sure that any
new owners would love it like we do and care for it.
2) And, then the strangest. . .Doris was going
through some old photographs of the place and came
across a color print from a slide taken by a guest we had
there from Dublin, Ireland. And, it truly looks like an
image in the long view up the lane to the house. Three
persons have noted this now. Then, on another slide it
looks as though there were a house in the distance (also
looking up the lane) which is only 1 Vz stories in height.
We’re having the company photographer blow them up
to see what we will see. I’ll certainly keep you posted on
this!
Well, it all adds up to the fact that we did a lot more
work and learned a lot more about the place. . .nearly all
of which correlates with Ethel’s comments. But as a
Yankee realist, I’m just going to have to cast sentiment
aside and let it go.
Drop us a line when you get a chance.
Sincerely yours,
*Willie left on Tuesday, St. Valentine’s Day.
Two points should be made here regarding this story.
Ethel Johnson Meyers had many phases or forms of medi-
umship, but despite her fervent belief that she might also
possess the ability to produce so-called extras, or supernor-
mal photographs, she never did during my investigations.
What she did produce at times on her own were so-called
scotographs, similar to Rorschach effects used in psychia-
try; they were the result of briefly exposing sensitive photo-
graphic paper to light and then interpreting the resulting
shapes.
But genuine psychic photography shows clear-cut
images, faces, figures that need no special interpretation to
be understood, and this, alas, did not occur in this case
when I took the photographs with my camera in Mrs.
Meyers’s presence.
After the Brighams had sold the Maine property,
they moved to Hampton, Virginia. Ken and Doris looked
forward to many years of enjoying life in this gentler cli-
mate.
Unfortunately, exactly two years after our last con-
tact, in August 1970, Ken slipped and injured an ankle,
which in turn led to complications and his untimely and
sudden death.
As for the restless ones up in Maine, nothing further
was heard, and they are presumed to be where they right-
fully belong.
The following research material, supplied by the late
Mr. Ken Brigham, is presented here to give the reader a
better feel for the territory and times in which this took
place.
* * *
Brigham’s documentation:
1 . Roberts, Kenneth, March to Quebec, Doubleday,
1938, p. 32. Listed in the King’s Service: Thomas
Murdock.
2. Carpenter, Allan, Enchantment of America — Maine,
Children s Press, 1966, p. 27 — 85 years of Indian warfare,
more than 1 ,000 Maine residents killed, hundreds captured;
by year 1675, there were about 6,000 European settlers in
what is now Maine.
3. Smith, Bradford, Roger’s Ranger & The French
and Indian War, Random House, 1956, p. 5 — Indians
began to slaughter them when they marched out of Fort
William Henry to surrender — women and children and
men (1757); p. 6 — Robert Rogers of New York raised com-
pany of rangers in 1755, by 1758 had five companies.
Ebenezer Webster came from his home in New Hamp-
shire; p. 46 — mentioned Colonel Bradstreet; p. 176 —
Ebenezer, 1761, returned east to Albany as Captain and
then to New Hampshire where he married a girl named
Mehitable Smith. . .pushed northward with men under
Colonel Stevens and settled on 225 acres at northern edge
of town of Salisbury. Later fought in Revolutionary War.
Oxford County Registry of Deeds
(References: Book 14, p. 18; Bk. 25, p. 295; Bk. 49,
p. 254; Bk. 67, p. 264; Bk. 92, p. 158; Bk. 110, p. 149; Bk.
117, p.268; Bk. 187, p. 197; Bk. 102, p. 135; Bk. 240, p.
477-478; Bk. 260, p. 381)
1805 Abraham (or Abram) Whitney sold to Nathan Jewell
1809 Nathan Jewell sold to William Monroe (part of land
and the house) (1/9/09)
1823 Jonathan Stone bankrupt and sold to Peter Gerry
(house), Thaddeus Brown and Josiah Shaw (5/19/23)
1836 Peter Gerry sold to Moses M. Mason (6/14/36)
1848 John Gerry sold to Daniel Billings (5/27/48)
1895 Semantha Bell sold to Caroline Bell (3/4/95)
1940 Edna Culhan (daughter of Caroline Bell) sold to Irv-
ing and Alice Bell (11/7/40)
1956 Alice Bell transferred to Archie and Ethel Bell
(10/12/56)
1959 Archie and Ethel Bell sold to K. E. and D. M.
Brigham (1/59)
Bk. 3, p. 484, Feb 7, 1799
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
518
Isaac Smith of Waterford for $800 sold to Nathaniel Geary
of Harvard, Lot 2 in 6th Range (southerly half).
Deed written February 7, 1799, but not recorded
until September 24, 1808. (m. Unice Smith) (See
notes 1 & 2)
Vol. 3, p. 99, Jan 6, 1800 (Fryeburg)
Nathaniel Geary and Betey Geary, his wife, sold to Peter
Geary for $400 westerly end of southern half of Lot 2
in 6th Range. Notarized in York, January 6, 1800.
On April 2, 1801 Betey Geary appeared and signed
document which was registered on February 1 1 ,
1804.
Peter Gerry (or Geary) b. 1776 — d. 6/16/1847
m. Mary (b. 1782— d. 3/16/1830)
m. Elizabeth (b. 1787 — d. 5/1/1858)
c. Mary (b. 1834 or 1804— d. 1844)
(see note 3) John C. (b. 1 808)
Roland (b. 1810— d. 1842)
m. Maria Farrar (b. 1811 — d. 1842)
Abbie (b. 1812— d. 1817)
Elbridge (b. 1815 — m. Anna Jenness)
Bk. 92, p. 158, May 27, 1848
John Gerry sold for $100 (?) to Daniel Billings
Daniel Billings (b. 1780 Temple, Massachusetts)
. . .m. Sarah Kimball (b. 1786)
. . .c. Louise (m. William Hamlin)
Caroline (b. 1810 — m. G. F. Wheeler — b. 1810)
George C. (b. 1837— d. 1919)
...m. Rebecca Whittcomb, private F. Co.,
9th Reg. — 3 years svc. Civil War)
Maria (m. Calvin Houghton)
James R. (m. Esther Clark)
John D. (m. Esther Knowlton)
Miranda
Bk. 102, p. 135, Oct 14, 1851
Daniel Billings sold to William F. Bell of Boston and Tim-
othy Bell for $1 ,400
Bk. 1 17, p. 268, Dec 24, 1858
William Bell of Waterford paid his father, William F. Bell,
$800 for Lot 2 in 6th Range
Bk. 187, p. 197, April 3, 1871
William Bell, ‘‘for support of self and wife,” transferred to
Timothy C. Bell "homestead farm” and its parts of
lots.
Bk. 240, p. 24,1894
Timothy Bell left property to his wife Semantha Bell
Bk. 240, p. 477-78, Mar 4, 1895
Semantha Hamlin Bell transferred to Caroline Bell of
Boston
Caroline Bell (b. 4/4/1848— d. 9/20/1926)
...m.T. C. Bell (b. 10/10/1829— d. 7/13/1894)
. . ,m. J. B. Bennett
1905
Caroline Bell (d. 1905??) left property to her son Irving
Bell, “her sole heir.”
Bk. 442, p. 133, Oct 30, 1940
Edna Bell Culhan (unmarried) of Cambridge, Mass, trans-
ferred to Irving and Alice Bell
Nov. 7, 1940
Irving Bell transferred to Edna Culhan “premises described
in deed from Semantha to his mother Caroline Bell
and he was her sole heir.”
Bk. 560, p. 381, Oct 12, 1956
Archie and Ethel Bell inherited Lots 1 & 2 in the 5th
Range and Lots 1 & 2 bought the 6th Range from
Alice Bell
Jan 1959
Archie and Ethel Bell sold property to K. E. and D. M.
Brigham
Notes
1. According to Bk. 2, pp. 445-46: On December 20,
1802, Nathaniel Gerry (wife Betey) for $800 sold to David
Whitcomb of Boston, Mass., Lot 2 in 6th Range. Deed
mentions road running thru land. Registered 1807 and
notarized and signed by Justice of the Peace Eber Rice.
2. According to Bk. 9. p. 467-68: On November 13,
1810, David Whitcomb for $150 sold to Peter Gerry Lot 2
in the 6th Range, including “Gerry Road.” Apparently
both these transactions (notes 1 & 2) were concerned with
the westerly end of the northern half of Lot 2 in the 6th
Range.
3. John C. Gerry (b. 1808): m. Nancy Farrar (b.
181 0 d . 1841), Nancy Sawin (b. 1819). He had an apothe-
cary store in Fryeburg.
Interesting Notes
1 . Local cemetery has gravestone of Hon. Lewis
Brigham, b. 1816, d. 1866 (at Amherst, Mass).
2. Eben Bell, (b. 8/5/1820— d. 6/8/1900)
3. Richard and Samuel Brigham, and David Whit-
comb, signed petition for incorporation on December 9,
1795.
4. Historical:
Waterford was in York Country when it applied for incor-
poration (January 27, 1796).
Fryeburg (Pequawkett) was settled in 1763, Inc. 1777; in
1768 Fryeburg had population 300 plus.
November 17, 1796 — Isaac Smith petitioned, with others,
Massachusetts for incorporation. Document stated
there were fifty to sixty families in “said plantation."
History of Waterford, p. 25 — “and when the Indians
attacked the growing settlements on the Androscog-
The Ghost Who Would Not Leave
519
gin in 1781, and carried Lt. Segar* and other into
Canadian captivity, Lt. Stephen Farrington led
twenty-three men over this trail in hot, although vain
pursuit of the savages.”
(*Lt. Nathaniel Segar had cleared a few acres in 1774. A
few townships, as Waterford and New Suncook [Lovell
and Sweden] had been surveyed and awaited settlers, p. 22)
Waterford, settled 1775, incorporated 1797; population
1790—150; 1800—535.
“Spirit of 76” (Commanger/Morris, p. 605) — General Bur-
goyne surrenders October 1 111 . . .General John Stark
agreed to work with Seth Warner because Warner
was from New Hampshire or the Hampshire Grants
(1777).
November 15, 1745 — First Massachusetts Regiment, under
Sir William Pepperrell — 8th company: Capt. Thomas
Perkins, Lt. John Burbank, John Gerry (single).
Civil War: "Fifth Regiment commanded by Mark H.
Dunnill of Portland. “Fifth was engaged in eleven
pitched battles and eight skirmishes ere it entered on
terrible campaign of the Wilderness which was an
incessant battle. It captured 6 rebel flags and more
prisoners than it had in its ranks.”
5. Local Notes:
A) Androscoggin Trail was the main Indian route
from the East Coast to Canada. Below our property, in the
area of Lot 3 in the 4th Range, it follows a brook called
“Mutiny Brook.” The origin of the term used here is
vague, but the natives say Indians mutinied there during
the French and Indian Wars.
B) When the town was first settled, the pioneers built
their homes on our hill rather than the flat land and the
only road around Bear Lake was at the foot of Sweden and
Blackguard roads.
C) Our road is called by the archaic word "Black-
guard” which connotes villain. No one knows why.
D) The second floor of the house was constructed
sometime after the first; timbers are hand hewn to the sec-
ond floor and mill cut above. The house was rebuilt several
times apparently; about 1890 or so two brothers and their
families intended to live there but one died before taking
residence. Also, foundations of an earlier building were
uncovered near the back door.
m ii4
The Ghost at Port Clyde
PORT Clyde IS A LOVELY little fishing village on the
coast of Maine where a small number of native Yankees,
who live there all year round, try to cope with a few sum-
mer residents, usually from New York or the Midwest.
Their worlds do not really mesh, but the oldtimers realize
that a little — not too much — tourism is really quite good
for business, especially the few small hotels in and around
Port Clyde and St. George, so they don’t mind them too
much. But the Down Easterners do keep to themselves,
and it isn’t always easy to get them to open up about their
private lives or such things as, let us say, ghosts.
Carol Olivieri Schulte lived in Council Bluffs, Iowa,
when she first contacted me in November 1974. The wife
of a lawyer, Mrs. Schulte is an inquisitive lady, a college
graduate, and the mother of what was then a young son.
Somehow Carol had gotten hold of some of my books and
become intrigued by them, especially where ghosts were
concerned, because she, too, had had a brush with the
uncanny.
"It was the summer of 1972,” she explained to me,
"and I was sleeping in an upstairs bedroom,” in the sum-
mer cottage her parents owned in Port Clyde, Maine.
CHAPTER SIX: This House Is Haunted
520
“My girlfriend Marion and her boyfriend were sleep-
ing in a bedroom across the hall with their animals, a
Siamese cat and two dogs.”
The cat had been restless and crept into Carol’s
room, touching her pillow and waking her. Carol sat up in
bed, ready to turn on the light, when she saw standing
beside her bed a female figure in a very white nightgown.
The figure had small shoulders and long, flowing hair. . .
and Carol could see right through her!
It became apparent, as she came closer, that she
wanted to get Carol’s attention, trying to talk with her
hands.
“Her whole body suggested she was in desperate need
of something. Her fingers were slender, and there was a
diamond ring on her fourth finger, on the right hand. Her
hands moved more desperately as I ducked under the
covers.”
Shortly after this, Carol had a dream contact with the
same entity. This time she was abed in another room in
the house, sleeping, when she saw the same young woman.
She appeared to her at first in the air, smaller than life-size.
Her breasts were large, and there was a maternal feeling
about her. With her was a small child, a boy of perhaps
three years of age, also dressed in a white gown. While the
child was with Carol on her bed, in the dream, the mother
hovered at some distance in the corner. Carol, in the
dream, had the feeling the mother had turned the child
over to her, as if to protect it, and then she vanished.
Immediately there followed the appearance of another
woman, a black-hooded female, seeming very old, coming
toward her and the child. Carol began to realize the dark-
hooded woman wanted to take the child from her, and the
child was afraid and clung to her. When the woman stood
close to Carol’s bed, still in the dream, Carol noticed her
bright green eyes and crooked, large nose, and her dark
complexion. She decided to fight her off, concentrating her
thoughts on the white light she knew was an expression of
psychic protection, and the dark-hooded woman disap-
peared. Carol was left with the impression that she had
been connected with a school or institution of some kind.
At this, the mother in her white nightgown returned and
took the child back, looking at Carol with an expression of
gratitude before disappearing again along with her child.
Carol woke up, but the dream was so vivid, it stayed
with her for weeks, and even when she contacted me, it
was still crystal clear in her mind. One more curious event
transpired at the exact time Carol had overcome the evil
figure in the dream. Her grandmother, whom she described
as “a very reasoning, no-nonsense lively Yankee lady,” had
a cottage right in back of Carol's parents’. She was tending
her stove, as she had done many times before, when it
blew up right into her face, singeing her eyebrows. There
was nothing whatever wrong with the stove.
Carol had had psychic experiences before, and even
her attorney husband was familiar with the world of spirits,
so her contacting me for help with the house in Maine was
by no means a family problem.
I was delighted to hear from her, not because a
Maine ghost was so very different from the many other
ghosts I had dealt with through the years, but because of
the timing of Carol’s request. It so happened that at that
time I was in the middle writing, producing, and appearing
in the NBC series called ‘‘In Search of. . . ” and the ghost
house in Maine would make a fine segment.
An agreement was arranged among all concerned,
Carol, her husband, her parents, the broadcasting manage-
ment, and me. I then set about to arrange a schedule for
our visit. We had to fly into Rockland, Maine, and then
drive down to Port Clyde. If I wanted to do it before Carol
and her family were in residence, that, too, would be all
right though she warned me about the cold climate up
there during the winter months.
In the end we decided on May, when the weather
would be acceptable, and the water in the house would be
turned back on.
I had requested that all witnesses of actual phenom-
ena in the house be present to be questioned by me.
Carol then sent along pictures of the house and state-
ments from some of the witnesses. I made arrangements to
have her join us at the house for the investigation and film-
ing for the period May 13-15, 1976. The team — the crew,
my psychic, and me — would all stay over at a local hotel.
The psychic was a young woman artist named Ingrid Beck-
man with whom I had been working and helping develop
her gift.
And so it happened that we congregated in Port
Clyde from different directions, but with one purpose in
mind — to contact the lady ghost at the house. As soon as
we had settled in at the local hotel, the New Ocean House,
we drove over to the spanking white cottage that was to be
the center of our efforts for the next three days. Carol's
brother Robert had driven up from Providence, and her
close friend Marion Going from her home, also in Rhode
Island.
I asked Ingrid to stay at a little distance from the
house and wait for me to bring her inside, while I spoke to
some of the witnesses, out of Ingrid’s earshot. Ingrid
understood and sat down on the lawn, taking in the beauty
of the landscape.
Carol and I walked in the opposite direction, and
once again we went over her experiences as she had
reported them to me in her earlier statement. But was there
anything beyond that, I wondered, and questioned Carol
about it.
"Now since that encounter with the ghostly lady have
you seen her again? Have you ever heard her again?”
‘‘Well about three weeks ago before I was to come
out here, I really wanted to communicate with her. I con-
centrated on it just before I went to sleep, you know. I was
thinking about it, and I dreamed that she appeared to me
the way she had in the dream that followed her apparition
here in this house. And then I either dreamed that I woke
up momentarily and saw her right there as I had actually
seen her in this bedroom or I actually did wake up and see
her. Now the sphere of consciousness I was in — I am
doubtful as to where I was at that point. I mean it was
nothing like the experience. I experienced right here in this
room. I was definitely awake, and I definitely saw that ghost.
As to this other thing a couple of weeks ago — I wasn’t
quite sure.”
“Was there any kind of message?”
‘‘No, not this last time.”
“Do you feel she was satisfied having made contact
with you?”
“Yeah, I felt that she wanted to communicate with
me in the same sense that I wanted to communicate with
her. Like an old friend will want to get in touch with
another old friend, and I get the feeling she was just say-
ing, ‘Yes, I’m still here.’”
I then turned to Carol’s brother, Bob Olivieri, and
questioned him about his own encounters with anything
unusual in the house. He took me to the room he was
occupying at the time of the experiences, years ago, but
apparently the scene was still very fresh in his mind.
Mr. Olivieri, what exactly happened to you in this
room?”
“Well, one night I was sleeping on this bed and all of
a sudden I woke up and heard footsteps — what I thought
were footsteps — it sounded like slippers or baby’s feet in
The Ghost at Port Clyde
521
pajamas — something like that. Well, I woke up and I came
over, and I stepped in this spot, and I looked in the hall-
way and the sound stopped. I thought maybe I was imag-
ining it. So I came back to the bed, got into bed again, and
again I heard footsteps. Well, this time I got up and as
soon as I came to the same spot again and looked into the
hallway it stopped. I figured it was my nephew who was
still awake. So I walked down the hallway and looked into
the room where my sister and nephew were sleeping, and
they were both sound asleep. I checked my parents’ room,
and they were also asleep. I just walked back. I didn’t
know what to do so I got into bed again, and I kept on
hearing them. I kept on walking over, and they would still
be going until I stepped in this spot where they would
stop. As soon as I stepped here. And this happened for an
hour. I kept getting up. Heard the footsteps, stepped in
this spot and they stopped. So finally I got kind of tired of
it and came over to my bed and lay down in bed and as
soon as I lay down I heard the steps again, exactly what
happened before — and they seemed to stop at the end of
the hallway. A few minutes later I felt a pressure on my
sheets, starting from my feet, and going up, up, up, going
up further, further, slowly but surely. . .and finally some-
thing pulled my hair! Naturally I was just scared for the
rest of else night. I couldn’t get to sleep.”
I thought it was time to get back to Ingrid and bring
her into the house. This I did, with the camera and sound
people following us every step of the way to record for NBC
what might transpire in the house now. Just before we
entered the house, Ingrid turned to me and said, “You
know that window up there? When we first arrived, I
noticed someone standing in it.”
“What exactly did you see?”
“It was a woman. . .and she was looking out at us.”
The house turned out to be a veritable jewel of
Yankee authenticity, the kind of house a sea captain might be
happy in, or perhaps only a modern antiquarian. The white
exterior was matched by a spanking clean, and sometimes
sparse interior, with every piece of furniture of the right
period — the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — and
a feeling of being lived in by many people, for many years.
After we had entered the downstairs part where there
was an ample kitchen and a nice day room, I asked Ingrid,
as usual, to tell me whatever psychic impression she was
gathering about the house, its people and its history. Natu-
rally, I had made sure all along that Ingrid knew nothing
of the house or the quest we had come on to Maine, and
there was absolutely no way she could have had access to
specifics about the area, the people in the house — past and
present — nor anything at all about the case.
Immediately Ingrid set to work, she seemed agitated.
“There is a story connected here with the 1820s or
the 1840s,” she began, and I turned on my tape recorder to
catch the impressions she received as we went along. At
first, they were conscious psychic readings, later Ingrid
seemed in a slight state of trance and communication with
spirit entities directly. Here is what followed.
“1820s and 1840s. Do you mean both or one or the
other?”
"Well, it’s in that time period. And I sense a woman
with a great sense of remorse.”
"Do you feel this is a presence here?”
"Definitely a presence here.”
“What part of the house do you feel it’s strongest
in?”
"Well, I’m being told to go upstairs.”
“Is it a force pulling you up?”
“No, I just have a feeling to go upstairs.”
“Before you go upstairs, before you came here did
you have any feeling that there was something to it?”
"Yes, several weeks ago I saw a house — actually it
was a much older house than this one, and it was on this
site — and it was a dark house and it was shingled and it
was — as I say, could have been an eighteenth century
house, the house that I saw. It looked almost like a salt
box, it had that particular look. And I saw that it was right
on the water and I sensed a woman in it and a story con-
cerned with a man in the sea with this house.”
“A man with the sea?”
“Yes.”
“Do you feel that this entity is still in the house?”
“I do, and of course I don’t feel this is the original
house. I feel it was on this property, and this is why I
sense that she is throughout the house. The she comes here
because this is her reenactment.”
1 asked her to continue.
“I can see in my mind’s eye the house that was on
this property before, and in my mind I sense a field back
in this direction, and there was land that went with this!”
"Now we are upstairs. I want you to look into every
room and give me your impressions of it,” I said.
"Well, the upstairs is the most active. I sense a
woman who is waiting. This is in the same time period.
There are several other periods that go with this house, but
I will continue with this one. I also see that she has looked
out — not from this very same window, but windows in this
direction of the house — waiting for somebody to come back"
“What about this room?”
“Well, this room is like the room where she con-
ducted a vigil, waiting for someone. And I just got an
impression where she said that, ‘She’ meaning a schooner,
‘was built on the Kennebec River’ ... It seems to be a
double-masted schooner, and it seems to be her husband
who is on this. And I have an impression of novelties that
he has brought her back. Could be from a foreign country.
Perhaps the Orient or something like that.”
“Now go to the corridor again and try some of the
other rooms. What about this one?”
CHAPTER SIX: This House Is Haunted
522
"I sense a young man in this room, but this is from a
different time period. It’s a young boy. It seems to be
1920s.”
"Is that all you sense in this room?”
"That is basically what I sense in this room. The
woman of the double-masted schooner story is throughout
the house because as I have said, she doesn’t really belong
to this house. She is basically on the property — mainly she
still goes through this whole house looking for the man to
come home. And the front of the house is where the major
activity is. She is always watching. But I have an impres-
sion now of a storm that she is very upset about. A gale of
some kind. It seems to be November. I also feel she is say-
ing something about. . .flocking sheep. There are sheep on
this property.”
“Where would you think is the most active room?”
“The most active room I think is upstairs and to the
front, where we just were. I feel it most strongly there.”
“Do you think we might be able to make contact
with her?”
"Yes, I think so. Definitely I feel that she is watching
and I knew about her before I came."
“What does she look like?”
“I see a tall woman, who is rather thin and frail with
dark hair and it appears to be a white gown. It could be a
nightgown I see her in — it looks like a nightgown to me
with a little embroidery on the front. Hand done.”
“Let us see if she cares to make contact with us?”
“All right.”
“If the entity is present, and wishes to talk to us, we
have come as friends; she is welcome to use this instru-
ment, Ingrid, to manifest.”
“She is very unhappy here, Hans. She says her family
hailed from England. I get her name as Margaret.”
“Margaret what?”
-“Something like Hogen — it begins with an H. I don’t
think it is Hogan, Hayden, or something like that. I’m not
getting the whole name.”
"What period are you in now?”
“Now she says 1843. She is very unhappy because
she wanted to settle in Kennebunk; she does not like it
here. She doesn’t like the responsibilities of the house. Her
husband liked it in this fishing village. She is very unhappy
about his choice.”
■ "Is he from England?”
“Yes, their descendants are from England.”
“You mean were they born here or in England?”
“That I’m not clear on. But they have told me that
their descendants are English.”
“Now is she here.. .?”
“She calls Kennebunk the city. That to her is a
center.”
“What does she want? Why is she still here?”
"She’s left with all this responsibility. Her husband
went on a ship, to come back in two years.”
“Did he?”
"No, she’s still waiting for him.”
“The name of the ship?”
"I think it’s St. Catherine.”
“Is it his ship? Is he a captain?”
"He is second-in-command. It’s not a mate, but a
second something-or-other.”
“What is she looking for?”
“She’s looking to be relieved.”
"Of what?”
“Of the duties and the responsibilities.”
“For what?”
“This house.”
“Is she aware of her passing?”
“No, she’s very concerned over the flocks. She says
it's now come April, and it’s time for shearing. She is very
unhappy over this. In this direction, Hans, I can see what
appears to be a barn, and it’s very old fashioned. She had
two cows.”
“Is she aware of the people in the house now?”
"She wants to communicate.”
“What does she want them to do for her?”
“She wants for them to help her with the farm. She
says it’s too much, and the soil is all rocky and she can’t
get labor from the town. She’s having a terrible time. It’s
too sandy here.”
“Are there any children? Is she alone?”
“They have gone off, she says.”
“And she’s alone now?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Can you see her?”
“Yes, I do see her.”
“Can she see you?”
“Yes.”
“Tell her that this is 1976, and that much time has
passed. Does she understand this?”
“She just keeps complaining; she has nobody to write
letters to.”
“Does she understand that her husband has passed
on and that she herself is a spirit and that there is no need
to stay if she doesn’t wish to?”
“She needs to get some women from the town to help
with the spinning.”
“Tell her that the new people in the house are taking
care of everything, and she is relieved and may go on.
She’s free to go.”
“She said, ‘to Kennebunk?”’
"Any place she wishes — to the city or to join her
husband on the other side of life.”
“She said, ‘Oh, what I would do for a town house.’”
“Ask her to call out to her husband to take her away.
He’s waiting for her.”
“What does Johnsbury mean? A Johnsbury.”
“It’s a place.”
“She asking about Johnsbury.”
The Ghost at Port Clyde
523
“Does she wish to go there?”
“She feels someone may be there who could help
her.”
“Who?”
“It seems to be an uncle in Johnsbury.”
“Then tell her to call out to her uncle in Johnsbury.”
“She says he has not answered her letters.”
“But if she speaks up now he will come for her. Tell
her to do it now. Tell Margaret we are sending her to her
uncle, with our love and compassion. That she need not
stay here any longer. That she need not wait any longer for
someone who cannot return. That she must go on to the
greater world that awaits her outside, where she will rejoin
her husband and she can see her uncle.”
“She is wanting to turn on the lights. She is talking
about the oil lamps. She wants them all lit.”
“Tell her the people here will take good care of the
house, of the lamps, and of the land.”
“And she is saying, no tallow for the kitchen.”
“Tell her not to worry.”
“And the root cellar is empty."
“Tell her not to worry. We will take care of that for
her. She is free to go — she is being awaited, she is being
expected. Tell her to go on and go on from here in peace
and with our love and compassion.”
“She is looking for a lighthouse, or something about a
lighthouse that disturbs her.”
“What is the lighthouse?”
“She is very upset. She doesn’t feel that it’s been well
kept; that this is one of the problems in this area. No one
to tend things. I ought to be in Kennebunk, she says,
where it is a city.”
“Who lives in Kennebunk that she knows?”
“No one she knows. She wants to go there.”
“What will she do there?”
“Have a town house.”
“Very well, then let her go to Kennebunk.”
“And go [to] the grocer,” she says.
“Tell her she’s free to go to Kennebunk. That we
will send her there if she wishes. Does she wish to go to
Kennebunk?”
“Yes, she does.”
“Then tell her — tell her we are sending her now.
With all our love
"In a carriage?”
“In a carriage.”
“A black carriage with two horses.”
"Very well. Is she ready to go?”
“Oh, I see her now in a fancy dress with a bonnet.
But she’s looking younger — she’s looking much younger
now. And I see a carriage out front with two dark horses
and a man with a hat ready to take her.”
"Did she get married in Kennebunk?”
“No.”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
“Where did she get married?”
"I don’t get that.”
“Is she ready to go?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Tell her to get into the carriage and drive off.”
“Yes, she's ready,”
“Then go, Margaret — go.”
“She says, many miles — three-day trip.”
“All right. Go with our blessings. Do you see her in
the carriage now?”
“Yes, the road goes this way. She is going down a
winding road.”
“Is she alone in the carriage?”
“Yes, she is, but there is a man driving.”
"Who is the man who is driving?”
“A hired man.”
“Is she in the carriage now?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Is she on her way?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then wave at her and tell her we send her
away with our love.”
“She looks to be about twenty -two now. Much
younger.”
“She's not to return to this house.”
“She doesn’t want to. She grew old in this house, she
says.”
"What was the house called then?”
"It was Point something.”
“Did they build the house? She and her husband?”
“No, it was there.”
“Who built it?”
“Samuel.”
“And who was Samuel?”
“A farmer.”
"They bought it from him?”
“Yes, they did. She says the deed is in the town
hall.”
“Of which town? Is it in this village?"
“Next town. Down the road.”
“I understand. And in whose name is the deed?”
"Her husband’s.”
“First name."
"James.”
“James what. Full name.”
“It’s something like Haydon.”
“James Haydon from. . .? What is Samuel’s first
name?”
"Samuels was the last name of the people who owned
it.”
“But the first name of the man who sold it. Does she
remember that?”
“She never knew it.”
“In what year was that?”
“1821.”
“How much did they pay for the house?”
524
“Barter.”
“What did they give them?”
“A sailing ship. A small sailing ship for fishing, and
several horses. A year’s supply of roots, and some paper —
currency. Notes.”
“But no money?”
“Just notes. Like promises, she says. Notes of
promises.”
“What was the full price of the house?”
“All in barter, all in exchange up here.”
“But there was no sum mentioned for the house? No
value?”
"She says, Ask my husband.’”
“Now did she and her husband live here alone?”
“Two children.”
“What were their names?”
“Philip. But he went to sea.”
“And the other one?”
"Francis.”
"Did he go to sea too?”
"No.”
"What happened to him?”
“I think Francis died.”
"What did he die of?"
"Cholera. He was seventeen.”
“Where did they get married? In what church?"
“Lutheran."
“Why Lutheran? Was she Lutheran?”
“She doesn’t remember.”
“Does she remember the name of the minister?"
“Thorpe.”
“Thorpe?”
“Yes. Thorpe.”
“What was his first name?”
"Thomas Thorpe.”
“And when they were married, was that in this
town?”
“No.”
"What town was it in?”
“A long way away.”
“What was the name of the town?”
“Something like Pickwick. . .a funny name like
that. . .it’s some kind of a province of a place. A Piccadilly
— a province in the country she says.”
“And they came right here after that? Or did they go
anywhere else to live?”
“Saco. They went into Saco.”
“That’s the name of a place?”
“Yes.”
“How long did they stay there?”
“Six months in Saco.”
“And then?”
"Her husband had a commission."
“What kind of commission?”
“On a whaling ship.”
“What was the name of the ship?”
“St. Catherine. I see St. Catherine or St. Catherines."
“And then where did they move to?”
“Port Clyde.”
“. . .and they stayed here for the rest of their lives?”
"Yes, until he went to sea and didn’t come back one
time.”
“His ship didn’t come back?”
“No.”
"Does she feel better for having told us this?”
“Oh yes.”
“Tell her that she. ...”
“She says it’s a long story.”
“Tell her that she need not stay where so much
unhappiness has transpired in her life. Tell her husband is
over there. ...”
“Yes.”
“Does she understand?”
“Yes, she does.”
“Does she want to see him again?”
"Yes.”
"Then she must call out to him to come to her. Does
she understand that?”
"Yes.”
“Then tell her to call out to her husband James right
now.”
“He'll take her to Surrey or something like that, he
says.”
“Surrey.”
“Surrey. Some funny name.”
“Is it a place?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Does she see him?”
“Yes.”
“Are they going off together?”
“Yes, I see her leaving, slowly, but she’s looking
back.”
“Tell her to go and not to return here. Tell her to go
with love and happiness and in peace. Are they gone?”
“They are going. It's a reunion.”
“We wish them well and we send them from this
house, with our blessings, with our love and compassion,
and in peace. Go on, go on. What do you see?”
“They are gone.”
And with that, we left the house, having done
enough for one day, a very full day. The camera crew
packed up, so that we could continue shooting in the
morning. As for me, the real work was yet to come: cor-
roborating the material Ingrid Beckman had come up with.
I turned to Carol for verification, if possible, of some
of the names and data Ingrid had come up with while in
the house. Carol showed us a book containing maps of the
area, and we started to check it out.
"Look,” Carol said and pointed at the passage in the
book, “this strip of land was owned by John Barter and it
The Ghost at Port Clyde
525
was right next to Samuel Gardner. . .and it says John
Barter died in 1820. . .the date mentioned by Ingrid! Ah,
and there is also mention of the same Margaret Barter, and
there is a date on the same page, November 23, 1882. . .1
guess that is when she died.”
“Great,” I said, pleased to get all this verification so
relatively easily. "What exactly is this book?”
“It’s a copy of the town’s early records, the old
hypothogue, of the town of St. George.”
“Isn’t that the town right next door?”
“Yes, it is.”
“What about the name Hogden or Hayden or
Samuel?”
"Samuel Hatton was a sailor and his wife was named
Elmira,” Carol said, pointing at the book. Ingrid had
joined us now as I saw no further need to keep her in the
dark regarding verifications — her part of the work was
done.
“We must verify that,” I said. “Also, was there ever
a ship named St. Catherine and was it built on the Ken-
nebec River as Ingrid claimed?”
But who would be able to do that? Happily, fate was
kind; there was a great expert who knew both the area and
history of the towns better than anyone around, and he
agreed to receive us. That turned out to be a colorful ex-
sailor by the name of Commander Albert Smalley, who
received us in his house in St. George — a house, I might
add, which was superbly furnished to suggest the bridge of
a ship. After we had stopped admiring his mementos, and
made some chitchat to establish the seriousness of our mis-
sion, I turned to the Commander and put the vital ques-
tions to him directly.
“Commander Albert Smalley, you’ve been a resident
in this town for how long?”
"I was born in this town seventy-six years ago.”
"I understand you know more about the history of
Port Clyde than anybody else.”
“Well, that’s a moot question, but I will say, possi-
bly, yes.”
“Now, to the best of your knowledge, do the names
Samuel and Hatton mean anything in connection with this
area?”
“Yes, I know Hatton lived at Port Clyde prior to
1850. That I’m sure about.”
“What profession did he have?”
“Sailor.”
“Was there a ship named the St. Catherine in these
parts?”
“Yes, there was.”
“And would it have been built at the Kennebec
River? Or connected with it in some way?”
“Well, as I recall it was, and I believe it was built in
the Sewell Yard at the Kennebec River.”
“Was there any farming in a small way in the Port
Clyde area in the nineteenth century?”
“Oh yes, primarily that’s what they came here for.
But fishing, of course, was a prime industry.”
“Now there’s a lighthouse not far from Port Clyde
which I believe was built in the early part of the nineteenth
century. Could it have been there in the 1840s?”
“Yes. It was built in 1833.”
"Now if somebody would have been alive in 1840,
would they somehow be concerned about this compara-
tively new lighthouse? Would it have worried them?”
“No, it would not. The residence is comparatively
new. The old stone residence was destroyed by lightning.
But the tower is the same one.”
"Now you know the area of Port Clyde where the
Leah Davis house now stands? Prior to this house, were
there any houses in the immediate area?”
“I’ve always been told that there was a house there.
The Davis that owned it told me that he built on an old
cellar.”
"And how far back would that go?”
“That would go back to probably 1870. The new
house was built around 1870.”
"And was there one before that?”
“Yes, there was one before that.”
“Could that have been a farmhouse?”
"Yes, it could have been because there is a little farm
in back of it. It’s small.”
“Now you of course have heard all kinds of stories —
some of them true, some of them legendary. Have you ever
heard any story of a great tragedy concerning the owners of
the farmhouse on that point?”
“Whit Thompson used to tell some weird ghost sto-
ries. But everyone called him a damned liar. Whether it's
true or not, I don’t know, but I’ve heard them.”
“About that area?”
“About that area.”
“Was there, sir, any story about a female ghost — a
woman?”
"I have heard of a female ghost. Yes, Whit used to
tell that story.”
“What did he tell you?”
“That was a long time ago, and I cannot recall just
what he said about it — he said many things — but she used
to appear, especially on foggy nights, and it was hard to
distinguish her features — that was one of the things he
used to tell about — and there was something about her
ringing the bell at the lighthouse, when they used to ring
the old fog bell there. I don’t recall what it was.”
“Now the story we found involved a woman wearing
a kind of white gown, looking out to sea from the window
as if she were expecting her sailor to return, and she appar-
ently was quite faceless at first.”
“I don’t think Whitney ever told of her face being
seen.”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
526
“Do you know of anybody in your recollection who
has actually had an unusual experience in that particular
area?”
“No, I don’t.”
"Commander, if you had the choice of spending the
night in the house in question, would it worry you?”
“No, why should it?”
"You are not afraid of ghosts?”
“No. Why should I be?”
“Urey are people after all.”
“Huh?”
"They are just people after all.”
"Yes.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“No, I was brought up with mediums and spiritual-
ists and as a kid I was frightened half to death, I didn’t
dare go our after dark, but I got over that.”
“Thank you very much.”
“The lighthouse and the gale. . .the ship in a
gale. . .it all seems to fit. . Ingrid mumbled as we got
back into our cars and left the Commander’s house.
And there you have it. A woman from the big city
who knows nothing about the case I am investigating, nor
where she might be taken, still comes up with the names
and data she could not possibly know on her own. Ingrid
Beckman was (and is, I suppose) a gifted psychic. Shortly
after we finished taping the Port Clyde story, I left for
Europe.
While I was away, Ingrid met a former disc jockey
then getting interested in the kind of work she and I had
been doing so successfully for a while. Somehow he per-
suaded her to give a newspaper interview about this case —
which, of course, upset NBC a lot since this segment would
not air for six months — not to mention myself. The news-
paper story was rather colorful, making it appear that
Ingrid had heard of this ghost and taken care of it. . .but
then newspaper stories sometimes distort things, or perhaps
the verification and research of a ghost story is less inter-
esting to them than the story itself. But to a professional
like myself, the evidence only becomes evidence when it is
carefully verified. I haven’t worked with Ingrid since.
As for the ghostly lady of Port Clyde, nothing further
has been heard about her, either, and since we gently per-
suaded her not to hang on any longer, chances are indeed
that she has long been joined by her man, sailing an ocean
where neither gales nor nosy television crews can intrude.
» 115
A Plymouth Ghost
I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT the Plymouth where the Pil-
grims landed but another Plymouth. This one is located in
New Hampshire, in a part of the state that is rather lonely
and sparsely settled even today. If you really want to get
away from it all — whatever it may be — this is a pretty
good bet. I am mentioning this because a person living in
this rural area isn’t likely to have much choice in the way
of entertainment, unless of course you provide it yourself.
But I am getting ahead of my story.
I was first contacted about this case in August 1966
when a young lady named Judith Elliott, who lived in
Bridgeport, Connecticut, at the time, informed me of the
goings-on in her cousin’s country house located in New
Hampshire. Judith asked if I would be interested in con-
tacting Mrs. Chester Fuller regarding these matters. What
intrigued me about the report was not the usual array of
footfalls, presences, and the house cat staring at someone
unseen — but the fact that Mrs. Fuller apparently had seen
a ghost and identified him from a book commemorating the
Plymouth town bicentennial.
When I wrote back rather enthusiastically, Miss
Elliot forwarded my letter to her cousin, requesting more
detailed and chronological information. But it was not until
well into the following year that I finally got around to
making plans for a visit. Ethel Johnson Meyers, the late
medium, and my ex-wife Catherine, always interested in
spooky houses since she used to illustrate some of my
books, accompanied me. Mrs. Fuller, true to my request,
supplied me with all that she knew of the phenomena
themselves, who experienced them, and such information
about former owners of the house and the house itself as
she could garner. Here, in her own words, is that report,
which of course I kept from the medium at all times so as
not to influence her or give her prior knowledge of the
house and circumstances. Mrs. Fuller’s report is as follows:
Location: The house is located at 38 Merrill Street in
the town of Plymouth, New Hampshire. To reach the
house, you leave Throughway 93 at the first exit for
Plymouth. When you reach the set of lights on Main
Street, turn right and proceed until you reach the blue
Sunoco service station, then take a sharp left onto Mer-
rill Street. The house is the only one with white picket
snow fence out front. It has white siding with a red
front door and a red window box and is on the right
hand side of the street.
1 . The first time was around the middle of June —
about a month after moving in. It was the time of day
when lights are needed inside, but it is still light outside.
This instance was in the kitchen and bathroom. The
bathroom and dining room are in an addition onto the
kitchen. The doors to both rooms go out of the kitchen
beside of each other, with just a small wall space
between. At that time we had our kitchen table in that
A Plymouth Ghost
527
space. I was getting supper, trying to put the food on
the table and keep two small children (ages 2 and 5) off
the table. As I put the potatoes on the table, I swung
around from the sink toward the bathroom door. I
thought I saw someone in the bathroom. I looked and
saw a man. He was standing about halfway down the
length of the room. He was wearing a brown plaid shirt,
dark trousers with suspenders, and he [wore] glasses
with the round metal frames. He was of medium height,
a little on the short side, not fat and not thin but a good
build, a roundish face, and he was smiling. Suddenly he
was gone, no disappearing act or anything fancy, just
gone, as he had come.
2. Footsteps. There are footsteps in other parts of
the house. If I am upstairs, the footsteps are downstairs.
If I am in the kitchen, they are in the living room, etc.
These were scattered all through the year, in all seasons,
and in the daytime. It was usually around 2 or 3 and
always on a sunny days, as I recall.
3. Winter — late at night. Twice we (Seth and I)
heard a door shutting upstairs. (Seth is an elderly man
who stays with us now. When we first moved here he
was not staying with us. His wife was a distant cousin
to my father. I got acquainted with them when I was in
high school. I spent a lot of time at their house and his
wife and I became quite close. She died 1 1 years ago
and since then Seth has stayed at his son’s house, a
rooming house, and now up here. He spent a lot of time
visiting us before he moved in.) Only one door in the
bedrooms upstairs works right, and that is the door to
my bedroom. I checked the kids that night to see if they
were up or awake, but they had not moved. My hus-
band was also sound asleep. The door was already shut,
as my husband had shut it tight when he went to bed to
keep out the sound of the television. The sound of the
door was very distinct — the sound of when it first made
contact, then the latch clicking in place, and then the
thud as it came in contact with the casing. Everything
was checked out — anything that was or could be loose
and have blown and banged, or anything that could
have fallen down. Nothing had moved. The door only
shut once during that night, but did it again later on in
the winter.
4. The next appearance was in the fall. I was preg-
nant at the time. I lost the baby on the first of Novem-
ber, and this happened around the first of October.
Becky Sue, my youngest daughter, was 3 at the time.
She was asleep in her crib as it was around midnight or
later. I was asleep in my bedroom across the hall. I
woke up and heard her saying, “Mommy, what are you
doing in my bedroom?” She kept saying that until I
thought I had better answer her or she would begin to
be frightened. I started to say “I’m not in your room,”
and as I did I started to turn over and I saw what
seemed to be a woman in a long white nightgown in
front of my bedroom door. In a flash it was gone out
into the hall. At this time Becky had been saying,
“Mommy, what are you doing in my room?” As the
image disappeared out in the hall, Becky changed her
question to, “Mommy, what were you doing in my bed-
room?” Then I thought that if I told her I wasn’t in her
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
room that she would really be scared. All this time I
thought that it was Kimberly, my older daughter, get-
ting up, and I kept waiting for her to speak to me.
Becky was still sounding like a broken record with her
questions. Finally I heard “It” take two steps down,
turn a corner, and take three steps more. Then I went
into Becky’s room and told her that I had forgotten
what I had gone into her room for and to lie down and
go to sleep, which she did. All this time Kim had not
moved. The next morning I was telling Seth (who was
living with us now) about it, and I remembered about
the footsteps going downstairs. I wondered if Becky had
heard them too, so I called her out into the kitchen and
asked her where I went after I left her room. She looked
at me as if I had lost my mind and said, “Downstairs!”
5. This was in the winter, around 2. Seth was help-
ing me make the beds upstairs as they had been skipped
for some reason. We heard footsteps coming in from the
playroom across the kitchen and a short way into the
hall. We both thought it was Becky Sue who was play-
ing outdoors. She comes in quite frequently for little
odds and ends. Still no one spoke. We waited for a
while expecting her to call to me. Finally, when she did
not call, I went downstairs to see what she wanted, and
there was no one there. I thought that maybe she had
gone back out, but there was no snow on the floor or
tracks of any kind. This was also on a very sunny day.
6. This was also late at night in 1965, around 1 1 . I
was putting my husband’s lunch up when there was a
step right behind me. That scared me, although I do not
know why; up until that time I had never had any fear.
Maybe it was because it was right behind my back and
the others had always been at a distance or at least in
front of me.
I cannot remember anything happening since then.
Lately there have been noises as if someone was in the
kitchen or dining room while I was in the living room,
but I cannot be sure of that. It sounds as if something
was swishing, but I cannot definitely say that it is not
the sounds of an old house.
History of House and Background of Previous Owners
The history of the house and its previous owners is
very hard to get. We bought the house from Mrs. Ora
Jacques. Her husband had bought it from their son who
had moved to Florida. The husband was going to do
quite a bit of remodeling and then sell it. When he died,
Mrs. Jacques rented it for a year and then sold it.
Mr. Jacques’ son bought it from a man who used to
have a doughnut shop and did his cooking in a back
room, so I have been told. There was a fire in the back
that was supposedly started from the fat. They bought
the house from Mrs. Emma Thompson, who, with her
husband, had received the house for caring for a Mr.
Woodbury Langdon, and by also giving him a small
sum of money. Mrs. Thompson always gave people the
impression that she was really a countess and that she
had a sister in Pennsylvania who would not have any-
thing to do with her because of her odd ways.
Mrs. Thompson moved to Rumney where she con-
tracted pneumonia about six months later and died.
Mr. and Mrs. Thompson moved in to take care of
Mr. Woodbury Langdon after he kicked out Mr. and
Mrs. Dinsmore. (Mr. Cushing gave me the following
528
information. He lives next door, and has lived there
since 1914 or 1918).
He was awakened by a bright flash very early in the
morning. Soon he could see that the top room (tower
room) was all fire. He got dressed, called the firemen,
and ran over to help. He looked in the window of what
is now our dining room but was then Mr. Langdon’s
bedroom. (Mr. Langdon was not able to go up and
down stairs because of his age.) He pounded on the
window trying to wake Mr. Langdon up. Through the
window he could see Mr. and Mrs. Dinsmore standing
in the doorway between the kitchen and the bedroom.
They were laughing and Mr. Dinsmore had an oil can
in his hand. All this time Mr. Langdon was sound
asleep. Mr. Cushing got angry and began pounding
harder and harder. Just as he began to open the window
Mr. Langdon woke up and Mr. Cushing helped him out
the window. He said that no one would believe his
story, even the insurance company. Evidently Mr.
Langdon did because soon after he kicked the Dins-
mores out and that was when Mr. and Mrs. Thompson
came to take care of him. Around 1927 he came down
with pneumonia. He had that for two days and then he
went outdoors without putting on any jacket or sweater.
Mrs. Thompson ran out and brought him back in. She
put him back in bed and warmed him up with coffee
and wrapped him in wool blankets. He seemed better
until around midnight. Then he began moaning. He
kept it up until around 3, when he died.
Mr. Langdon was married twice. His first wife and
his eighteen-year-old son died [of] typhoid fever. He
had the wells examined and found that it came from
them. He convinced his father to invest his money in
putting in the first water works for the town of Ply-
mouth. At that time he lived across town on Russell
Street.
He later married a woman by the name of Donna.
He worshipped her and did everything he could to
please her. He remodeled the house. That was when he
added on the bathroom and bedroom (dining room). He
also built the tower room so that his wife could look out
over the town. He also had a big estate over to Squam
Lake that he poured out money on. All this time she
was running around with anyone she could find. Mr.
Cushing believes that he knew it deep down but refused
to let himself believe it. She died, Mr. Cushing said,
from the things she got from the thing she did! He
insists that it was called leprosy. In the medical encyclo-
pedia it reads, under leprosy, “differential diag: tubercu-
losis and esp. syphilis are the two diseases most likely to
be considered.”
She died either in this house or at the estate on the
lake. She was buried in the family plot in Trinity Ceme-
tery in Holderness. She has a small headstone with just
one name on it, Donna. There is a large spire-shaped
monument in the center of the lot, with the family’s
names on it and their relationship. The name of Wood-
bury Langdon’s second wife is completely eliminated
from the stone. There is nothing there to tell who she
was or why she is buried there. This has puzzled me up
to now, because, as she died around 1911, and he did
not die until around 1927, he had plenty of time to have
her name and relationship added to the family stone.
Mr. Cushing thinks that, after her death, Mr. Langdon
began to realize more and more what she was really like.
He has the impression that Mr. Langdon was quite
broke at the time of his death.
I cannot trace any more of the previous owners, as I
cannot trace the house back any farther than around
1860. Mr. Langdon evidently bought and sold houses
like other men bought and sold horses. If this is the
house I believe it to be, it was on the road to Rumney
and had to be moved in a backward position to where it
is now. They had something like six months later to
move the barn back. Then they had to put in a street
going from the house up to the main road. They also
had to put a fence up around the house. This property
did have a barn, and there was a fence here. There is a
small piece of it left. The deeds from there just go
around in circles.
The man who I think the ghost is, is Mr. Woodbury
Langdon. I have asked people around here what Mr.
Langdon looked like and they describe him VERY MUCH
as the man I saw in the bathroom. The man in the
bicentennial book was his father. There is something in
his face that was in the face of the "ghost.”
I have two children. They are: Kimberly Starr, age 9
years and Rebecca Sue, age 6 years. Kim’s birthday is
on April 2 and Becky’s is on August 10.
I was born and brought up on a farm 4'/i miles out
in the country in the town of Plymouth. My father
believes in spirits, sort of, but not really. My mother
absolutely does not.
I carried the business course and the college prepara-
tory course through my four years of high school. I had
one year of nurses’ training. I was married when I was
20, in June, and Kim was born the next April.
P.S. We have a black cat who has acted queer at
times in the past.
1 . He would go bounding up the stairs only to come
to an abrupt halt at the head of the stairs. He would sit
there staring at presumably empty space, and then take
off as if he had never stopped.
2. Sometimes he stood at the bathroom door and
absolutely refused to go in.
3. He had spells of sitting in the hallway and staring
up the stairs, not moving a muscle. Then suddenly he
would relax and go on his way.
* * *
We finally settled on August 12, a Saturday, 1967, to
have a go at Mr. Langdon or whoever it was that haunted
the house, because Miss Elliot was getting married in July
and Mrs. Fuller wanted very much to be present.
Eleanor Fuller greeted us as we arrived, and led us
into the house. As usual Ethel began to sniff around, and I
just followed her, tape recorder running and camera at the
ready. We followed her up the stairs to the upper floor,
where Ethel stopped at the bedroom on the right, which
happened to be decorated in pink.
“I get an older woman wearing glasses,” Ethel said
cautiously as she was beginning to pick up psychic leads,
“and a man wearing a funny hat.”
A Plymouth Ghost
529
I pressed Ethel to be more specific about the “funny
hat" and what period hat. The man seemed to her to
belong to the early 1800s. She assured me it was not this
century. She then complained about a cold spot, and when
I stepped into it I too felt it. Since neither doors nor win-
dows could be held responsible for the strong cold draft we
felt, we knew that its origin was of a psychic nature, as it
often is when there are entities present.
I asked Ethel to describe the woman she felt present.
“She is lying down. . .and I get a pain in the chest,” she
said, picking up the spirit’s condition. “The eyes are
closed!”
. We left the room and went farther on. Ethel grabbed
her left shoulder as if in pain.
"She is here with me, looking at me,” Ethel said.
"She’s been here.”
“Why is she still here?” I asked.
“I get a sudden chill when you asked that,” Ethel
replied.
“She tells me to go left. . . I am having difficulty
walking. . .1 think this woman had that difficulty.”
We were walking down the stairs, when Ethel sud-
denly became a crone and had difficulty managing them.
The real Ethel was as spry and fast as the chipmunks that
used to roam around her house in Connecticut.
"I think she fell down these stairs,” Ethel said and
began to cough. Obviously, she was being impressed by a
very sick person.
We had barely got Ethel to a chair when she slipped
into full trance and the transition took place. Her face
became distorted as in suffering, and a feeble voice tried to
manifest through her, prodded by me to be clearer.
"Lander. . .or something. . .” she mumbled.
What followed was an absolutely frightening realiza-
tion by an alien entity inside Ethel’s body that the illness
she was familiar with no longer existed now. At the same
time, the excitement of this discovery made it difficult for
the spirit to speak clearly, and we were confronted with a
series of grunts and sighs.
Finally, I managed to calm the entity down by insist-
ing she needed to relax in order to be heard.
“Calm. . .calm. . she said and cried, “good. . .he
knows. . .he did that. ..for fifty years. . .the woman!”
She had seized Mr. Fuller’s hand so forcefully I felt
embarrassed for her, and tried to persuade the spirit within
Ethel to let go, at the same time explaining her true condi-
tion to her, gently, but firmly.
After I had explained how she was able to communi-
cate with us and that the body of the medium was merely
a temporary arrangement, the entity calmed down, asking
only if he loved her, meaning the other spirit in the house.
I assured her that this was so, and then called on Albert,
Ethel’s spirit guide, to help me ease the troubled one from
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
Ethel’s body and thus free her at the same time from the
house.
And then the man came into Ethel’s body, very emo-
tionally, calling out for Sylvia.
Again I explained how he was able to communicate.
“You see me, don’t you,” he finally said as he calmed
down. “I loved everyone. . .I’ll go, I won’t bother you.
I called again for Albert, and in a moment his crisp
voice replaced the spirit's outcries.
“The man is a Henry MacLellan. . .there stood in
this vicinity another house. . .around 1810, 1812. ..to
1820. . .a woman connected with this house lies buried
here somewhere, and he is looking for her. His
daughter... Macy?...Maisie? About 1798. ..16 or 18 years
old. . .has been done wrong. . .had to do with a feud of two
families ... McDern ... ”
Albert then suggested letting the man speak to us
directly, and so he did a little while. 1 offered my help.
“It is futile,” he said. “My problem is my own."
“Who are you?”
“Henry. I lived right here. I was born here.”
"What year? What year are we in now as I speak
with you?”
“I speak to you in the year 1813.”
“Are you a gentleman of some age?”
"I would have forty-seven years.”
“Did you serve in any governmental force or
agency?”
“My son. . .John Stuart Me.. .”
“McDermont? Your son was John Stuart
McDermont?”
“You have it from my own lips.”
“Where did he serve?”
“Ticonderoga.”
And then he added, "My daughter, missing, but I
found the bones, buried not too far from here. I am satis-
fied. I have her with me.”
He admitted he knew he was no longer "on the earth
plane,” but was drawn to the place from time to time.
“But if you ask me as a gentleman to go, I shall go,”
he added. Under these circumstances — rare ones, indeed,
when dealing with hauntings — I suggested he not disturb
those in the present house, especially the children. Also,
would he not be happier in the world into which he had
long passed.
“I shall consider that,” he acknowledged, “You speak
well, sir. I have no intention for frightening.”
“Are you aware that much time has passed. . .that
this is not 1813 any more?” I said.
“I am not aware of this, sir. . .it is always the same
time here.”
Again I asked if he served in any regiment, but he
replied his leg was no good. Was it his land and house?
Yes, he replied, he owned it and built the house. But when
I pressed him as to where he might be buried, he balked.
"My bones are here with me. . .1 am sufficient unto
myself.”
530
I then asked about his church affiliation, and he
informed me his church was “northeast of here, on Beacon
Road.” The minister’s name was Rooney, but he could not
tell me the denomination. His head was not all it used to
be.
"A hundred any fifty years have passed,” I said, and
began the ritual of exorcism.” Go from this house in peace,
and with our love. ”
And so he did.
Albert, Ethel’s guide, returned briefly to assure us
that all was as it should be and Mr. McDermot was gone
from the house; also, that he was being reunited with his
mother, Sarah Ann McDermot. And then Albert too with-
drew and Ethel returned to her own self again.
I turned to Mrs. Fuller and her cousin, Miss Elliott,
for possible comments and corroboration of the information
received through Mrs. Meyers in trance.
* * *
It appears the house that the Fullers were able to
trace back as far as about 1860 was moved to make room
for a road, and then set down again not far from that road.
Unfortunately going further back proved difficult. I heard
again from Mrs. Fuller in December of that year. The
footsteps were continuing, it seemed, and her seven-year-
old daughter Becky was being frightened by them. She had
not yet been able to find any record of Mr. McDermot, but
vowed to continue her search.
That was twenty years ago, and nothing further
turned up, and I really do not know if the footsteps contin-
ued or Mr. McDermot finally gave up his restless quest for
a world of which he no longer was a part.
As for Mr. Langdon, whom Ethel Meyers had also
identified by name as a presence in the house, he must by
now be reunited with his wife Donna, and I hope he has
forgiven her trespasses, as a good Christian might: over
there, even her sins do not matter any longer.
* 116
The Ghosts at the
Morris-Jumel Mansion
We HAD HARDLY RETURNED to our home in New York,
when my friend Elizabeth Byrd telephoned to inquire if I
had gotten that grave opened yet. I hadn’t, but I should
really let you in at the beginning.
You see, it all started with an article in the New York
Journal -American on January 11, 1964, by Joan Hanauer, in
which the ghostly goings-on at Jumel Mansion in New
York City were brought to public attention. Youngsters on
a field trip from P.S. 164, Edgecombe Avenue and 164th
Street, said a tall, gray-haired, elderly woman stepped out
onto the balcony and told them to be quiet.
The description fit Mme. Jumel.
Could it have happened?
Mrs. Emma Bingay Campbell, curator of the Man-
sion at 1 60th Street and Edgecombe, said no.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said, "but it was very
strange. The house was locked and empty. We know that.
There could not have been a woman there. But several of
the children insist they saw and heard her.
"It was shortly before eleven, opening time for the
house, which dates back to 1765.
“When I came over to the children to explain they
must wait for John Duffy, the second gardener, to unlock
the doors at eleven,” Mrs. Campbell said, “one of the girls
wanted to know why the tall woman who had come out on
the balcony to reprimand them for boisterousness couldn’t
let them in. There couldn’t have been any such woman —
or anyone else — in the house.
"The woman the children described resembled Mme.
Jumel, who some thought murdered her husband in the
house in 1832, then married Aaron Burr the following year.
“But the children couldn’t know that, or what she
looked like.
“They also couldn’t know that the balcony on which
the apparition appeared separated Mme. Jumel’s and Burr’s
bedrooms.”
Elizabeth Byrd was then working on a story about
Manhattan ghosts for a magazine, so we decided to follow
up this case together. First we contacted the public school
authorities and obtained permission to talk to the children.
The teacher assembled the entire group she had originally
taken to the Jumel Mansion, and we questioned them, sep-
arately and together. Their story was unchanged. The
woman appeared on the balcony, suddenly, and she told
them to be quiet.
“How did she disappear?” I wanted to know.
One youngster thought for a moment, then said hesi-
tantly, "She sort of glided back into the house.”
“Did you see the balcony doors open?” I asked the
girl.
“No sir,” she replied firmly.
“Then did she glide through the door?”
"She did.”
The dress they described the ghost as wearing does
exist — but it is put away carefully upstairs in the mansion
and was not on display, nor is this common knowledge,
especially among eleven-year-old school girls.
There was a cooking class in progress when we
arrived, and the girls carefully offered us samples of their
art. We declined for the moment and went on to see the
The Ghosts at the Morris-Jumel Mansion
531
The Morris-Jumel Mansion —
Washington Heights, New York
curator of the mansion, Mrs. Campbell. This energetic lady
takes care of the mansion for the Daughters of the Ameri-
can Revolution in whose charge the City of New York had
placed the museum.
“Is this the first report of a haunting here?" 1 wanted
to know.
Mrs. Campbell shook her head. “Here," she said, and
took down from one of the shelves in her office a heavy
book. “William Henry Shelton’s work, The Jumel Mansion,
pages 207 and 208 report earlier ghosts observed here."
“Have you ever seen or heard anything?”
“No, not yet, but others have. There was that Ger-
man nurse who lived here in 1865 — she heard strange
noises even then. Footsteps have been heard by many visi-
tors here when there was no one about. The ghost of Mme.
Jumel appeared to a retired guard at the door of this
room."
“How would you like me to investigate the matter?" I
offered. A date was set immediately.
First, I thought it wise to familiarize myself with the
physical layout of the historic house. I was immediately
struck by its imposing appearance. Historian John Kent
Tilton wrote:
Located on the highest elevation of Manhattan is one
of the most famous old historic houses in the nation, the
Morris-Jumel Mansion. The locality was originally
called Harlem Heights by the Dutch in the days of New
Amsterdam and was then changed to Mount Morris
during the English ownership, before receiving the pre-
sent name of Washington Heights.
The plot of land upon which the old mansion is situ-
ated was originally deeded in 1700 to a Dutch farmer
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
named Jan Kiersen, from part of the “half morgen of
land of the common woods” of New Haarlem.
Lieutenant Colonel Roger Morris purchased the
estate in 1765. The new owner was born in England in
1728 and came to America at the age of eighteen with a
commission of captaincy in the British army.
It was here that the Morris family, with their four
children, spent their summers, living the domestic life
typical of a British squire and family until the outbreak
of the Revolution.
Colonel Morris fled to England at the beginning of
hostilities, where he remained for two and one-half
years.
As early in the war as August 1 776, Mount Morris
was taken over by the American troops and General
Heath and staff were quartered there. After the disas-
trous Battle of Long Island, General Washington
retreated to Haarlem Heights and made the place his
headquarters. After Washington decided to abandon this
location, the British moved in and the Morris Mansion
housed General Sir Henry Clinton and his officers and,
at intervals, the Hessians, during the seven years the
British occupied New York.
During the following quarter of a century it was sold
and resold several times and witnessed many changes in
its varied career. Renamed Calumet Hall, it served for a
time as a Tavern and was a stopping place for the stage
coaches en route to Albany. It was the home of an
unknown farmer when President Washington paid a
visit to his old headquarters and entertained at dinner,
among others, his cabinet members, John Adams,
Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox, and their wives.
The locality was one that Stephen Jumel with his
sprightly and ambitious wife delighted driving out to on
a summer’s day from their home on Whitehall Street.
Mme. Jumel became entranced with the nearby old
Morris Mansion and persuaded her husband to purchase
it for their home in 1810, for the sum of $10,000 which
included 35 acres of land still remaining of the original
tract.
The old house was fast falling into decay when Mme.
Jumel energetically went about renovating and refur-
nishing it, and when completed, it was one of the most
beautiful homes in the country. The Jumels restored the
mansion in the style of the early nineteenth century,
when the Federal influence was in fashion.
Mme. Jumel first married, some say by trickery, the
rich Frenchman, Stephen Jumel. He had at one time
owned a large plantation in Santo Domingo from
whence he was obliged to flee at the time of the insur-
rection. Arriving in the United States, a comparatively
poor man, he soon amassed a new fortune as a wine
merchant, and at his death in 1832, his wife became one
of the richest women in America. A year later she mar-
ried Aaron Burr, former vice president of the United
States. This second marriage, however, was of short
duration and ended in divorce. Mme. Jumel died at the
age of 93 in 1865.
The Morris-Jumel Mansion is of the mid-Georgian
period of architecture. The front facade has four columns,
two stories in height, with a pediment at the top.
532
The exterior is painted white. One of the post-colo-
nial features added by the Jumels is the imposing front
entrance doorway, with flanking sidelights and elliptical
fanlight.
In the interior, the wide central hall with arches is
furnished with late eighteenth and early nineteenth century
pieces. At the left of the entrance is the small parlor or tea-
room where the marriage ceremony of the Widow Jumel
and Aaron Burr was performed in 1833 when the bride was
fifty-eight and the groom twenty years her senior.
Across the hall is the stately Georgian dining room
where many persons of fame assembled for elaborated din-
ner parties.
At the rear of the hall is the large octagonal drawing
room.
The broad stairway leads to the spacious hall on the
upper floor, which is furnished with personal belongings of
the Jumels. There is a group portrait of Mme. Jumel and
the young son and daughter of her adopted daughter, Mary
Eliza, who married Nelson Chase.
The northwest bedroom contains furniture owned by
the Jumels, including a carved four-poster bed.
In the old days the rooms on the third floor were
probably used as extra guest chambers since the servants’
quarters were then located in the basement with the
kitchen.
On January 19, 1964, a small group of people assem-
bled in Betsy Jumels old sitting room upstairs. Present
were a few members of the New York Historical Society
and the Daughters of the American Revolution, journal-
American writer Nat Adams, and a latecomer, Harry
Altschuler of the World -Telegram. I was accompanied by
Ethel Meyers, who had not been told where we were going
that winter afternoon, and Jessyca Russell Gaver, who was
serving us my secretary and doing a magazine article on
our work at the same time.
We had barely arrived when Ethel went in and out of
the Jumel bedroom as if someone were forcing her to do
so. As she approached the room across the hall, her shoul-
der sagged and one arm hung loose as if her side and had
been injured!
“I feel funny on my left side,” Ethel finally said, and
her voice had already taken on some of the coloring of
someone else’s voice.
We went back to the bedroom, which is normally
closed to the public. One side is occupied by a huge carved
four-poster, once the property of Napoleon I, and there are
small chairs of the period in various spots throughout the
room. In one corner, there is a large mirror.
“The issue is confused,” Ethel said, and sounded
confused herself. “There is more than one disturbed person
here. I almost feel as though three people were involved.
There has been sickness and a change of heart. Someone
got a raw deal.”
Suddenly, Ethel turned to one of the men who had
sat down on Napoleon’s bed. "Someone wants you to get
The haunted balcony
up from that bed,” she said, and evinced difficulty in
speaking. As if bitten by a tarantula, the young man shot
put from the bed. No ghost was going to goose him.
Ethel again struggled to her feet, despite my restrain-
ing touch on her arm. ‘Tve got to go back to that other
room again,” she mumbled, and off she went, with me
trailing after her. She walked almost as if she were being
taken over by an outside force. In front of the picture of
Mme. Jumel, she suddenly fell to her knees.
“I never can go forward here. . .1 fall whenever I’m
near there.” She pointed at the large picture above her, and
almost shouted, “My name isn’t on that picture. I want my
name there!”
Mrs. Campbell, the curator, took me aside in agita-
tion. “That’s very strange she should say that,” she
remarked. "You see, her name really used to be on that
picture a long time ago. But that picture wasn’t in this spot
when Betsy Jumel was alive.”
I thanked her and led Ethel Meyers back to her chair
in the other room.
"Henry. . .and a Johann. . .around her. . she
mumbled as she started to go into a deep trance. Hoarse
sounds emanated from her lips. At first they were unintelli-
gible. Gradually I was able to make them out. Halfway
into a trance, she moved over to the bed and lay down on
it. I placed my chair next to her head. The others strained
to hear. There was an eerie silence about the room, inter-
rupted only by the soft words of the entranced medium.
"You think me dead. . .” a harsh, male voice now
said.
“No, I've come to talk to you, to help you,” I
replied.
“Go away," the ghostly voice said. “Go away!”
“Are you a man or a woman?” I asked.
The Ghosts at the Morris-Jumel Mansion
533
Side view of the Morris-Jumel Mansion
A bitter laugh was the reply.
"Man... ha!” the voice finally said.
"What is your name?”
“Everybody knows who I am.”
“I don’t. What is your name?” I repeated.
“Let me sleep.”
“Is anything troubling you?”
There was a moment of silence, then the voice was a
bit softer. “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend come to help you.”
“Nobody talks to me. They think I’m dead.”
“What exactly happened to you?”
"They took me away,” the voice said in plaintive
tones. “Iam not dead yet. Why did they take me away?”
Now the body of the medium shook as if in great
agitation, while I spoke soothing words to calm the atmos-
phere. Suddenly, the ghost speaking through the medium
was gone, and in his place was the crisp, matter-of-fact
voice of Albert, Ethel’s control. I asked Albert to tell us
through the entranced medium who the ghost was.
“I don’t hear a name, but I see a sturdy body and
round face. He complains he was pronounced dead when
he in fact wasn’t. I believe he is the owner of the house
and it bears his name. There are many jealousies in this
house. There is an artist who is also under suspicion.”
“Is there a woman here?”
“One thwarted of what she desired and who wants to
throw herself out the window.”
"Why?” I asked.
“Thwarted in love and under suspicion.”
Later, I asked Mrs. Campbell about this. She thought
for a moment, then confirmed the following facts: A young
servant girl involved with one of the family tried to commit
suicide by jumping out the window.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
I questioned Albert further. "Is there a restless
woman in this house?”
“That is right. The one in the picture. Her con-
science disturbs her.”
“About what?”
The medium now grabbed her side, as if in pain. "I
am being threatened,” Albert said now, “I feel the revela-
tion would disturb.”
“But how can I release her unless I know what is
holding her here?”
“It has to do with the death of her husband. That he
was strangled in his coffin.”
I tried to question him further, but he cut us short.
The medium had to be released now.
Soon, Ethel Meyers was back to her own self. She
remembered very little of the trance, but her impressions of
a clairvoyant nature continued for a while. I queried her
about the person on the bed.
“I get the initial J.,” she replied and rubbed her side.
I turned to Mrs. Campbell. “What about the story of
Mme. Jumel’s guilty conscience?”
“Well,” the curator replied, “after her husband’s
death, she refused to live in this house for some time. She
always felt guilty about it.”
We were standing in a corner where the medium
could not hear us. "Stephen Jumel bled to death from a
wound he had gotten in a carriage accident. Mme. Jumel
allegedly tore off his bandage and let him die. That much
we know.”
Mrs. Campbell naturally is a specialist on Betsy
Jumel and her life, and she knows many intimate details
unknown to the general public or even to researchers.
It was 5:30 in the afternoon when we left the house,
which must be closed for the night after that hour.
* * *
The next morning two newspaper accounts appeared:
One, fairly accurate, in the Journal, and a silly one in the
Telegram, by a man who stood outside the room of the
investigation and heard very little, if anything.
Several weeks went by and my ghost-hunting activi-
ties took me all over the country. Then I received a tele-
phone call from Mrs. Campbell.
“Did you know that May twenty-second is the
anniversary of Stephen Jumel’s death?” I didn't and I
wagered her nobody else did, except herself and the late
Mr. Jumel. She allowed as to that and suggested we have
another go at the case on that date. I have always felt that
anniversaries are good times to solve murder cases so I
readily agreed.
This time, the Journal and Telegram reporters weren’t
invited, but the New York Times, in the person of reporter
Grace Glueck, was, and I am indebted to her for the notes
she took of the proceedings that warm May afternoon.
Present also were the general manager of King Fea-
tures, Frank McLearn; Clark Kinnaird, literary critic of the
534
Journal, John Allen and Bob O’Brien of Reader’s Digest;
Emeline Paige, the editor of The Villager ; writers Elizabeth
Byrd and Beverly Balin; Ed Joyce of CBS; and several
members of the New York Historical Society, presumably
there as observers ready to rewrite history as needed since
the famous Aaron Burr might be involved.
Ethel Meyers was told nothing about the significance
of the date, nor had I discussed with her the results of the
first seance.
Again we assembled in the upstairs bedroom and Ed
Joyce set up his tape recorder in front of Napoleon’s bed,
while Ethel sat on the bed itself and I next to her on a
chair. To my left, the young lady from the Times took her
seat. All in all there must have been twenty-five anxious
people in the room, straining to hear all that was said and
keeping a respectful silence when asked to. Within a few
minutes, Ethel was in a deep trance, and a male voice
spoke through her vocal cords.
“Who are you?” I asked as I usually do when an
unknown person comes through a medium.
“Je suis Stephen," the voice said.
“Do you speak English?”
In answer the medium clutched at her body and
groaned, “Doctor! Doctor! Where is the doctor?”
“What is hurting you?” I asked.
The voice was firm and defiant now. “I’m alive, I’m
alive. . .don’t take me away.”
“Did you have an accident? What happened to you?”
"She tricked me.”
“Who tricked you?”
“I can’t breathe. . .where is she? She tricked me.
Look at her!”
“Don’t worry about her,” I said. “She’s dead.”
“But I’m alive!” the entranced voice continued.
"In a sense, you are. But you have also passed over.”
“No — they put me in the grave when I was not yet
dead.”
“How did you get hurt?” I wanted to know.
The ghost gave a bitter snort. “What matter — I’m
dead. You said so.”
“I didn’t say you were dead.” I replied.
The voice became furious again. “She took it, she
took it — that woman. She took my life. Go away.”
“I’m your friend.”
“I haven't any friends. . .that Aaron. . . .”
“Aaron? Was he involved in your death?”
“That strumpet. . .hold him! They buried me alive, I
tell you.”
“When did this happen?”
“It was cold. She made me a fool, a fool!”
“How did she do that?”
“All the time I loved her, she tricked me.”
“I want to help you.”
“I'm bleeding.”
“How did this happen?”
“Pitchfork. . .wagon. . .hay . . . .”
Painting of Madame Betsy Jumel at the house.
She is still there...
“Was it an accident, yes or no?”
“I fell on it.”
“You fell on the pitchfork?”
“Look at the blood bath. . .on Napoleon’s bed.”
“What about that pitchfork?” I insisted.
“There was a boy in the hay, and he pushed me off.”
“Did you know this boy?”
“Yes. . .give me her. She wanted to be a lady. I saw
it. I wasn’t so foolish I didn’t see it.”
“What happened when you got home?”
“She told me I was going to die.”
“Did you have a doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t the wound bandaged?”
“They took me out alive. I was a live man he put in
the grave. I want to be free from that grave!”
“Do you want me to set you free?”
“God bless you!”
“It is your hatred that keeps you here. You must for-
give.”
“She did it to me.”
The Ghosts at the Morris-Jumel Mansion
535
Ethel Meyers making contact
I then pleaded with the ghost to join his own family
and let go of his memories. "Do you realize how much
time has gone on since? A hundred years!’’
“Hundred years!"
The medium, still entranced, buried her head in her
hands: “I’m mad!”
“Go from this house and don’t return.”
“Mary, Mary!”
Mary was the name of Jumel’s daughter, a fact not
known to the medium at the time.
“Go and join Mary!” I commanded, and asked that
Albert, the control, help the unhappy one find the way.
Just as soon as Jumel’s ghost had left us, someone
else slipped into the medium’s body, or so it seemed, for
she sat up and peered at us with a suspicious expression:
“Who are you?”
“I’m a friend, come to help,” I replied.
“I didn’t ask for you.”
“My name is Holzer, and I have come to seek you
out. If you have a name worth mentioning, please tell us."
“Get out or I’ll call the police! This is my house.”
There was real anger now on the medium’s entranced
face.
I kept asking for identification. Finally, the disdainful
lips opened and in cold tones, the voice said, “I am the
wife of the vice president of the United States! Leave my
house!”
I checked with Mrs. Campbell and found that Betsy
Jumel did so identify herself frequently. On one occasion,
driving through crowded New York streets long after her
divorce from Aaron Burr she shouted, “Make way for the
wife of the vice president of the United States!”
“Didn’t you marry someone else before that?" 1
asked. “How did your husband die?”
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
"Bastard!”
“You’ve been dead a hundred years, Madam,” I said
pleasantly.
“You are made like the billow in the captain’s cabin,”
she replied, somewhat cryptically. Later I checked this out.
A sea captain was one of her favorite lovers while married
to Jumel.
“Did you murder your husband?” I inquired and
drew back a little just in case.
“You belong in the scullery with my maids,” she
replied disdainfully, but I repeated the accusation, adding
that her husband had claimed she had killed him.
“I will call for help,” she countered.
“There is no help. The police are on your trail!” I
suggested.
“I am the wife of the vice president of the United
States!”
“I will help you if you tell me what you did. Did you
cause his death?”
“The rats that crawl. . .they bit me. Where am I?”
“You’re between two worlds. Do you wish to be
helped?”
“Where is Joseph?”
"You must leave this house. Your husband has for-
given you.”
“I adored him!”
“Go away, and you will see Stephen Jumel again.”
“Only the crest on the carriage! That’s all I did. He
was a great man.”
I had the feeling she wasn’t at all keen on Monsieur
Jumel. But that happens, even to ghosts.
I finally gave up trying to get her to go and join
Jumel and tried another way.
"Go and join the vice president of the United States.
He awaits you.” To my surprise, this didn't work either.
“He is evil, evil,” she said.
Perplexed, I asked, “Whom do you wish to join?”
“Mary.”
“Then call out her name, and she’ll join you and take
you with her.”
“No crime, no crime.”
“You’ve been forgiven. Mary will take you away
from here.”
I asked Albert, the control, to come and help us get
things moving, but evidently Madame had a change of
heart: “This is my house I’ll stay here.”
“This is no longer your house. You must go!”
The struggle continued. She called for Christopher,
but wouldn’t tell me who Christopher was.
"He’s the only one I ever trusted,” she volunteered,
finally.
“It’s not too late,” I repeated. "You can join your
loved ones.”
“Good-bye.”
I called for Albert, who quickly took control. “She’s
no longer in the right mind,” he said, as soon as he had
536
firm control of the medium’s vocal cords. "You may have
to talk with her again.”
“Is she guilty of Jumel’s death?”
“Yes. It was arranged.”
“Who was the boy who pushed him?”
“A trusty in the house. She told him to.”
“What about Stephen Jumel?”
“He is in a better frame of mind.”
“Is there anything else we did not bring out? Who is
this Christopher she mentioned?”
“A sea captain. She buried him in Providence.”
Mrs. Campbell later confirmed the important role the
sea captain played in Betsy’s life. There was also another
man named Brown.
“Did Aaron Burr help bury Jumel?”
“That is true. Burr believed Mme. Jumel had more
finances than she actually had.”
“What about the doctor who buried him alive? Is his
name known?”
“Couldn't stop the bleeding.”
“Was Aaron Burr in on the crime?”
“He is very much aware that he is guilty. He still
possesses his full mental faculties."
I then asked the control to help keep the peace in the
house and to bring the medium back to her own body.
A few minutes later, Ethel Meyers was herself again,
remembering nothing of the ordeal she had gone through
the past hour, and none the worse for it.
Jumel died in 1832 and, as far as I could find, the
first ghostly reports date back to 1865. The question was:
Could his remains disclose any clues as to the manner in
which he died? If he suffocated in his coffin, would not the
position of his bones so indicate?
I queried two physicians who disagreed in the matter.
One thought that nothing would be left by now; the other
thought it was worth looking into.
I thought so, too. However, my application to reopen
the grave of Stephen Jumel, down in the old Catholic
cemetery on Mott Street, got the official run-around. The
District Attorney’s office sent me to Dr. Halpern, the chief
medical examiner, who told me it would be of no use to
check. When I insisted, I was referred to the church offices
of old St. Patrick’s, which has nominal jurisdiction over the
plot.
Have you ever tried to reopen a grave in the City of
New York? It’s easier to dig a new one, believe me!
As the years passed, I often returned to the mansion.
I made several television documentaries there with the
helpful support of the curator, who now is the affable and
knowledgeable Patrick Broom. The famous blue gown is no
longer on display, alas, having disintegrated shortly after I
first published the story. But the legend persists, and the
footfalls are still heard on lonely nights when the security
guard locks up. Whether the Jumels, the remorseful Betsy
and the victimized Stephen, have since made up on the
other side, is a moot question, and I doubt that Aaron Burr
will want anything further to do with the, ah, lady, either.
The Ghosts at the Morris-Jumel Mansion
537
Bernstein Castle, Austria, now a fine hotel,
once was the site of a tragic misunderstanding
and murder. The countess was innocent of
having betrayed her husband, so he killed her
in a fit of jealousy.
Bernstein Castle exterior, Austria — The
wealth of the area comes from the mining of
semiprecious stone called “Smaragdt.” It
was in the noble Almassy family until
recently.
A small shrine marks the spot where the
countess was murdered — and also where
her ghost was frequently seen.
Castle Pflindsberg, now a total ruin, high up
in the Alps near Bad Aussee, Austria is the
site of a medieval rape and abduction,
avenged by the family of the perpetrator. His
wild ghost is sometimes seen on horseback
on a stormy night.
CHAPTER SIX: This House is Haunted
538
In the Gothic Cathedral of Basle,
Switzerland, a curious, luminous skeleton
has been captured by Hans Holzer on film.
During the strict Calvinistic era, people
accused of “sins” were sometimes walled
up alive in the church walls.
Castle Altenburg, Syria, now a romantic
hotel, was the home of the unhappy ghost
of a servant who betrayed his master in
1920. This happened when rebellious
peasants wanted to kill the master. He did
not die, but it is the servant who can’t leave
the place.
This House is Haunted
539
CHAPTER SEVEN
Haunted Places
IT STANDS TO REASON THAT, if ghosts — people who have passed on from this life but who have not
yet been able to enter the next stage — appear in people’s houses, such earthbound spirits can also be
found outside houses, in the open. And so they are.
In legends dark forests are often haunted, and in the Caribbean, crossroads are often considered
ghostly places. In fact, in Haitian Voodoo, the gods of the crossroads are invoked for protection.
Legends abound about haunted ships, from the wraith of slain pirates who died in combat aboard
their ship to the case of the worker killed in an accident aboard the Queen Mary, now a floating
museum, who keeps appearing to tourists (without being prompted to do so by management) to the
belief in “the Flying Dutchman,’’ which inspired Richard Wagner to dramatize the Dutchman’s fate in
his opera of the same name. Was there a flying Dutchman? To begin with, he did not really “fly.”
Flying may refer here to the “racing across the seas” of his clipper ship, or it may be a description of
the way ghosts move about — gliding, rather than walking, some of the time. Very likely, he was sim-
ply a captain who went down with his ship and never wanted to leave her even in death.
That there are ghosts reported on airplanes is hardly news. The most famous of these in recent
years is the ghost of Flight 401 , which crashed in the Florida Everglades, causing the loss of 101 lives.
John Fuller wrote of this case in 1976, and if it were not for the stinginess of the airlines, we would
never know about it. But it so happened that some sections of the crashed airliner were salvaged and
used again (!) on another airliner; the ghost of the dead flight engineer appeared to a stewardess on
this recycled plane, complaining that the airplane — both the one that had crashed and the one he
appeared in now — was not safe to fly.
Ghosts, after all, are people. They are emotional beings. If they cannot let go of their particular
tragedy, they will end up bound to the place where the event occurred and they will either appear or
make themselves heard from time to time, when conditions are conducive — anniversaries of the event,
for example, or the presence of a medium who makes contact possible. An emotional tie, therefore, is
required to keep someone from going across to “the
other side,” free and clear. Here are some of those
places I have personally investigated, and verified. Haunted Places
541
* 117
The Case of the Lost Head
One OF THE most famous ghosts of the South is railroad
conductor Joe Baldwin. The story of Joe and his lantern
was known to me, of course, and a few years ago Life mag-
azine even dignified it with a photograph of the railroad
track near Wilmington, North Carolina, very atmospheri-
cally adorned by a greenish lantern, presumably swinging
in ghostly hands.
Then one fine day in early 1964, the legend became
reality when a letter arrived from Bill Mitcham, Executive
Secretary of the South Eastern North Carolina Beach Asso-
ciation, a public-relations office set up by the leading resort
hotels in the area centering around Wilmington. Mr.
Mitcham proposed that I have a look at the ghost of Joe
Baldwin, and try to explain once and for all — scientifically
— what the famous "Maco Light” was or is.
In addition, Mr. Mitcham arranged for a lecture on
the subject to be held at the end of my investigation and
sponsored jointly by the Beach Association and Wilming-
ton College. He promised to roll out the red carpet for
Catherine and me, and roll it out he did.
Seldom in the history of ghost hunting has a para-
psychologist been received so royally and so fully covered
by press, television and radio, and if the ghost of Joe Bald-
win is basking in the reflected glory of all this attention
directed towards his personal ghost hunter, he is most wel-
come to it.
If it were not for Joe Baldwin, the bend in the rail-
road track which is known as Maco Station (a few miles
outside of Wilmington) would be a most unattractive and
ordinary trestle. By the time I had investigated it and left,
in May of 1964, the spot had almost risen to the promi-
nence of a national shrine and sight-seeing groups arrived
at all times, especially at night, to look for Joe Baldwin’s
ghostly light.
Bill Mitcham had seen to it that the world knew
about Joe Baldwin’s headless ghost and Hans Holzer seek-
ing same, and not less than seventy-eight separate news
stories of one kind or another appeared in print during the
week we spent in Wilmington.
Before I even started to make plans for the Wilming-
ton expedition, I received a friendly letter from a local stu-
dent of psychic phenomena, William Edward Cox, Jr., and
a manuscript entitled “The Maco Ghost Light.” Mr. Cox
had spent considerable time observing the strange light,
and I quote:
A favorite “ghost story” in the vicinity ofWilming-
ton, N.C., is that of “Joe Baldwin’s Ghost Light,”
which is alleged to appear at night near Maco, N.C., 12
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
miles west of Wilmington on the Atlantic Coast Line
Railroad.
On June 30-July 1 , 1949, this writer spent consider-
able time investigating the phenomenon. The purpose
was to make an accurate check on the behavior of the
light under test conditions, with a view toward ascer-
taining its exact nature.
This light has been observed since shortly after the
legend of the Joe Baldwin ghost light “was born in
1867.” It is officially reported in a pamphlet entitled
“The Story of the Coast Line, 1830-1948.” In its gen-
eral description it resembles a 25-watt electric light
slowly moving along the tracks toward the observer,
whose best point of observation is on the track itself at
the point where the tracks, double at that point, are
crossed by a branch of a connecting roadway between
U.S. Highway 74-76 and U.S. Highway 19.
The popular explanation is that Conductor Baldwin,
decapitated in an accident, is taking the nocturnal walks
in search of his head ....
After testing the various “natural” theories put for-
ward for the origin of the nocturnal light, Mr. Cox admits:
Although the general consensus of opinion is that the
lights stem from some relatively rare cause, such as the
paranormal, "ignis fatuus," etc., the opinions of residents
of the Maco vicinity were found by this observer to be
more divided. The proprietor of the Mobilgas Service
Station was noncommittal, and a local customer said he
had “never seen the light.” A farmer in the area was
quite certain that it is caused by automobile headlights,
but would not express an opinion upon such lights as
were customarily seen there before the advent of the
automobile.
The proprietress of the Willet Service Station, Mrs.
C. L. Benton, was firmly convinced that it was of
“supernatural origin,” and that the peculiar visibility of
automobile headlights to observers at Maco must be
more or less a subsequent coincidence.
She said that her father “often saw it as he loaded the
wood burners near there over 60 years ago.”
The basic question of the origin and nature of the
“Maco Light," or the original light, remains incom-
pletely answered. The findings here reported, due as
they are to entirely normal causes, cannot accurately be
construed as disproving the existence of a light of para-
normal origin at any time in the distant past (or, for that
matter, at the present time).
The unquestionable singularity of the phenomenon’s
being in a locale where it is so easily possible for auto-
mobiles to produce an identical phenomenon seems but
to relegate it to the enigmatic “realm of forgotten mys-
teries.”
So much for Mr. Cox's painstaking experiment con-
ducted at the site in 1949.
The coming of the Ghost Hunter (and Mrs. Ghost
Hunter) was amply heralded in the newspapers of the area.
Typical of the veritable avalanche of features was the story
in The Charlotte Observer:
542
Can Spook Hunter De-Ghost Old Joe?
The South Eastern N. C. Beach Association invited a
leading parapsychologist Saturday to study the ghost of
Old Joe Baldwin.
Bill Mitcham, executive director of the association,
said he has arranged for Hans Holzer of New York to
either prove or disprove the ghostly tales relating to Old
Joe.
Holzer will begin his study May 1 .
Tales of Joe Baldwin flagging down trains with false
signals, waving his lantern on dark summer nights have
been repeated since his death in 1867.
Baldwin, a conductor on the Wilmington, Manchester
and Augusta Railroad, was riding the rear coach of a
train the night of his death. The coach became uncou-
pled and Baldwin seized a lantern in an effort to signal a
passenger train following.
But the engineer failed to see the signal. In the
resulting crash, Baldwin was decapitated.
A witness to the wreck later recalled that the signal
lantern was flung some distance from the tracks, but it
burned brightly thereafter for some time.
Soon after the accident, there were reports of a mys-
terious light along the railroad tracks at Maco Station in
Brunswick County.
Two lanterns, one green and one red, have been used
by trainmen at Maco Station so that engineers would
not be confused or deceived by Joe Baldwin’s light.
Most helpful in a more serious vein was the
Women’s Editor of the Wilmington Star -News, Theresa
Thomas, who has for years taken an interest in the psychic
and probably is somewhat sensitive herself. On April 8,
1964, she asked her readers:
Have You Ever Seen the Maco Light?
Have you ever seen Old Joe Baldwin? Or his light, that
is? As far as we know, nobody has actually seen Joe
himself.
But if you have seen his lantern swinging along the
railroad track at Maco, you can be of great help to Hans
Holzer, Ghost Hunter, who will be in Wilmington April
29th.
Either write out your experience and send it to us, or
call and tell us about it.
Then Miss Thomas’ point of view added another
angle:
His [Mr. Holzer ’s] wife is just as fascinating as he.
She is a painter and great -great -great -granddaughter of
Catherine The Great of Russia. Mrs. Holzer was born
Countess Catherine Buxhoeveden in a haunted castle in
Meran, the Tyrol, in the Italian Alps. And she paints —
haven’t you guessed? — haunted houses.
My visit was still three weeks away, but the wheels of
publicity where already spinning fast and furiously in
Wilmington.
Theresa Thomas’ appeal for actual witnesses to the
ghostly phenomena brought immediate results. For the first
time people of standing took the matter seriously, and
those who had seen the light, opened up. Miss Thomas did
not disguise her enthusiasm. On April 12, she wrote:
It seems a great many people have seen Old Joe
Baldwin’s light at Maco and most of them are willing —
even eager — to talk about it.
Among the first to call was Mrs. Larry Moore, 211
Orange Street, who said she had seen the light three or
four times at different seasons of the year.
The first time it was a cloudy, misty winter night
and again in summer, misty again. Her description of
the light was “like a bluish yellow flame.” She and her
companions walked down the track and the light came
closer as they approached the trestle. When they
reached the center of the trestle with the light appar-
ently about 10 feet away, it disappeared.
Mrs. Thelma Daughtry, 6 Shearwater Drive,
Wrightsville Beach, says she saw it on a misty spring
night. It was about 7 or 8 o’clock in the evening and the
reddish light appeared to swing along at about knee
height.
Mrs. Margaret Jackson, of 172 Colonial Circle, a
native of Vienna, Austria, saw it about seven years ago
on a hazy night. She was with several other people and
they all saw the light, a “glary shine” steady and far
away but always the same distance ahead of them.
Dixie Rambeau, 220 Pfeiffer Avenue, saw it about 1
A.M. Friday morning. She says it was “real dark” and
the light appeared as a red pinpoint at a distance up the
track, as it neared it became yellowish white, then closer
still it was a mixed red and white.
She recalls that she and her companions watched it
come closer to the left side of the track and that as it
came close the reflection on the rail almost reached
them. At about 10 feet away it reversed its process and
as they walked toward it, it disappeared. Once it
appeared to cross over. They watched it five or six
times, she said.
Mrs. Marvin Clark, 406 Grace Street, a practical
nurse, states that she and her husband saw the light 1 5
years ago. It was about midnight on a cloudy, rainy
night. They were standing in the middle of the track
and “it looked like a light on a train coming at full
speed.”
Mrs. Clark described the light as “the color of a train
light.”
“We picked up our little girl and ran. All of us have
always seen reflections of automobiles but beyond a
doubt it was the Maco Light.”
Mrs. Lase V. Dail of Carolina Beach also has a story
to tell. It seems she and her husband came home late
one night from Fayetteville.
She writes: “As we left the cut off and headed into
74-76 highway, I shall never forget the experience we
had. . ..” She goes on, “All at once a bright light came
down the road toward us, first I figured it was a car. But
decided if so it had only one light. On it came steadily
toward us.
“Then I figured it was a train, yet I heard nothing,
and as suddenly as it appeared it vanished. I can say it
The Case of the Lost Head
543
The haunted railway crossing —
Wilmington, North Carolina
was quite a weird feeling. I have often thought of it. I
have heard many versions, but never one like this.”
Three days later, Miss Thomas devoted still another
full column to people who had witnessed the ghost light.
Mrs. Marjorie H. Rizer of Sneads Ferry writes: “I
have seen the light three times. The last and most sig-
nificant time was about a year and a half ago. My hus-
band, three young sons and a corpsman from the United
States Naval Hospital at Camp Lejeune were with me
and we saw the same thing. It was about 10:30 P.M. and
we were returning from a ball game. We decided to go
to Maco since we were so near and the young man with
us didn’t believe there was anything to our story.
“The sky was cloudy and a light mist was falling.
We parked the car beside the track and sure enough,
there was the light down the track. I stayed in the car
with my sons, and my husband and the corpsman
walked down the track toward the light.
“The light would alternately dim and then become
very bright. The two men walked perhaps a quarter of a
mile down the track before they returned. They said the
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
544
light stayed ahead of them, but my sons and I saw the
light between them and us.
‘‘It looked as if the light would come almost to where
we were parked and then it would wobble off down the
track and disappear. In a moment it would reappear and
do the same time after time.
‘‘When we had been there for about an hour and
started to leave, a train approached going toward Wil-
mington. The light was a short distance away from us.
As the train passed the light, it rose and hovered over
the train. We could clearly see the top of the train as
the light became very bright.
‘‘It stayed over the train until it had passed then dis-
appeared back down near the track and finally it looked
as if someone had thrown it off into the woods.
‘‘As we pulled away from the track the light came
back on the track and weaved backward and forward
down the track as it had been doing.”
And still the letters poured in. On April 22, after half
a column devoted to my imminent arrival in the area, Miss
Thomas printed a letter from a young man who had taken
some interesting pictures:
He is J. Everett Huggins, home address 412 Market
Street, Wilmington. The letter is addressed to Bill
Mitcham and reads in part: “I read with interest the
articles on your ‘ghost survey,’ especially since I saw the
Maco light less than two weeks ago and was actually
able to catch Old Joe on film.
“On the nights of April 1 and 2 a schoolmate of
mine and I went to Maco Station in the hopes of seeing
the light. We saw nothing on Friday, April 1 , but we
had more success on Saturday, when it was a littler
darker. Around 10:30 we saw a yellow light about 100
yards down the track from us (this distance is only a
guess). It seemed to be about 10 feet above the tracks
and looked as if it were moving slowly toward us for a
while, then it went back and died out.
“The light appeared maybe three times in succession
for periods up to what I would estimate to be about
thirty seconds.
“I attempted to take two time exposures with my
camera. Unfortunately I did not have a tripod, and so I
had to hold the camera in my hands, which made clear
results impossible. The pictures are not spectacular —
just a small spot on each of the color transparencies —
but they are pictures. If you are interested I will have
some copies made.
“My friends had kidded me about the light, so I
noted some details to try to end their skepticism. The
headlights of cars traveling west on Highway 74 could
be seen in the distance, and no doubt many who think
they see Old Joe only see these lights. Old Joe could be
distinguished in several ways, however. First, the light
had a yellower tone than did the auto headlights.
“Secondly, unlike the headlights which grow brighter
and brighter and then suddenly disappear, the Maco
light would gradually grow brighter and then gradually
fade out. Thirdly, the Maco light produced a reflection
on the rails that was not characteristic of the headlights.
“More interesting was the fact that the reflection on
the rails was seen only on a relatively short stretch of
track. By observing the reflection, we could tell that the
light moved backward and forward on the rails. It
always remained directly above the tracks.
“I had seen the light once before, in 1956. It was on
a cold winter night, and the light was brighter."
As the day of our arrival grew nearer, the tempo of
the press became more hectic. On April 26, Arnold Kirk
wrote in the Wilmington Star -News:
This tiny Brunswick County village, nestled in a
small clearing a few miles west of Wilmington off U.S.
Highway 74, is rapidly gaining acclaim as the “Ghost
Capital" of North Carolina.
Its few dozen inhabitants, mostly farmers of moder-
ate means, have suddenly found their once-peaceful
nights disturbed by scores of vehicles sparring for van-
tage points from which to view the famous “Maco
Light."
While the legend of the light and old Joe Baldwin,
the “ghost" of Maco, has long been known, its popular-
ity has become intense only in recent months.
Elaborate plans have already been made to welcome
Holzer to the Port City. The mayors of all the towns in
New Hanover and Brunswick counties, in addition to
county commissioners from both counties, have agreed
to be at the New Hanover County Airport Wednesday
at 7:43 P.M. when the “ghost hunter’s" plane arrives.
Lanterns at Airport — Also on hand to greet the noted
parapsychologist will be 1 ,000 high-school students, car-
rying, appropriately enough, lighted lanterns! The
lanterns were purchased by the city years ago to offer
warmth to trees and plants during blustery winter
months.
Adding to the fanfare of the event will be the first
public offering of “The Ballad of Old Joe Baldwin,"
written by the senior English class of New Hanover
High School.
The reception was a bash that would have made Old
Joe Baldwin feel honored. A little later, we tried to sneak
out to Maco and have a first glance at the haunted spot.
The results were disappointing.
It was not so much that the ghost did not show, but
what did show up was most disturbing. The Wilmington
Star summed it up like this:
An unwilling Old Joe Baldwin exercised his ghostly
prerogative Wednesday night by refusing to perform
before what may have been his largest audience.
Huddled in small clusters along the railroad tracks
near the center of this tiny Brunswick County village, an
estimated 250 persons stared into the gloomy darkness
in hopes of catching a glimpse of the famous “Maco
Light."
But the light would not offer the slightest flicker.
Holzer ’s announced visit to the scene of Baldwin’s
ghastly demise gave no comfort to the few dozen resi-
dents of Maco. By 10 o’clock, dozens of cars lined both
sides of the narrow Maco road and scores of thrill -seek-
ing teenagers had spilled onto the railroad track.
If Joe Baldwin had decided to make an appearance,
his performance no doubt would have been engulfed in
the dozens of flashlights and battery-powered lanterns
searching through the darkness for at least a mile down
the track.
Several times, the flashlights and lanterns were mis-
taken for the “Maco Light,” giving hope that the myste-
rious glow would soon appear.
A large portion of the track was illuminated by the
headlights of a jeep and small foreign car scurrying back
and forth along both sides of the track. A young girl
created an anxious moment when she mistook a firefly as
the “Maco Light" and released a penetrating scream
that sliced through the pitch-darkness.
Holzer ’s visit to Maco on Wednesday night was
mostly for the benefit of photographers and reporters
who met the noted parapsychologist at the New
Hanover County airport earlier that night.
His second visit to the crossing will be kept a closely
guarded secret in hopes the "ghost hunter” will be able
to conduct his investigation of the light without being
interrupted by pranksters and playful teenagers.
Soon I realized that it would impossible for us to go
out to the tracks alone. Crowds followed us around and
The Case of the Lost Head
545
crowds were ever present at the spot, giving rise to a suspi-
cion in my mind that these people were not in a working
mood while we were visiting their area. Evidently we were
the most exciting thing that had happened to them for
some time.
Finally, the day of a scheduled press conference
arrived, and at 10 o’clock in the morning, before a battery
of kleig lights and microphones set up at the magnificent
new Blockade Runner Hotel on the beach, I started to talk
in person to those who had come to tell me about their
encounters with Joe Baldwin’s ghost.
In addition to those who had written to Miss
Thomas and reaffirmed their original stories, others came
forward who had not done so previously. There was
William McGirt, an insurance executive, who called the
light “buoyant,” flicking itself on and off, as it were, and
fully reflected on the iron rails. But you cannot see it look-
ing east, he told me, only when you look towards Maco
Station.
Margaret Bremer added to her previously told story
by saying the light looked to her "like a kerosene lantern
swaying back and forth.”
Her husband, Mr. Bremer, had not planned on say-
ing anything, but I coaxed him. He admitted finally that
twelve years ago, when his car was standing straddled
across the track, he saw a light coming towards him. It
flickered like a lamp and when it came closer, it flared up.
As an afterthought, he added, “Something strange — sud-
denly there seemed to be a rush of air, as if a train were
coming from Wilmington.”
"Was there?” I inquired cautiously.
"No, of course not. We wouldn’t have had the car
across the track if a train were expected.”
Mrs. Laura Collins stepped forward and told me of
the time she was at the trestle with a boy who did not
believe in ghosts, not even Joe Baldwin’s. When the light
appeared, he sneered at it and tried to explain it as a reflec-
tion. Six feet away from the boy, the light suddenly disap-
peared and reappeared in back of him — as if to show him
up! Mrs. Collins, along with others, observed that misty
weather made the light appear clearer.
Next in the parade of witnesses came Mrs. Elizabeth
Finch of Wilmington, who had offered her original testi-
mony only the day before.
“It appeared to me many times,” she said of the
light, "looked like a lantern to me. Two years ago, we were
parked across the tracks in our car — we were watching for
a train of course, too — when I saw two dazzling lights from
both sides. It was a winter evening, but I suddenly felt
very hot. There was a red streak in front of the car, and
then I saw what was a dim outline of a man walking with a
lantern and swinging it. Mind you, it was a bare outline,”
Mrs. Finch added in emphasis, “and it did have a
head. . .just kept going, then suddenly he disappeared
inside the tracks.”
“Did you ever have psychic experiences before, Mrs.
Finch?” I wanted to know.
"Yes, when we lived in a house in Masonborough, I
used to hear noises, steps, even voices out of nowhere —
later, I was told it was haunted.”
I thanked Mrs. Finch, wondering if the local legend
had impressed her unconscious to the point where she did
see what everyone had said was there — or whether she
really saw the outline of a man.
I really have no reason to doubt her story. She struck
me as a calm, intelligent person who would not easily make
up a story just to be sensational. No, I decided, Mrs. Finch
might very well have been one of the very few who saw
more than just the light.
“I tell you why it can’t be anything ordinary,” Mr.
Trussle, my next informant, said. “Seven years ago, when I
saw the light on a damp night about a mile away from
where I was standing, I noticed its very rapid approach. It
disappeared fast, went back and forth as if to attract atten-
tion to something. It was three foot above the track, about
the height of where a man’s arm might be.
“At first, it seemed yellowish white; when I came
closer, it looked kind of pinkish. Now an ordinary car
headlight wouldn’t go back and forth like that, would it?”
I agreed it was most unlikely for an automobile head-
light to behave in such an unusual manner.
Mrs. Miriam Moore saw it three times, always on
misty, humid nights. “I had a funny ringing in my ears
when I reached the spot,” she said. She was sure what she
saw was a lamp swinging in a slow motion. Suddenly, she
broke into a cold sweat for no reason at all. I established
that she was a psychic person, and had on occasion foretold
the death of several members of her family.
E. S. Skipper is a dapper little man in the golden
years of life, but peppery and very much alert. He used to
be a freight shipper on the Atlantic Coast Line and grew
up with the Maco Light the way Niagara kids grow up
with the sight of the Falls.
“I’ve seen it hundreds of times,” he volunteered.
‘Tve seen it flag trains down — it moved just like a railroad
lantern would. On one occasion I took my shotgun and
walked towards it. As I got nearer, the light became so
bright I could hardly look. Suddenly, it disappeared into
the old Catholic cemetery on the right side of the tracks.”
“Cemetery?” I asked, for I had not heard of a ceme-
tery in this area.
Mr. Skipper was quite certain that there was one. I
promised to look into this immediately. “Since you came so
close to the light, Mr. Skipper,” I said, “perhaps you can
tell me what it looked like close up.”
“Oh, I got even closer than that — back in 1929, I
remember it well. It was 2 o’clock in the morning. I got to
within six foot from it.”
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
546
“What did you see?”
“I saw a flame. I mean, in the middle of the light,
there was, unmistakably, a flame burning.”
"Like a lantern?”
“Like a lantern.”
I thanked Mr. Skipper and was ready to turn to my
last witness, none other than Editor Thomas herself, when
Mrs. E. R. Rich, who had already given her account in the
newspaper, asked for another minute, which I gladly gave
her.
“Ten years ago,” Mrs. Rich said, “we were at the
track one evening. My son Robert was in the car with me,
and my older son went down the track to watch for the
light. Suddenly not one but two lights appeared at the car.
They were round and seemed to radiate, and sparkle — for a
moment, they hung around, then one left, the other stayed.
My feet went ice cold at this moment and I felt very
strange.”
"Miss Thomas,” I said, “will you add your own
experiences to this plethora of information?”
“Gladly,” the Women’s Editor of the Star-News
replied. “There were three of us, all newspaper women,
who decided a few weeks ago to go down to the trestle and
not see anything.”
"I beg your pardon?”
“We’d made up our minds not to be influenced by
all the publicity Joe Baldwin’s ghost was getting.”
“What happened?”
“When we got to the track, dogs were baying as if
disturbed by something in the atmosphere. We parked on
the dirt road that runs parallel to the track, and waited.
After a while, the light appeared. It had a yellow glow.
Then, suddenly, there were two lights, one larger than the
other, swaying in the night sky.
"The lights turned reddish after a while. There was
no correlation with car lights at all. I thought at first it was
a train bearing down on us, that’s how big the lights
appeared. Just as suddenly the lights disappeared. One
light described an arc to the left of the track, landing in the
grass.”
“Just as those old tales say Joe’s lantern did, eh?”
“It seems so, although it is hard to believe.”
“What else did you notice?”
“I had a feeling that I was not alone.”
And there you have it. Mass hysteria? Self-hypnosis?
Suggestion? Could all these people make up similar stories?
Although the Maco Light is unique in its specific
aspects, there are other lights that have been observed at
spots where tragedies have occurred. There are reports of
apparitions in Colorado taking the form of concentrated
energy, or light globes. I don’t doubt that the human per-
sonality is a form of energy that cannot be destroyed, only
transmuted. The man who heard the sound of a train, the
psychic chill several people experienced, the flame within
the light, the two lights clearly distinguished by the news-
paper women — possibly Joe’s lantern and the headlight of
the onrushing train — all these add up to a case.
That evening, at Bogden Hall, before an audience of
some five hundred people of all ages, I stated my convic-
tion that the track at Maco Station was, indeed, haunted. I
explained that the shock of sudden death might have
caused Joe Baldwin’s etheric self to become glued to the
spot of the tragedy, re-enacting the final moments over and
over again.
I don’t think we are dealing here with an “etheric
impression" registered on the atmosphere and not possess-
ing a life of its own. The phantom reacts differently with
various people and seems to me a true ghost, capable of
attempting communication with the living, but not fully
aware of his own status or of the futility of his efforts.
I was, and am, convinced of the veracity of the phe-
nomenon and, by comparing it to other “weaving lights” in
other areas, can only conclude that the basic folklore is on
the right track, except that Joe isn’t likely to be looking for
his head — he is rather trying to keep an imaginary train
from running into his uncoupled car, which of course exists
now only in his thought world.
And until someone tells Joe all’s well on the line
now, he will continue to wave his light. I tried to say the
right words for such occasions, but I was somewhat ham-
pered by the fact that I did not have Mrs. Ethel Meyers,
my favorite medium, with me; then, too, the Wilmington
people did not like the idea of having their town ghost go
to his reward and leave the trestle just another second-rate
railroad track.
The folks living alongside it, though, wouldn’t have
minded one bit. They can do without Joe Baldwin and his
somewhat motley admirers.
Suddenly the thought struck me that we had no proof
that a Joe Baldwin had ever really existed in this area. The
next morning I went to the Wilmington Public Library
and started to dig into the files and historical sources deal-
ing with the area a hundred years ago. Bill Mitcham and I
started to read all the newspapers from 1866 onwards, but
after a while we gave up. Instead, I had a hunch which,
eventually, paid off. If Joe Baldwin was physically fit to
work on the railroad in so hazardous a job as that of a train
man, he must have been well enough to be in the Armed
Forces at one time or another.
I started to search the Regimental Records from 1867
on backwards. Finally I found in volume V, page 602, of a
work called North Carolina Regiments, published in 1901,
the following entry:
Joseph Baldwin, Company F, 26th N.C.T., badly
wounded in the thigh. Battle of Gettysburg. July 1,
1863.
The Case of the Lost Head
547
It was the only Joseph Baldwin listed in the area, or,
for that matter, the state,
I also inquired about the old Catholic cemetery. It
was, indeed, near the railroad track, but had been out of
use for many years. Only oldsters still remembered its exis-
tence. Baldwin may have been Catholic, as are many resi-
» 118
The Woman On the Train
(Switzerland)
The NIGHT TRAIN gave one more shrill whistle, then
pulled out of Vienna’s spanking new Western Station. By
the next morning, it would be in Zurich, Switzerland. One
could make the same journey in an hour by air, but then
how many mountains and lakes can one look at from
10,000 feet up? So there are always enough people who
prefer the night train, enough at any rate to make the train
continue as it has for all these years. It is a good train, as
trains go, far cleaner and better than American trains. The
sleepers are comfortable and the dining cars serve good
food, and the soup does not come up and meet you half
way to your face the way it does on the rickety American
diners these days.
Now the train was running at a faster pace, leaving
Vienna's sprawling suburbs behind. After it passed
Huetteldorf- Hacking, the so-called Vorbahnhof, or advance
station, for Vienna proper, it became an express train and
the clickety-clack of the rails turned into a smoother, faster
ride. Travellers could now settle back into their cushioned
seats and enjoy the ride. True, the landscape would not be
interesting until after Tulin, but by then darkness would
be setting in. But the early morning glory of seeing the
mountains out of the train windows around 6 A.M., would
amply compensate for the dark portions of the voyage. The
Zurich Express wasn’t as glamorous as the famed Orient
Express but it was no less classy, and the railroad made
every effort to keep their clientele from leaving for the air-
lines. Even to the extent of placing perfume containers into
the washrooms and flowers in the compartments. Let the
Penn-Central try that!
One of the travelers beginning to relax was a diminu-
tive redhead with large, dark eyes and the unmistakable air
of show business about her. She was well dressed, to be
sure, but in a manner and style just a trifle too showy for
the ordinary Vienna hausfrau or even the elegant lady of
the world. There was nothing cheap about her clothes or
manner, but she seemed rather self-assured, too much so to
be just another wife or sister traveling to Zurich by herself.
dents of the area. Time did not permit me to look among
the dilapidated tombstones for a grave bearing the name of
Joe Baldwin.
But it would be interesting to find it and see if all of
Joe Baldwin lies buried in sacred ground!
Her luggage took up almost all of the available space, leav-
ing very little for any other traveler if she had shared her
compartment. As it was, she was alone, luckily, and having
the sleeping compartment all to herself contributed immea-
surably to her sense of comfort at this moment.
Rita Atlanta used the fading moments of the day to
reflect on the weeks past. She had just ended a successful
engagement in Vienna, two months of full houses in the
nightclub where she was employed with her specialty act.
Her specialty? Rita is a striptease dancer, one of the best in
this somewhat “old-fashioned” field in this day of extremes
— like topless dancers and bottomless chorines. But Rita,
despite the fact she takes her clothes off in public, is a lady.
She was once married to an American officer of high rank
who had met her in Germany. Far from asking her to give
up her occupation, he insisted she continue with it. It did
not sit well with the general, but the enlisted men
loved it, and her performances were always sellouts. Ulti-
mately, her husband passed away and Rita began to divide
her year between her European engagements and her com-
fortable trailer stationed near Boston. Her son was growing
up and going to school and Rita’s life was pretty orderly
and peaceful. She came from a good Austrian family and
grew up among people to whom the horrors of war and
occupation were only too familiar.
Somehow she had forgotten about those horrible
years and only now and then did something remind her
about them as she traveled across Europe now.
Since childhood Rita had shown a remarkable degree
of extrasensory powers. She was aware of the death of a
relative long before it became known and she knew when
someone would soon pass away by merely looking at him.
This ability she found far from welcome, but it stayed with
her, like it or not. Then, when she moved into a trailer
near Boston, she soon discovered that she had also inher-
ited a ghost. She was repeatedly awakened at three in the
morning by the specter of a large man in a wide-brimmed
hat, staring at her from the foot of her bed. Later, it was
discovered that a man had been run over nearby by a car.
Show business people like to talk about the unknown
and she often found herself regaling her friends in the
dressing rooms with her experiences. Many a friendship
was formed by her because of her special “gift,” and
though she viewed all this with mixed emotions, she knew
she had to live with it all her life.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
548
Now that her summer season had ended and she
could look forward to a good engagement in the fall, she
had decided to take some time off and visit a friend of
many years in her home at Locarno, Switzerland, Susan
West had been ill two years prior to this visit, but a suc-
cessful operation for cancer had apparently halted the
spread of the disease and she had been declared cured.
Thus her friend welcomed the idea of Rita’s visit, as she
had never felt better in her life.
Outside the train window the landscape started to
become more interesting even as the light faded. The hills
of the Wachau Valley clearly etched themselves against the
skyline and the Danube nearly gave one the feeling of a
truly romantic journey. Rita turned the overhead lights low
and settled back for a while. Then the monotonous sound
of the rails affected her and she felt herself tiring. She
undressed and got into bed, turning the overhead lights out
and the bedside lamp on. But she was not quite ready for
sleep. To begin with, in her profession one does not go off
to sleep until very late at night, and the habit pattern had
made early bedtimes very difficult for her. Then, too, the
brisk October air outside made her feel alive and she
decided to read a little before turning the lights off.
She had bought some magazines at the Western Sta-
tion and now she went through them, always hoping to
find perhaps a picture or mention of herself somewhere —
an occupational habit most show business people have.
After about twenty minutes of this, she felt sleep
reaching out to her, and dropped the magazines. Then she
turned off the light and prepared herself for sleep. Within
a few minutes, she was fast asleep.
All of a sudden, she woke up. Outside, it was quite
dark now and the train was very quiet. She had no idea
how long she had slept, but it must have been several
hours by the way she felt. Still, she was wide awake and
began to wonder why she had suddenly awakened. She
turned her head and looked away from the bed into the
compartment. Even though there was no moon, enough
light from reflected surfaces streamed into the window to
let her see the outlines of everything in the small room.
There, in front of her bed, was a woman she had never
seen before in her life, kneeling on the floor before her!
With a jerk, she sat up and stared at the figure.
Stunned by the intrusion, all she could think of was how
the woman could have gotten into her room. The woman
was kneeling, with her hands raised over her head, looking
upward. Rita saw her face, the face of a dark complexioned
woman with dark hair, perhaps of Mexican or Latin ances-
try. The woman’s expression was one of sheer terror as if
something horrible was about to be done to her!
Rita found herself scared out of her wits, her heart
pounding to her teeth, and yet unable to move. Then she
started to find her way to the light switch to turn on the
lights. It took her several seconds, which seemed like hours
to her, to find the switch and turn it.
When the light flooded the compartment, the appari-
tion was gone. Quickly Rita tried the door, but it was
locked securely, just as she had left it prior to retiring.
There was no way in which the woman could have gotten
into the compartment, if she had been of flesh and blood.
But Rita knew from her previous experience in the trailer
that she was not confronted with a human being: ‘‘do
trains harbor ghosts too?” she wondered, and then the
thought hit her that this had something to do with her
friend Susan.
It did not seem to make sense, but she could not
shake the feeling that the ghostly woman was someone
connected with her friend, who had come to warn her of
impending doom for Susan.
Perhaps it is a ghost, someone killed in this compart-
ment, she tried to reason, but to no avail. Her inner voice
told her it was not.
The entire incident cast a sad spell over her otherwise
pleasant trip, but eventually she went back to sleep and
arrived in Zurich somewhat more composed.
She changed trains and took the train to Bellinzona
where her friend and prospective hostess was to meet her
and take her the rest of the way to a little town outside of
Locarno, where she lived. When she saw Susan in
Bellinzona, Rita's fears vanished. Her friend looked radiant
and quite obviously was in good health. In fact, she looked
years younger than the last time she had seen her. She had
changed her hair to red and it looked well on her. The two
women embraced and the bright southern sun quickly
made Rita forget the horrible experience on the train to
Zurich.
They traveled together now to Locarno, and to while
away the time, or perhaps out of an inner compulsion to be
reassured somehow, Rita told Susan about the apparition
on the train. But she did not mention her own inner fears
that it had some foreboding concerning her friend.
‘‘I hope it has nothing to do with me,” Susan said, as
if reading her thoughts, however. Rita immediately assured
her that it didn’t, and couldn't.
“How could a ghost on a train have any possible con-
nection with you here in Locarno?” she reasoned, but her
friend was not relaxed.
“I don’t know,” she said and then they changed the
subject. Soon afterward they arrived at her apartment in
Tenero, near Locarno, and the afternoon and evening was
spent talking over old times and plans for the future.
When it was time to go to sleep, Rita was given a bed in
her friend’s living room. Her hostess slept in the bedroom
of the apartment.
The place was pretty and new and Rita immediately
took a liking to it. She was looking forward to her visit
now, and the experience on the train went even further into
the background.
The Woman On the Train (Switzerland)
549
She read for a while, as was her custom, then she
turned the light out and lay quietly in the dark, waiting for
sleep to come and blot out her conscious thoughts.
As she was slowly drifting off to sleep, deliberately
avoiding any recollections or reflections upon her experi-
ence on the train, she felt herself surrounded by an unseen
presence. She blamed her unfamiliarity with her surround-
ings, the long journey, the excitement of the trip for her
nervousness. But it did not help much, the feeling of an
ominous presence in the room persisted.
After a while, it seemed to her as if someone were
watching her from all over that room, someone she could
not actually see but whom her keen senses felt very much
present. She wasn’t even sure whether it was one person or
several, because the feeling seemed to drift over her from
all sides.
It was a very bad night and she hardly slept at all,
but she did not wish to alarm her hostess, so she said
nothing of it at breakfast the next morning. Instead, at the
first opportunity, she went into town and bought sleeping
pills, the strongest she could get.
That night, she was drowsy almost at once, due to
the drug in the pills. She still felt the presence however,
just as strongly as the first night. Only, because she had
taken the pills, she did not care.
Two days after her arrival, she met Mrs. Recalcati, a
neighbor of Susan’s. Somehow the conversation turned to
the psychic world and ghosts in particular, and to her sur-
prise Rita discovered that the lady was not at all hostile
toward the possibility that such things did indeed exist.
Encouraged by this open-minded attitude, Rita con-
fided in the neighbor, telling her of her ghostly encounter
on the train and of the uncanny sensations in the apart-
ment afterwards.
"I have the feeling Susan is going to die,” she added,
somehow unable to hold back her dreary thoughts.
The neighbor woman was at first horrified, but then
she nodded. “Susan hasn't been well of late,” she remarked
and Rita shuddered. She had only seen the radiant joy of
the reunion of two old friends after many years.
The five days allotted to her visit passed quickly. She
returned to Vienna and her own apartment. It was good to
spend a night in a room without an unseen presence staring
at one from out of the dark.
For the first two days, she just rested — rested from a
vacation. Then she confided in a close friend, Elfie Hartl,
what had occurred on the train and in Locarno.
Soon after, she returned to America for her usual
Christmas holiday with her son, and again discussed what
had happened with the boy and some of her American
friends. But after that, the matter was dropped and not dis-
cussed again. Rita was busy living her daily life and the
less she had to do with psychic matters, the better from her
own point of view.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
This was not entirely possible, as the ghostly mani-
festations in her trailer never ceased. But she had taken her
3 A.M. "visitor” for granted by now and was not unduly
disturbed by him any longer. After all, he was dead and
she knew that it did not concern herself or anyone close to
her. If he wanted to visit her trailer for some strange rea-
son, that was all right with her. She had often thought of
changing her residence or moving the trailer elsewhere, but
it was a lot of trouble to go to on account of a ghost.
Besides, she had made friends in the trailer camp and her
boy was in school nearby.
Meanwhile the demands for her act were as great as
ever. The “girl in the champagne glass,” as she was known,
had added an oriental act to her original routine, and as a
belly dancer she was in almost greater demand than as a
striptease artist. There are hundreds of small clubs in the
United States using this type of talent and Rita had a busy
winter season, traveling about the country.
Somehow, word of her preoccupation with the occult
had gotten around, perhaps because she liked to talk about
it on occasion with fellow performers. Agents and man-
agers would proffer their palms and ask to be “read” as if
Rita were some kind of carnival gypsy. Rita, of course,
refused but did not bother to explain the difference
between a casual psychic reader and a person genuinely
possessed of ESP and a serious interest in that which she
did not want, but nevertheless found present within her.
Still, inadvertently, she sometimes told friends what
she felt about them only to find out later that it had all
come true the way she had so casually mentioned it. It did
not give her any sense of pride in her psychic accomplish-
ment. To the contrary, she kept asking herself, what is the
matter with me? I don’t want to see ghosts; I don’t want to
tell people’s fortune or misfortune — I just want to be left
alone by the forces that cause all this.
She could handle the freshest of hecklers when per-
forming her act, and quench the rudest remark, if neces-
sary. But this was different. How can you deal with
something you don’t see or hear, something within you?
One day in Baltimore, she was sitting in her dressing
room backstage at a local club. It was an icy February day
of 1968 and business had been good despite the cold
weather. Perhaps because of it, she reasoned, men wanted
to see a pretty girl undress. She had some time to kill
between performances, and her son had forwarded her mail
to her from Boston.
As she casually went through the stack of fan mail,
she noticed an unfamiliar stamp. It was a letter from
Locarno. Quickly, she tore open the envelope. The letter
was from Susan’s son. She had died on January 7 of that
year. As she put the letter down, she kept seeing her red-
headed friend in her mind, how lifelike and joyous she had
been during their last get-together.
Then, with a shudder, she felt herself think of the
woman on the train again, and all at once Rita knew that
550
this was someone connected with Susan’s death. But why
had she been chosen to receive this warning and not Susan
herself? Was she the "telephone between worlds” for all
her friends and should she have told her friend about the
warning after all? "No,” she said to herself, "no,” it would
have spoiled the last few happy months she had on earth.
With a sigh Rita put the letter back with the others and
prepared herself for the next performance.
She is often in Vienna, but the night train to Zurich
is out of bounds to her now. Perhaps there are ghosts on
airplanes too, but at least the flight to Zurich only takes an
hour.
» 119
The Lady Of the Garden (California)
Gardening is one of the finest expressions of man’s
cultural heritage, for it stems back to the early Greek and
Roman cultures, if not beyond that into Babylonian and
Chaldean realms. The hanging gardens of Nineveh were far
more elaborate than anything modern man can dream up
no matter how green his thumb, and the rose gardens of
Emperor Diocletian at Salonae, among which he spent his
declining years, were a great deal more elaborate than the
gardens we are apt to have for our own.
Gardening is also a health measure, for it serves two
purposes admirably well: it provides man with physical
exercise, and cleanses the air around him through the
chemical process of photosynthesis, the miraculous arrange-
ment whereby carbon dioxide is changed into oxygen
naturally.
Americans in the eastern states often find gardening a
hard-to-find pleasure especially if they live in the cities.
But in the sunny west, it comes as a natural adjunct to
one’s house and is often the most desirable feature of it.
Many of the citizens of the small communities of Califor-
nia have gone there, usually from the east or midwest, to
have an easier life in their later years. To them, having a
garden to putter in is perhaps one of the chief attractions of
this unhurried way of life.
The western climate is very kind to most forms of
flowers, to fruit trees and almost all the plants usually
found in both moderate and tropical climates, so it is small
wonder that some of the California gardens turn into veri-
table show places of color and scent for their loving
owners.
Naomi S. is a widow who has lived in California
most of her life. Since the passing of her second husband,
she has lived quietly in the southern California community
of Huntington Park, and nothing of great importance hap-
pens to her now. That is as it should be, for she has had a
glimpse into a world that has at once amazed and fright-
ened her and she prefers that the excursion into it remain a
veiled memory that will eventually be indistinguishable
from the faded pictures of other past experiences in her
busy and full life.
* * *
At the time, in 1953, she and her husband had been
house hunting in Lynwood for a suitable place. She did not
care for the run-of-the-mill houses one often finds in
American communities and when they both saw this
strangely attractive old house on Lago Avenue, they knew
at once that that was it.
It was almost as if the house had invited them to
come and get it, but so eager were they to investigate its
possibilities, they never thought of this until much, much
later.
The house was built in Norman style, almost Euro-
pean in its faithful copying of such old houses, and it was
covered with all kinds of greens and vines going up and
down the stone walls. Since it was surrounded by shrub-
bery and trees in the manner of a fence, it was most
secluded, and one had the feeling of complete privacy.
There was sufficient land around it to make it even more
remote from the surrounding community, and as the zon-
ing laws in Lynwood were quite careful, chances of a new
building going up next door to them were remote. They
immediately went past the shrubbery and looked around,
possibly to see if anyone could show them the house. The
sign outside had read “For Sale” and given the name of a
real estate firm, but it did not state whether or not the
house was currently inhabited. As they approached the
house across the soft lawn they came to realize immediately
that it could not be. All around them were signs of neglect
and apparently long periods of no care at all. What had
once been a beautifully landscaped garden was now a semi-
wilderness in which weeds had overgrown precious flowers
and the shrubbery grew whichever way it chose.
The paths, so carefully outlined by a previous owner,
were hardly recognizable now. The rains had washed them
away and birds had done the rest.
“Needs lots of work,” her husband mumbled appre-
hensively, as they observed the earmarks of destruction all
around them. But they continued toward the house. They
did not enter it but walked around it at first in the manner
in which a wild animal stalks its prey. They wanted to take
in all of the outside, the grounds, first, before venturing
inside.
The Lady Of the Garden (California)
551
On the other side of the house was a fine patio that
had apparently served as a breakfast and dining patio at
one time. A forlorn broken cup and a rusty spoon lay on
the ground, but otherwise the patio was empty and still.
“Boy, they sure let this place run downhill,” Mr. S.
remarked and shook his head. He was a businessman used
to orderly procedures and this was anything but good
sense. Why would anyone owning so lovely a place let it
go to pot? It didn’t make sense to him.
All over the neighborhood, down Elm Street, the
houses were aristocratic and well-kept. It would seem some-
one would care enough to look after this little jewel of a
house, too. Why hadn’t the real estate man sent someone
around to clean things up once in a while? He decided to
question the man about it.
From the patio on down to the end of the property,
clearly marked by the shrubbery, was almost nothing but
roses. Or rather, there had been at one time. One could
still see that some loving hand had planted rows upon rows
of rose bushes, but only a few of them were flowering now.
In between, other plants had grown up and what there was
left of the roses needed careful and immediate pruning, his
knowledgeable eyes told him at once. Still, there was hope
for the roses if a lot of work were to be put in on them.
They entered the house through the patio door,
which was ajar. Inside they found further proof of long
neglect. The furniture was still there, so it was a furnished
house for sale. This was a pleasant surprise for it would
make things a lot easier for them, financially speaking, even
if some of the things they might buy with the house had to
be thrown out later.
The dust covering the inside and an occasional spi-
der’s web drove home the fact that no one could have lived
here for years. But this did not disturb them, for there are
lots of nice houses in California standing empty for years
on end until someone wants them. They felt a strange sen-
sation of being at home now, as if this had already been
their house and they had just now re-entered it only after a
long summer vacation.
Immediately they started to examine each room and
the gray, almost blackened windows. No doubt about it, it
would take months of cleaning before the house would be
livable again. But there was nothing broken or inherently
beyond repair in the house and their courage rose, espe-
cially when they realized that most of the Victorian furni-
ture was in excellent condition, just dirty.
After a prolonged stay in the house, during which
they examined every one of the rooms, every nook and
cranny, and finally went out into the garden again, they
never doubted for a moment that this would be their future
home. It never occurred to them that perhaps the sign had
been out there for months even though someone had
already bought the place or that it might be available but
priced beyond their means.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
Somehow they knew immediately that the house was
right for them, just the size they wanted — they had no
children — not too big to manage, but yet spacious and
above all quiet, as it sat in the midst of what might once
again become a fine garden.
"Well, what do you say, Naomi?” Mr. S. inquired. It
was more of rhetorical question since he, and she, knew
very well what they were to do next. “Yes, it will do,” she
nodded and smiled at him. It is a good feeling to have
found one’s home.
They carefully closed the patio door and locked it as
best they could — after all, it was their home now, practi-
cally, and not just a neglected, empty old house for sale.
As they walked up the garden path towards Elm Street,
they had the distinctive feeling of being followed by a pair
of eyes. But they were so preoccupied with thoughts of
how to make this place into a livable home, that they paid
no heed. They didn’t even turn around when they heard a
rustling sound in the leaves that covered the path. It was
the kind of sound the wind would make, had there been a
wind.
After they left the place, they immediately drove
down to the real estate office.
Yes, the place was still for sale. They sighed with
relief, too noticeably to escape the glance of the real estate
man. It bemused him, since he was only too glad to unload
the white elephant the house on Lago Avenue represented
to him. After some small talk, they agreed on a price and
move-in date, and then Mrs. S. began to wonder about the
people who had lived there before.
But the real estate man, either by design or ignorance,
could not tell them much. The house had been there
for about thirty years or so, but even that was not certain.
It might have been sixty years, for all he knew. It could
not be more than that, for Lynwood wasn’t much older.
Who had built it? He didn’t know their names, but a cou-
ple had built it and lived in it originally, and after them a
number of other people had either bought or rented it, but
somehow nobody stayed very long. His company had just
recently taken over its sale, he believed, in the name of
some absentee heir, across the country somewhere, but he
really could not tell them more than that.
“It’s just an old house, you know,” he finally said
and looked at them puzzled. “Why do you want to know
more?”
Why indeed? The man was right. Resolutely, they
signed the contract and a few weeks later, when their
affairs elsewhere had been wound up, they moved into the
house.
The first few days were grim. They reminded one of
the pioneering days of early Americans as the S.s worked
from early to late to get their bedroom into livable condi-
tion. After that, the kitchen, and so forth until gradually,
with much sweat and effort, the house changed. In the
spring, they turned their attention to the garden, and since
Mr. S. had meanwhile gone into semi-retirement from his
552
business he had a little more time on his hands to help.
Now and then they used the services of a local gardener,
but by and large, it was their own effort that made the gar-
den bloom again. Carefully pruning the roses, and when-
ever they found a gap, replanting a rose bush, they
managed to bring back a new life to the beautiful place.
Inside the house the old furniture had been dusted and
repaired where necessary and they had augmented the
pieces with some of their own, interspersing them where
suitable. So the house took on a strange look of mixture of
their old house and what must have been the former
owner’s own world, but the two did not seem to clash, and
intermingled peacefully for their comfort.
They never tried to change anything in either house
or garden just for change’s sake: if they could find what
had stood on the spot, they would faithfully restore it,
almost as if driven by a zeal to turn the clock back to
where it had stood when the house had first been built.
They felt themselves motivated by the same loyalty a
museum curator displays in restoring a priceless master-
piece to its original appearance. Their efforts paid off, and
the house became a model of comfortable, if somewhat
Victorian, living.
As they became acquainted with their garden, they
became aware of the fact that it contained lots more than
roses or ordinary flowers. Apparently the previous owners
liked rare plants for there were remnants of unusual flowers
and green plants, they had never seen before outside of
museums or arboretums. With some of them, the original
label had remained, giving the name and origin. Whenever
they were able to, they fixed these labels so that much of
the old flavor returned to the garden. They even went to
the local florist and asked him to explain some of the rare
plants, and in turn they bought some replacements for
those that had died of neglect, and put them where they
would have been before.
With all this work taking up most of their time, they
found no opportunity to make friends in the community.
For a long time, they knew no one except the real estate
man and the gardener who had occasionally worked for
them, neither persons of social acquaintance status.
But one morning Mrs. S. noticed a nice lady pass her
as she was working in the front garden, and they
exchanged smiles. After that, she stopped her in the street
a day or so later and inquired about shops in the area and
it turned out the lady was a neighbor living across the
street from them, a certain Lillian G., who had been a
longtime resident of the area. Not a young woman any
longer, Mrs. G. knew a great deal about the community, it
appeared, but the two women never talked about anything
but current problems of the most mundane nature — on the
few occasions that they did meet again. It was almost as if
Naomi did not want to discuss the story of her house any
longer, now that she owned it.
A year went by and the S.s were finally through with
all their restorations in the house and could settle back to a
comfortable and well-earned rest. They liked their home
and knew that they had chosen well and wisely. What had
seemed at the time a beckoning finger from the house itself
to them, now appeared merely as an expression of horse
sense upon seeing the place and they prided themselves on
having been so wise.
* * *
It was summer again and the California sky was blue
and all was well with the house and themselves. Mr. S. had
gone out and would not be back until the afternoon. Mrs.
S. was busy working in the rose garden, putting some fine
touches on her bushes. Despite the approaching midday, it
was not yet too hot to work.
Naomi had just straightened out one of the tea roses,
when she looked up and realized she had a visitor. There,
on the path no more than two yards away, stood a rather
smallish lady. She was neatly dressed in a faded house
dress of another era, but in California this is not particu-
larly unusual. Lots of retired people like to dress in various
old-fashioned ways and no one cares one way or another.
The lady was quite elderly and fragile, and Naomi was
startled to see her there.
Her surprise must have been obvious, for the visitor
immediately apologized for the intrusion. “I didn't mean to
scare you," she said in a thin, high-pitched voice that
somehow went well with her general appearance and
frailty.
"You didn't," Naomi bravely assured her. She was
nothing if not hospitable. Why should a little old lady
scare her?
“Well then,” the visitor continued tentatively,
"would it be all right if I looked around a bit?”
This seemed unusual, for the place was scarcely a
famous show place, and Naomi did not feel like turning it
into a public park. Again, her thoughts must have shown
on her face, for the lady immediately raised her hand and
said, “You see, my husband and I originally built this
place."
Naomi was flabbergasted. So the owners had decided
to have a look at their house after all these years. At the
same time, a sense of accomplishment filled her heart. Now
they could see how much had been done to fix up the
house!
"It’s a beautiful place,” Naomi said and waved her
visitor to come with her.
“Yes, isn’t it?” the lady nodded. “We took great
pride in it, really.”
“Too bad it was in such bad shape when we bought
it, though,” Naomi said succinctly. “We had to put a lot of
work into it to bring it back to its old state.”
* * *
The Lady Of the Garden (California)
553
“Oh, I can see that,” the lady commented and looked
with loving eyes at each and every shrub.
They were on the garden path in the rear now.
“Oh, you’ve put pink roses where the tea roses used
to be,” she suddenly exclaimed. "How thoughtful."
Naomi did not know that the tea roses had been on
that spot for there had been nothing left of them. But she
was glad to hear about it. The visitor now hopped from
flower to flower almost like a bird, inspecting here, caress-
ing a plant there, and pointing out the various rare plants
to Naomi, as if she were the hostess and Naomi the visitor.
“I am so glad you have brought life back into the
house, so glad,” she kept repeating.
It made Naomi even happier with her accomplish-
ment. Too bad her husband couldn’t be here to hear the
lady’s praise. Mr. S. had sometimes grumbled about all the
hard work they had had to put in to make the place over.
“The begonia over there. . .oh, they are still missing,
too bad. But you can fix that sometime, can you not?” she
said and hurried to another part of the garden, as if eager
to take it all in in whatever time Naomi allowed her to visit
with her.
"Wouldn’t you like to have a look at the inside of the
house, too?” Naomi finally suggested. The lady glowed
with happiness at the invitation.
“Yes, I would like that very much. May I?” Naomi
pointed at the garden door and together they stepped inside
the house. The cool atmosphere inside was in sharp con-
trast to the pleasant, but warm air in the garden.
“Over there, that’s where the grandfather clock used
to be. I see you’ve moved it to the den.”
Naomi smiled. They had indeed. The lady surely
must have an excellent memory to remember all that, for
they had not yet entered the den. It never occurred to
Naomi that the visitor knew the clock had been moved
prior to seeing it in the den. So much at home was the little
old lady in what used to be her house, that it seemed
perfectly natural for her to know all sorts of things about
it.
“The table is nice, too, and it fits in so well,” she
now commented. They had brought it with them from
their former home, but it did indeed blend in with the fur-
niture already in the house. The visitor now bounced gaily
to the other end of the long room which they were using as
a day room or parlor.
“That chair,” she suddenly said, and pointed at the
big, oaken chair near the fireplace, and there was a drop in
her voice that seemed to indicate a change in mood.
"What about the chair?” Naomi inquired and
stepped up to it. The visitor seemed to have difficulty in
holding back a tear or two, but then composed herself and
explained —
“My husband died in that chair.”
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
There was a moment of silence as Naomi felt com-
passion for the strange lady.
“He was raking leaves one morning. . .it was a nice
summer day just like today. . .just like today. . .he always
liked to do a little work around the garden before breakfast.
I was still in bed at that hour, but I was awake and I heard
him come into the house when he had finished his chores
in the garden.”
Naomi had not said anything, but her eyes were on
the lady with interest. She noticed how frail and ethereal
she looked, and how old age had really rendered her thin
and somehow tired. And yet, her eyes had an unusual,
bright sparkle in them that belied her frail and aged
appearance. No, this woman was all right, despite her
advanced age. Probably lives alone somewhere in the area,
too, now that her husband is dead, Naomi mused.
“My husband came into the house and a little later I
got up to fix him breakfast as I always did,” the visitor
continued, all the while holding the back of the chair firmly
with one hand.
“When I called out to him to come and get it, I
received no reply. Finally I thought this odd and went into
the room — this room — and there, in this chair, 1 found
him. He was dead.”
The account had given Naomi a strange chill. It sud-
denly occurred to her how little she knew about the former
owners. But the icy hush that had settled over the two
women was broken when the lady let go of the chair and
turned towards the door.
“I’d like another look at the patio, if I may,” she said
and as if she wanted to make up for her seriousness before,
now she chatted interminably and lightly about the pleas-
ures of living in such a house as this.
They had arrived at the rose beds again and the visi-
tor pointed at a particularly fullblown dark red bush
Naomi had fancied all along more than any other rose bush
in the garden.
"They were always my favorites,” the lady said,
almost with a whisper.
“Then let me give you some to take home with you,”
Naomi offered and since the visitor did not protest her
offer, she turned around to reach for the scissors, which
she kept at the foot of the patio.
Her back was not turned more than a second. But
when she looked up at her visitor again, the little lady was
gone.
"That’s rude of her,” Naomi thought immediately.
Why had she suddenly run away? Surely, the offer of roses
from her former home was no reason to be offended. But
then it occurred to Naomi that perhaps the lady’s emotions
at being back in her old home, yet no longer mistress of it,
might have gotten the upper hand with her and she simply
could not face getting roses from her favorite bush by a
stranger.
“I wonder which way she went, though,” Naomi said
out loud. She heard no car drive off, so the lady must have
554
come on foot. Perhaps she could still catch her, for surely
she could not have gotten far. It was plain silly of her not
to take the proffered roses.
Naomi quickly went down the garden path and
looked and then the driveway and looked there but the
woman was not on the property any longer. She then ran
out onto the street and even looked down Elm Street but
the visitor was nowhere in sight.
"But this is impossible,” Naomi thought. "She can’t
just disappear.” So little time had elapsed between their
last words and Naomi’s pursuit that no human being could
have disappeared without trace.
Naomi, still puzzled, went back into the house. The
whole episode took on a certain dreamlike quality after a
while and she forgot about it. Surely, there must be some
explanation for the lady’s quick disappearance, but Naomi
had other things to do than worry about it.
For reasons of her own she felt it best not to tell her
husband about the visit, for she was not at all sure herself
now that she had not dreamed the whole thing. Of course,
she hadn’t. The lady’s footprints were still visible in the
soft soil of the lawn several days after the visit. Such small
feet, too. But somehow she felt reluctant to discuss it fur-
ther. Besides, what of it? A former tenant wants to visit the
old home. Nothing special or newsworthy about that.
* * *
Several weeks later she happened to have tea with the
neighbor across the street. Over tea and cookies, they
talked about the neighborhood and how it changed over all
the years Mrs. G. had lived there. Somehow the visitor
came to mind again, and Naomi felt free to confide in
Mrs. G.
“I had a visitor the other day, only person I’ve talked
to except for you,” Naomi began.
“Oh?” Mrs. G. perked up. "Anyone I might know?”
“Perhaps. . .it was the lady who built our house. . .
who lived there before us.”
Mrs. G. gave Naomi a strange look but said nothing.
“She was a little lady with a faded pink dress and
kind of sparkling eyes, and she told me she and her hus-
band had built the house,” Naomi said, and described what
the visitor had looked like in minute detail. When she had
finished, Mrs. G. shook her head.
"Impossible,” she finally said. “That woman has been
dead for years.”
Naomi laughed somewhat uncertainly.
“But how could she be? I saw her as plainly as I see
you. She looked just like any little old lady does.”
“Maybe it was someone else,” the neighbor said, half
hoping Naomi would readily agree to her suggestion.
“I don’t think so,” Naomi said firmly, however. “You
see she also pointed out the chair her husband died in. He
had been raking leaves before breakfast, and when she
called out to him to come and get it, he didn’t answer, and
then she went into the parlor and there he was, dead in
that big oaken chair.”
Mrs. G. had suddenly become very pale.
“That is absolutely true, I mean, the story how he
died,” she finally managed to say. “But how would you
know about it?”
Naomi shrugged helplessly.
"I didn’t know it until the lady told me about it,” she
repeated.
“Incredible. But you’ve described her to a tee and he
did die the way she said. They’ve both been dead for years
and years, you know.”
Naomi finally realized the implication.
“You mean I’ve been visited by a ghost?”
"Seems that way,” Mrs. G. nodded gravely.
"But she seemed so very real. . .so solid. I’d never
have known she was just a ghost. Why, we even shook
hands and her hand felt fine to me.”
The woman went over the experience once more,
detail for detail. There was one thing that was odd, though.
On recollection, Mrs. S. did recall that she had not heard
the woman enter her garden. She had looked up from her
chores, and there the woman stood, smiling at her from in
front of the roses. No sound of footsteps on either entering
or leaving. Then, too, her intimate knowledge of each and
every plant in the garden.
"She even knew the Latin names of every one of
them,” Naomi pointed out.
“No doubt she did,” Mrs. G. explained, and added,
"she and her hubby were great horticulturists and took
enormous pride in creating a genuine arboretum in their
garden.”
But why had she visited her old home?
After some thought, Naomi felt she knew the answer.
They had just finished restoring the house and garden to
their original appearance and probably the same flavor they
had had in the years when the original owners had the
place. The ghostly lady felt they should be rewarded for
their efforts by an approving gesture from them. Or had
she simply been homesick for her old home?
Naomi was quite sure, now, that she had never really
left it. In her mind’s eye it had never fallen into disrepair
and the lovely roses never ceased to bloom even when the
garden had become a wilderness.
She never discussed the matter again with her neigh-
bor or with anyone else for that matter. Her husband,
whom she later divorced, never knew of the incident, for
Mrs. G. also kept the secret well.
The house may still be there amid the roses, and the
little lady in the faded dress no doubt has a ball skipping
along its paths and enjoying her beloved flowers.
The Lady Of the Garden (California)
555
» 120
The Ghost Car (Kansas)
MARLENE S. IS A thirty -seven -year -old housewife leading a
typical American housewife’s life — which is to say she is
neither given to explorations into the unknown nor particu-
larly involved in anything out of the ordinary. After two
years of college, she found that her married life took up
most, if not all, of her time, but she is still hoping to get
her teacher’s degree after which she would like to teach
English literature on a secondary level. But with four
youngsters — ranging in age from eleven to fifteen — and a
husband around the house, time for study is limited. Her
husband, Mr. S. is a district manager for a shoe company.
Marlene came from an average Nebraska family and
nothing particularly shocking ever happened to her, that is,
until she, her husband and children moved into a house in
Kansas City that will forever be etched in her memories.
The house itself was nothing special: about seven years old,
inexpensive looking, with four bedrooms, built ranch-style
all on one floor.
They moved into this house in 1958 when the chil-
dren were still quite young. A few weeks after they had
settled down in the house and gotten used to the new sur-
roundings. Marlene was lying awake in bed, waiting to fall
asleep. She never could go to sleep right away, and lying
awake trying to sort things out in her mind was her way of
inviting the sandman.
Because the children were still young, ranging in age
from one to five, she had to be always alert for any moves
or noises in case something was wrong. Perhaps this con-
tributed to her light sleep, but at any rate, she was not yet
drowsy at this point and was fully cognizant of what might
transpire around her.
Suddenly, she felt pressure at the foot of the bed as if
one of the children was trying to climb into bed to sleep
with the parents.
Marlene sat up quickly but quietly, leaned toward the
foot of the bed, made a grab, at the same time saying,
"Got you!” — only to find herself grabbing thin air.
She assumed the little culprit had quickly scuttled
back to his own bed, and got up and went across the hall
to the boys’ bedroom. After that, she inspected the girls’
room, but all four were sound asleep, tucked in precisely
the way she had earlier tucked them in and it was clear
that none of her children had caused the pressure at the
foot of her bed.
She decided she had imagined the whole thing and
went back to bed. But the following night, the pressure was
back again and again she grabbed nothing but a fistful of
thin air.
It got to be such a common occurrence she quit
checking on the children whether or not they were doing it.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
556
She then decided that it had to be caused by her husband’s
moving his foot in a certain way. Somehow she reasoned
that his moves gave the feeling the covers were drawn up
against her foot, creating the impression of an outside pres-
sure. Far-fetched though this explanation was, she accepted
it gladly. But she kept her foot against his for several
nights after this to find out what move of his caused all
this to happen.
As her husband slept, she observed, but it got her
nowhere: the pressure was still present, but there was no
connection with her husband’s foot or his movements.
She had hardly accepted the strange pressure in her
bed when still another phenomenon caused her to wonder
about the house. Near the doorway to the bedroom she
heard someone breathe deeply and heavily when there was
no one but her around. When this recurred several times
she decided to tell her husband about it. He shook his head
and said he had heard nothing. She did not tell him about
the pressure on the bed, thinking it just too absurd to dis-
cuss. That night she heard the crackling of what sounded
like someone stepping on cellophane just before she felt the
pressure at the foot of the bed again.
She knew she had left a cellophane bag at the foot of
the bed on the floor and she was sure one of her children
had come out and stepped on it. Again she grabbed but
again her hands held only air and the children were all
soundly asleep in the respective rooms.
By now a little bit of fear crept into her mind when
she came to realize that there wasn’t really any rational
explanation for the strange noises and especially the heavy
breathing.
But she pulled her knees up at night and thus
avoided coming in contact with whatever was causing the
pressure at the foot of the bed.
For a while, nothing untoward happened, and the
family was busy getting on with the problems of daily liv-
ing. The strange occurrences drifted into the background
for a while.
Then one night, several weeks later, Marlene was
awakened from sleep by a most incredible sound. It was as
if a giant vat of water was being poured on the house. The
swooshing sound of water cascading down upon them
reverberated for several seconds afterward. Her immediate
thought, being just awakened from deep sleep, was a logi-
cal one — one of the kids had not been able to make it to
the bathroom and what she was hearing was the result! But
no: they were all fast asleep in their rooms.
The next morning, she examined the floor. In the
boys’ room she found a strange liquid spot. It was like
water, except much thicker and did not ooze out as water
would, but lay there on the floor, perfectly cohesive and
round. It had neither odor nor color and when she removed
it with tissue paper, it left no trace. Her husband explained
that probably the liquid had oozed up from the ground or
dropped from the ceiling but her logical mind refused to
accept what was obviously not likely.
There was absolutely no rational explanation for
either the swooshing noise or the presence of the thick liq-
uid in the boys’ room. Several months afterward, a similar
spot appeared in the girls’ room. Since they had no animals
in the house, the matter remained a puzzle.
The house was so new that any thoughts of ghosts
were far from Marlene’s mind. But strange things began to
occur. One day, a car securely parked across from the
house on a slanting driveway, came downhill and crashed
into the boys’ bedroom. Luckily no one was hurt.
Not much later, another car from across the street
did the same thing, only this time the car went into the
girls’ room. The owner swore he had put the car into park-
ing position on leaving it. Just as he got out, he saw his car
roll down the driveway by itself.
This wasn’t too reassuring to Marlene. Was some
unknown force trying to “get” them? Was there a connec-
tion between the spots of liquid in the childrens’ bedrooms
and the two car crashes?
Somehow the atmosphere in the house was different
now from the time they had first moved in. It seemed
heavy, as if some sort of tragic pressure was weighing upon
it. Her husband did not notice anything unusual, or if he
did, he did not discuss it with her. But to her there was an
ominous presence in the house and she didn’t like it.
One night her husband was working late. She had
gone to bed and had just turned the lights out. No sooner
had she lain down, than she began to hear the heavy
breathing again. Next came the pressure at the foot of the
bed. With the breathing so close to her, she was absolutely
terrified and did not dare move. Whatever it was, it was
very near and she realized now that all her reasoning had
not explained a thing. Someone other than herself shared her
bed and that someone was not friendly .
But what was she to do? The children were asleep in
their beds and her husband was at work. She decided that
under the circumstances the best thing was to play possum.
She lay there as if asleep, barely breathing and not moving
a muscle.
She did not know how much time had passed when
she heard the car drive up to their door. The headlights
shone through the bedroom window and she heard the
motor being turned off.
“Thank God, Don is home,” she managed to say
under her breath.
Even though the presence was still close by, she
somehow managed to get enough courage to jump out of
bed and race to the window. Turning on the lights on the
way to the living room as she went by, she reached the
window and looked out to the driveway.
Instead of seeing her husband and the family car, she
was greeted by the blackness of the night. Nothing. No
car.
"This is the last straw!” she almost cried and ran
back to her bed. Pulling the covers over her she lay there
in terror, not knowing what to do next. When her husband
finally returned after what seemed hours upon hours, she
managed to sob out her story.
“There, there,” he said, soothingly, taking her head
in his hands. “You’ve been having nightmares.”
“He doesn’t believe a word I’ve said,” she thought,
between sobs, but she preferred being consoled by a non-
believer than not being consoled at all.
The next few weeks passed somehow. They had
requested a transfer to another location. When it came, she
was a new person. The prospect of moving into another
house where nothing would disturb her sleep was just too
wonderful.
Her husband had rented a big, old mansion in
Wichita, where they were transferred by the company, and
it was filled with antiques and fine furniture of a bygone
era.
When Marlene first saw the house, she thought, “Oh
my God, if any house ought to be haunted, this looks like
one!”
But it wasn’t and the house in Wichita proved as
peaceful and serene as a house can be, if it isn’t inhabited
by a restless ghost.
The house was full of memories of its past fifty years
but none of them intruded upon her and she lived a happy,
relaxed life now. The experiences in Kansas receded into
her memory and she was sure now that it had all been the
fault of the house and not something connected with her —
least of all, her imagination, for she knew, no matter what
her husband had said, that she had seen and heard that
ghost car drive up to the house.
She sometimes wonders who the new owners of that
house in Kansas are and whether they can hear the heavy
breathing the way she did. But then she realizes that it was
her own innate psychic ability that allowed the phenomena
to manifest themselves when they did. Another person not
so endowed might conceivably not feel anything at all.
What was the horrible accident that was being reen-
acted— from the sound of the water being poured down, to
the rushing up of the ghost car? And whose heavy breath-
ing was disturbing her nights?
Many times her curiosity almost made her inquire
but then she decided to let sleeping dogs lie. But in later
years while living in California, her psychic ability devel-
oped further until she was able to hear and see the dead as
clearly and casually as she could commune with the living.
It frightened her and she thought at first she was having
waking nightmares. All through the night she would be
aware of a room full of people while at the same time being
able to sleep on. Her observation was on several levels at
the same time, as if she had been turned into a radio
receiver with several bands.
Clearly, she did not want any of this, least of all the
heavy breathing she started to hear again after they had
moved to California.
The Ghost Car (Kansas)
557
But then it could be the breathing of another restless
soul, she decided, and not necessarily something or some-
one she had brought with her from Kansas. She read as
much as she could now on the subject of ESP, and tried her
hand at automatic writing. To her surprise, her late father
and her grandparents wrote to her through her own hand.
She noticed that the various messages were in differ-
ent hands and quite clearly differed from her own. Yet her
logical mind told her this might all come from her own
subconscious mind and she began to reject it. As she
closed herself off from the messages, they dwindled away
until she no longer received them.
This she regretted, for the presence of her father
around her to continue the link of a lifetime and perhaps
protect her from the incursions of unwanted entities of
both worlds, was welcome and reassuring.
By now she knew of her psychic powers and had
learned to live with them, but also to close the psychic
door when necessary.
* * *
Meanwhile the house in Kansas still stands and very
few tenants stay for long.
# 121
The Ghostly Monks of Aetna Springs
“If YOU LIKE GOLF, you’ll enjoy our nine-hole golf
course,” says the brochure put out by the Aetna Springs,
California, resort people. They have a really fine self-
contained vacationland going there. People live in comfort-
able cabins, children have their own playground, adults can
play whatever games they please, there are tennis, swim-
ming, fishing, riding, dancing, horseshoe pitching, hunting,
shuffleboarding, mineral bathing — the springs — and last,
but certainly not least, there is that lovely golf course
stretching for several miles on the other side of the only
road leading up to the place. With all the facilities on one
side of the road, the golf course looks like a million miles
from nowhere. I don't know if it pleases the guests, but it
is fine with the ghosts. For I did not come up eighty -five
miles north of San Francisco to admire the scenery, of
which there is plenty to admire.
As the road from Napa gradually enters the hills, you
get the feeling of being in a world that really knows little
of what goes on outside. The fertile Napa Valley and its
colorful vineyards soon give way to a winding road and
before you know it you’re deep in the woods. Winding
higher and higher, the road leads past scattered human
habitation into the Pope Valley. Here I found out that
there was a mineral spring with health properties at the far
end of the golf course.
In the old days, such a well would naturally be the
center of any settlement, but today the water is no longer
commercially bottled. You can get as much as you want for
free at the resort, though.
Incidentally there are practically no other houses or
people within miles of Aetna Springs. The nearest village is
a good twenty minutes’ ride away over rough roads. This is
the real back country, and it is a good thing California
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
knows no snow, for I wouldn’t want to tackle those roads
when they are slushy.
As I said before, we had not come up all that way for
the mineral water. Bill Wynn, a young engineer from San
Francisco, was driving us in my friend Lori Clerf's car.
Lori is a social worker and by “us" I mean, of course, my
wife Catherine and Sybil Leek. Sybil did not have the
faintest idea why we were here. She honestly thought it was
an excursion for the sheer joy of it, but then she knows me
well and suspected an ulterior motive, which indeed was
not long in coming.
My interest in this far-off spot started in 1965 when I
met Dr. Andrew von Salza for the first time. He is a
famous rejuvenation specialist and about as down-to-earth
a man as you can find. Being a physician of course made
him even more skeptical about anything smacking of the
occult. It was therefore with considerable disbelief, even
disdain, that he discovered a talent he had not bargained
for: he was a photographic medium with rare abilities.
It began in 1963, when a friend, the widow of
another doctor by the name of Benjamin Sweetland, asked
him to photograph her. She knew von Salza was a camera
bug and she wanted to have a portrait. Imagine their sur-
prise when the face of the late Dr. Sweetland appeared on a
lampshade in the room! There was no double exposure or
accidental second picture. Dr. von Salza had used ordinary
black and white film in his Leica.
The doctor’s curiosity was aroused and his naturally
inquiring mind was now stimulated by something he did
not understand and, furthermore, did not really believe.
But he came back with a color camera, also a Leica, and
took some pictures of Mrs. Sweetland. One out of twenty
produced an image of her late husband against the sky.
The experience with Mrs. Sweetland was soon fol-
lowed by another event.
A patient and friend of the doctor’s, Mrs. Pierson,
had been discussing her daughter with Andrew in her San
Francisco apartment. The girl had recently committed
suicide.
558
Suddenly Andrew felt impelled to reach for his cam-
era. There was little light in the room but he felt he
wanted to finish the roll of film he had. For no logical rea-
son, he photographed the bare wall of the room. On it,
when the film was developed, there appeared the likeness
of the dead girl von Salza had never met!
While he was still debating with himself what this
strange talent of his might be, he started to take an interest
in spiritualism. This was more out of curiosity than for any
partisan reasons.
He met some of the professional mediums in the Bay
area, and some who were not making their living from this
pursuit but who were nevertheless of a standard the doctor
could accept as respectable.
Among them was Evelyn Nielsen, with whom von
Salza later shared a number of seance experiences and who
apparently became a “battery” for his psychic picture tak-
ing, for a lot of so-called “extras,” pictures of people
known to be dead, have appeared on von Salza ’s pictures,
especially when Miss Nielsen was with him.
I have examined these photographs and am satisfied
that fraud is out of the question for a number of reasons,
chiefly technical, since most of them were taken with
Polaroid cameras and developed on the spot before compe-
tent witnesses, including myself.
One day in New York City, Mrs. Pierson, who had
been intrigued by the psychic world for a number of years,
took Andrew with her when she visited the famed clairvoy-
ant Carolyn Chapman.
Andrew had never heard of the lady, since he had
never been interested in mediums. Mrs. Pierson had with
her a Polaroid color camera. Andrew offered to take some
snapshots of Mrs. Chapman, the medium, as souvenirs.
Imagine everybody’s surprise when Mrs. Chapman’s
grandfather appeared on one of the pictures. Needless to
say, Dr. von Salza had no knowledge of what the old man
looked like nor had he access to any of his photographs,
since he did not know where he was going that afternoon
in New York.
A friend of Andrew’s by the name of Dr. Logan
accompanied him, Mrs. Pierson, and Evelyn Nielsen to
Mount Rushmore, where the group photographed the
famous monument of America’s greatest Presidents. To
their utter amazement, there was another face in the
picture — Kennedy’s!
Dr. Logan remained skeptical, so it was arranged that
he should come to Andrew’s house in San Francisco for an
experiment in which he was to bring his own film.
First, he took some pictures with von Salza 's camera
and nothing special happened. Then von Salza tried
Logan’s camera and still there were no results. But when
Dr. Logan took a picture of a corner in von Salza ’s apart-
ment, using Andrew’s camera, the result was different: on
the Polaroid photograph there appeared in front of an
“empty” wall a woman with a hand stretched out toward
him. As Andrew von Salza reports it, the other doctor
turned white — that woman had died only that very morn-
ing on his operating table!
But the reason for our somewhat strenuous trip to
Aetna Springs had its origin in another visit paid the place
in 1963 by Andrew van Salza. At that time, he took two
pictures with the stereo camera owned by a Mr. Heibel,
manager of the resort.
As soon as the pictures were developed, they were in
for a big surprise. His friend’s exposures showed the mag-
nificent golf course and nothing more. But Andrew's pic-
tures, taken at the same time, clearly had two rows of monks
on them. There were perhaps eight or ten monks wearing
white robes, with shaven heads, carrying lighted candles in
their outstretched hands. Around them, especially around
their heads, were flame-like emanations.
There was no doubt about it, for I have the pictures
before me — these are the photographs, in color, of monks
who died in flames — unless the fiery areas represent life
energy. They were brightest around the upper parts of the
bodies. On one of the pictures, the monks walk to the
right, on the other, to the left, but in both exposures one
can clearly distinguish their ascetic hollow-eyed faces — as if
they had suffered terribly.
The pictures were not only fascinating, they were
upsetting, even to me, and I have often been successful in
psychic photography. Here we had a scientific document of
the first order.
I wanted to know more about these monks, and the
only way to find out was to go up to Napa County. That is
why we were winding our way through the Pope Valley
that warm October afternoon.
We were still many miles away from Aetna Springs
when Sybil took my hand and said: "The place you’re tak-
ing me is a place where a small group of people must have
gone for sanctuary, for survival, and there is some religious
element present."
“What happened there?”
“They were completely wiped out.”
“What sort of people were they, and who wiped
them out?”
"I don’t know why, but the word ‘Anti-Popery’
comes tome. Also a name, Hi....”
A little later, she felt the influence more strongly.
“I have a feeling of people crossing water, not native
to California. A Huguenot influence?”
We were passing a sign on the road reading “Red Sil-
ver Mines” and Sybil remarked she had been impressed
with treasures of precious metals and the troubles that
come with them.
We had now arrived at the resort. For fifteen minutes
we walked around it until finally we encountered a surly
caretaker, who directed us to the golf course. We drove as
far onto it as we could, then we left the car behind and
walked out onto the lawn. It was a wide open area, yet
The Ghostly Monks of Aetna Springs
559
The ghostly monks of Aetna Springs,
California
Sybil instantly took on a harrowed look as if she felt closed
in.
“Torture. . .crucifixion and fire. . .” she mumbled,
somewhat shaken. “Why do we have to go through it?”
I insisted. There was no other way to find out if there
was anything ghostly there.
“There is a French Protestant Huguenot influence
here. . .” she added, “but it does not seem to make sense.
Religion and anti -religion. The bench over there by the
trees is the center of activity. . .some wiping out took place
there, I should think. . .crosses. . .square crosses, red, blood
crosses. ...”
“What nationality are they, these people?”
"Conquistadores.
"Who were the victims?”
“I’m trying to get just one word fixed. . . H-I... I
can’t get the rest. . .it has meaning to this spot. . . many
presences here....”
“How many?”
“Nine.”
“How are they dressed?”
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
"Like a woman’s dress on a man. . .skirted dress.”
"Color?”
“Brown.”
“Do they have anything in their hands or doing any-
thing, any action?”
“They have a thing around their head. . .like the Ku
Klux Klan. . .can’t see their faces. . .light. . .fire light. . .fire
is very important. ...”
When I asked her to look closer, she broke into tears.
“No, no,” she begged off, her fists clenched, tears
streaming down her cheeks. I had never seen her emotion-
ally involved that much in a haunting.
“What do you feel?” I asked softly. She was almost
in trance now.
“Hate. . .” she answered with a shaky voice choked
with tears, "to be found here, secretly, no escape. . .from the
Popishpeople...no faces
“Did they perish in this spot?” 1 asked.
Almost inaudibly Sybil’s voice replied: “Yes. . ..”
“Are the people, these nine, still here?”
“Have to be. . .Justice for their lives. .
“Who has hurt them?”
“Hieronymus.” There was the “Hi” she had tried to
bring out before.
560
“Who’s Hieronymus?”
“The leader of the Popish people.”
“What did he do to them?”
"He burned them.. .useless.”
“Who were they?”
“They took the silver. ...”
"I intoned some words of compassion and asked the
nine ghosts to join their brothers since the ancient wrong
done them no longer mattered.
“Pray for us,” Sybil muttered. “Passed through the
fire, crosses in hand... their prayers....”
Sybil spoke the words of a prayer in which I joined.
Her breath came heavily as if she were deeply moved. A
moment later the spell broke and she came out of it. She
seemed bewildered and at first had no recollection where
she was.
“Must go. . .” she said and headed for the car without
looking back.
It was some time before we could get her to talk
again, a long way from the lonely golf course gradually
sinking into the October night.
Sybil was herself again and she remembered nothing
of the previous hour. But for us, who had stood by her
when the ghostly monks told their story, as far as they
were able to, not a word was forgotten. If recollection
should ever dim, I had only to look at the photographs
again that had captured the agony in which these monks
had been frozen on the spot of their fiery deaths.
I took a motion picture film of the area but it showed
nothing unusual, and my camera, which sometimes does
yield ghost pictures, was unfortunately empty when I took
some exposures. I thought I had film in it but later discov-
ered I had forgotten to load it. . .or had the hand of fate
stayed my efforts?
Nobody at Aetna Springs had ever heard of ghosts or
monks on the spot. So the search for corroboration had to
be started back home.
At the Hispanic Society in New York, books about
California are available only for the period during which
that land was Spanish, although they do have some general
histories as well.
In one of these, Irving Richman’s California under
Spain and Mexico, I was referred to a passage about the
relationship between Native American populations and
their Spanish conquerors that seemed to hold a clue to our
puzzle.
The specific passage referred to conditions in Santo
Domingo, but it was part of the overall struggle then going
on between two factions among the Spanish -American
clergy. The conquistadores, as we all know, treated the
native population only slightly less cruelly than Hitler’s
Nazis treated subjugated people during World War II.
Their methods of torture had not yet reached such
infernal effectiveness in the sixteenth century, but their
intentions were just as evil. We read of Indians being put to
death at the whim of the colonists, of children thrown to
the dogs, of rigid suppression of all opposition, both politi-
cal and spiritual, to the ruling powers.
Northern California, especially the area above San
Francisco, must have been the most remote part of the
Spanish world imaginable, and yet outposts existed beyond
the well-known missions and their sub-posts.
One of these might have occupied the site of that golf
course near the springs. Thus, whatever transpired in the
colonial empire of Spain would eventually have found its
way, albeit belatedly, to the backwoods also, perhaps find-
ing conditions there that could not be tolerated from the
point of view of the government.
The main bone of contention at that time, the first
half of the sixteenth century, was the treatment and status
of the Native Americans. Although without political voice
or even the slightest power, the Indians had some friends
at court. Strangely enough, the protectors of the hapless
natives turned out to be the Dominican friars — the very
same Dominicans who were most efficient and active in the
Spanish Inquisition at home!
Whether because of this, or for political expendiency,
the white-robed Dominicans opposed the brown-robed
Franciscans in the matter of the Indians: to the Domini-
cans, the Indians were fellow human beings deserving
every consideration and humane treatment. To the Francis-
cans, they were clearly none of these, even after they had
been given the sacraments of Christianity!
And to the Spanish landowners, the Indians were
cheap labor, slaves that could not possibly be allowed any
human rights. Thus we had, circa 1530, a condition in
some ways paralleling the conditions leading up to the War
Between the States in 1861.
Here then is the passage referred to, from Sir A.
Helps' The Spanish Conquests in America, London 1900,
volume I, page 179 et seq.
The Fathers (Jeronimite ) asked the opinions of the
official persons and also of the Franciscans and Domini-
cans, touching the liberty of the Indians. It was very
clear beforehand what the answers would be. The offi-
cial persons and the Franciscans pronounced against the
Indians, and the Dominicans in their favor.
The Jeronimite Fathers. . .and Sybil had insisted on a
name, so important to this haunting: Hieronymus. . .Latin
for Jerome!
How could any of us have known of such an obscure
ecclesiastical term? It took me several days of research, and
plain luck, to find it at all.
The Ghostly Monks of Aetna Springs
561
» 122
Who Landed First in America?
To MANY PEOPLE, perhaps to the majority of my readers,
the question posed in the title of this chapter may seem
odd. Don’t we know that it was Christopher Columbus?
Can’t every schoolchild tell us that it happened in 1492
and that he landed on what is today known as the island of
San Salvador?
Well, he did do that, of course, and as late as 1956
an American, Ruth Wolper, put a simple white cross at
Long Bay, San Salvador, to mark the spot where he
stepped on American soil.
Still, the question remains: Was Columbus really the
first to discover America and establish contact between the
“Old” and the “New” Worlds?
If you want to be technical, there never was a time
when some sort of contact between the Old World and the
New World did not exist. Over the “land bridge,” Siberia
to Alaska, some people came as far back as the prehistoric
period. The Eskimo population of North America is of
Asian origin. The American Indian, if not Asian, is cer-
tainly related to the Mongol race and must have come to
the Americas at an even earlier time, perhaps at a time
when the land masses of Eurasia and North America were
even closer than they are today. For we know that the con-
tinents have drifted apart over the centuries, and we sus-
pect also that large chunks of land that are not now visible
may have once been above water.
But what about the people of Western Europe? If
Columbus was not the first to set sail for the New World,
who then did?
Although any patriotic Italian-American may shudder
at the consequences, especially on Columbus Day, the evi-
dence of prior contact by Europeans with the American
continent is pretty strong. It does not take an iota away
from Columbus’ courageous trip, but it adds to the lore of
seafaring men and the lure of the riches across the ocean.
Perhaps the question as to who landed first on Amer-
ican soil is less vital than who will land last — but the thrill
of discovery does have a certain attraction for most people,
and so it may matter. It has been an American trait ever
since to be first, or best, in everything, if possible.
Nothing in science is so well established that it can-
not yield to new evidence. The Pilgrims are generally con-
sidered to have been the first permanent settlers in this
country, landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620. But there is
new evidence that the Portuguese got here earlier — in 1511,
to be exact. Dighton Rock, in Berkley, Massachusetts,
bears markings in Portuguese consisting of crosses, a date,
1511, and the name Miguel Cortereal. Artifacts of
sixteenth-century Portuguese manufacture have been found
at the site. Until a Rhode Island medical doctor by the
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
name of Manuel da Silva, whose sideline is archaeology,
put two and two together, this fact had been completely
ignored by “the establishment” in science. And at nearby
Newport, Rhode Island, there is a stone tower similar to
Portuguese churches of the sixteenth century. Cannon and
swords of Portuguese origin have been dated pretty exactly,
and we know from their state of preservation approximately
how long they have been in the ground. They antedate the
Pilgrims and the trip of the Mayflower by a considerable
span.
But we are dealing here not with the first settlement
in America but with the discovery itself. How far back did
civilized man reach America from Europe? Did the Phoeni-
cians, those great sailors of antiquity, get this far? To date,
we have not found any evidence that they did. But we do
know that they reached Britain. Considering the type of
boat these pre-Christian people used, the voyage from Asia
Minor through the Mediterranean and the Straits of
Gibraltar and then along the French coast and finally
through the treacherous Straits of Dover must have called
for great nautical skill and daring. Phoenician settlements
certainly existed in England. Perhaps offshoots of these
early Britons might have ventured across the Atlantic on a
further exploration. I am not saying that they did, but if
some day Phoenician relics are unearthed in North Amer-
ica, I can only hope that the established historians will not
immediately yell “fraud" and step on the traces instead of
investigating open-mindedly.
Another great race of seafaring explorers whom we
must reckon with are the Norsemen who plowed the oceans
some two thousand years after the Phoenicians.
From their homes on the barren shores of Scandi-
navia they sailed along the coasts of Western Europe to
terrorize the people of France and eventually to establish a
duchy of their own in that part of France which to this day
is known as Normandy for the Normans or Norsemen who
once ruled there and who from there went on to rule all of
England — a country which the Vikings used to raid long
before there was a William the Conqueror. Then they
sailed on to raid Ireland and to establish Viking kingdoms
in that country, and still farther on to distant Iceland.
Their consummate skill with boats and their
advanced understanding of astronomy and meteorology, as
well as their incredible fighting power, combined to make
them the great nautical adventurers of the early Middle
Ages.
These men had lots of wood, so they built ships, or
better, longboats, capable of riding even the worst seas. At
one point traces of their domination existed in such divers
places as Scandinavia, the British Isles, France, southern
Italy, and Sicily.
What concerns us here, however, is mainly their
exploits at seafaring and discovery in a westerly direction
beyond Iceland. It was Iceland, which has the world’s old-
est Parliament, the Althing, that also provided us with the
earliest written accounts concerning the exploration of
562
America. Especially is The Saga of Eric the Red explicit in
the account of one Eric, known as the Red from his beard,
who lived in Iceland, which was then part of the Viking
domain.
In the year 985, he quarreled with his kinsmen and
was forced to leave Iceland. Banished for a three-year term,
he explored the western coast of Greenland in search of
new lands. It was he who gave the icy territory its name,
hoping that it might attract immigrants. Greenland is con-
sidered part of the North American continent, but to Eric
it was merely another island worth investigating. He
thought that the land he had looked over held promise, and
later brought his wife Thjodhild and their young son Leif
over to Greenland, along with twenty-five ships of men
and supplies. The majority of these Norsemen settled at
the southern tip of Greenland in an area they called the
Eastern Settlement. Here Eric operated a farm which he
called Brattahlid or "steep slope." Some of the Norsemen,
however, sailed on farther and founded another place they
called the Western Settlement.
As his son Leif grew up, Eric sent him to Trondhjem
to spend a year at Court. At that time Leif became a
Christian, although Eric refused to accept the new religion
to his dying day. But Leif impressed the King so strongly
that Olaf appointed him his commissioner to preach Chris-
tianity in Greenland. To make sure he did his best, he sent
along a Benedictine monk. The year was 1000 A.D. Leif
Ericsson did what was expected of him, and Greenland
became Christianized.
Sometime thereafter occurred the event that had such
tremendous bearing on American history.
An Icelandic trader returning home from Norway
was blown far off his course by a storm and finally, instead
of getting to Iceland, somehow managed to make landfall
at Brattahlid in Greenland. He was welcomed then by Leif,
the son of Eric, and told his host that, while struggling
with the sea far to the west of Greenland, he had sighted
land still farther west, where no land was supposed to be —
a land on which he had not dared to step ashore.
Now, this evidently has just the kind of challenge
that would spur a man like Leif Ericsson to action. He
rigged his ship and gathered a crew and sailed westward to
see if, indeed, there was land there.
There was land, and Leif went ashore with his men,
and found that wild grapes were growing there and so — the
saga tells us — Leif named it Vinland.
The sagas report on this in quite considerable detail.
They also tell us of several other expeditions from Green-
land to Vinland following Leif’s first discovery, which took
place about the year 1000. And yet, until recently, these
reports were considered legends or at least tradition open to
question, for not every word of ancient sagas can be trusted
as being accurate, although in my opinion a great deal
more is than “establishment” scholars want to admit.
* * *
Follins Pond, Cape Cod— where the Vikings
first landed
Then in 1967 a group of Eskimos living at the side of
Brattahlid started to excavate for the foundations for a new
school. To their surprise, and the Danish Archaeological
Society's delight, they came upon a beautifully preserved
graveyard, filled with the remains of dozens of people. In
addition, the foundations of an eleventh-century church
and a nearby farmhouse were also found, exactly as the
saga had described them. Life magazine published a brief
account of these exciting discoveries, and all at once the
reputation of Leif Ericsson as a real-life personality was
reestablished after long years of languishing in semi-
legendary domains.
It is known now for sure that the Greenland colonies
established by Eric lasted five centuries, but somehow they
disappeared around 1 500 and the land was left to the Eski-
mos. Only two hundred years later did the Scandinavians
recolonize the vast island.
The most remarkable part of the sagas, however, is
not the exploration of Greenland but the discovery and
subsequent colonization of what the Vikings called Vin-
land. And, although few scholars will deny that the Vin-
land voyage did indeed take place, there has always been
considerable discussion about its location.
There have been strange digs and even stranger find-
ings in various parts of the United States and Canada, all
of which tended to confuse the strait-laced archaeologists to
the point where, until recently, the entire question of a
Viking discovery of America was relegated to the "maybe”
category.
Eventually, however, discoveries of importance came
to light that could no longer be ignored, and once again the
topic of Leif Ericsson’s eleventh-century voyage to Amer-
Who Landed First in America?
563
ica became a popular subject for discussion, even among
nonarchaeologists .
* * *
There were, until the present experiment was under-
taken, only two ways to prove an event in history: written
contemporary testimony, or artifacts that can be securely
tied to specific places, periods, or historical processes. Even
with the two “ordinary” methods, Leif Ericsson did not do
badly. The saga of Eric the Red and his son Leif Ericsson
is a historical document of considerable merit. It is factual
and very meticulous in its account of the voyages and of
the locations of the settlements. About twenty-five years
ago it was fashionable to shrug off such ancient documents
or stories as fictional or, at best, distorted and embroidered
accounts of events. Certainly this holds true on occasion.
One of the most notable examples of such transposition is
the story of King Arthur, who changed from a real-life
sixth-century post-Roman petty king to a glamorous
twelfth-century chevalier-king. But the discovery of the
Dead Sea scrolls gave scholars new food for thought. They,
and the recent excavations at Masada, King Herod’s
fortress, proved that at least some very ancient historical
accounts were correct. The thrill of rediscovering land-
marks or buildings mentioned in contemporary accounts,
and covered up by the centuries, is a feeling only an
archaeologist can fully appreciate. The unbiased scholar
should be able to find his way through the maze of such
source material especially if he is aided by field work. By
field work I mean excavations in areas suspected of harbor-
ing buildings or artifacts of the period and people involved.
In addition, there are the chance finds which supplement
the methodical digs. The trouble with chance finds is that
they are not always reported immediately so that competent
personnel can investigate the circumstances under which
these objects show up. Thus it is easy for latter-day experts
to denounce some pretty authentic relics as false, and only
later, calm reappraisal puts these relics in a deserved posi-
tion of prominence.
In the case of the Vikings, there had been a strong
disposition on the part of the "establishment” scholars to
look down on the Viking sagas, to begin with, partly on
psychological grounds: How could the primitive Norsemen
manage not only to cross the stormy Atlantic in their little
boats, but even manage to penetrate the American conti-
nental wilderness in the face of hostile Indians and
unfriendly natural conditions? How did the Egyptians get
those heavy boulders onto their pyramids without modern
machinery? We don’t know — at least "officially” — but the
Egyptians sure did, because the stones are up there for
everybody to see.
Probability calculations are not always reliable in
dealing with past events. Like the lemmings, the inveterate
Norse sailors had a strong inner drive to seek new lands
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
beyond the seas. This drive might have helped them over-
come seemingly impossible obstacles. Men have crossed the
Atlantic in tiny boats even in recent times, against all odds
of survival, but they did it successfully. In recent years the
feeling among scholars has tended to accept the Vinland
crossings as genuine, and concentrate their search on the
location of that elusive piece of land the Vikings called
Vinland.
* * *
It is here that one must consider the physical evi-
dence of Viking presences in America, for there is some
evidence in the form of buildings, graves, stones, and arti-
facts of Norse origin that cannot be ignored.
* * *
In 1948 a retired engineer and navigator named
Arlington Mallery discovered some ruins of a Norse settle-
ment on the northern tip of Newfoundland, and promptly
concluded that this was Vinland. In 1951, in a book called
Lost America, Mallery reported his investigations of Norse
traces not only in Newfoundland, but also in Ohio, Rhode
Island, and Virginia. Because Mr. Mallery was not an
“establishment” scholar with an impressive institution
behind him, his discoveries, though carefully documented,
drew little attention in the press and with the public at the
time.
What exactly did Mallery find?
At a place called Sop’s Island in northern Newfound-
land, he discovered the remnants of four houses of the
Viking type and period. In and around them he found
many iron tools, nails, boat rivets, chisels, and axes of the
typically Norse design completely alien to the native popu-
lation of the island. William D. Conner, an Ohio journalist
who has been interested in the subject of Vinland for a
long time, detailed Mallery ’s struggle for evidence in an
article in Fate magazine of November 1967. According to
Conner, Mallery ’s main deficiency was that the radiocarbon
dating process now commonly used to date artifacts could
not have been used by Mallery, because it had not yet been
invented at the time. Nevertheless, Mallery compared the
iron implements found in Newfoundland with tools of
Scandinavian origin and found them to be identical. Being
primarily a metallurgical engineer and not an archaeologist,
Mallery had the iron tools tested from the former point of
view. These tests, made by independent laboratories,
showed that the iron artifacts of Newfoundland were made
in the same way and at the same time as definitely identi-
fied Norse tools discovered in Greenland and Denmark.
But Mallery was not satisfied with his Newfoundland
discoveries. He had always felt that the Vikings had spread
out from their initial landing sites to other areas along the
coast and even farther inland. Mallery was an expert car-
tographer, and his reading of three ancient Icelandic maps
helped him establish his theory of Viking landings in
North America.
564
The first of these three, the Stephansson map, shows
a large peninsula along the coast of Labrador, then called
Skralingeland. This peninsula on the map is labeled
Promontorium Winlandiae, promontory ofVinland.
Mallery felt this referred to the northern peninsula of New-
foundland rather than Labrador. The second map was
drawn by one Christian Friseo in 1 605 and is a copy of a
much older map available to him at the time. The third of
the maps mentioned by Mallery and Conner is the Thord-
sen map, also of Icelandic origin, dating from the sixteenth
century. It shows an area of Canada opposite Newfound-
land, and refers to "Vinland the Good.”
Additional support for Viking presences in North
America came from excavations and discoveries made by
Dr. Junius Bird, curator of archaeology at the American
Museum of Natural History. These finds were made in
northern Labrador in the Nain-Hopedale area, and con-
sisted of iron nails, boat spikes, clinch rivets, and stone
house remains. The stone houses, in Mallery 's view, were
also of Norse origin and not built by the local Eskimos, as
some had thought. The construction of the twelve houses
found was much too sophisticated to have been native,
Mallery argued. But Labrador had been a way station to
the Newfoundland site of a Viking camp, and it did not
seem to be quite so outlandish to suggest that Vikings did
indeed visit this region.
However, Mallery also discovered evidence of Norse
penetration in Virginia and Ohio, consisting of iron spikes
and other iron artifacts excavated in rural areas. After com-
paring these finds with Scandinavian originals of the period
in question, Mallery came to the conclusion that they were
indeed of Viking origin.
But Mallery 's discoveries were not generally accepted,
and it remained for another investigator to rediscover much
of Mallery ’s evidence all over again, in 1963. This was Dr.
Helge Ingstad of Norway, who had spent three years exca-
vating in Newfoundland. Dr. Ingstad found the remains of
a Viking settlement, consisting of houses and even an
entire iron smelter, and because he was able to utilize the
new radiocarbon dating process, his discoveries were widely
publicized. According to Ingstad, the Vikings founded their
settlement about 1000 A.D., giving dear old Columbus a
Chris-come-lately status. But in one important detail
Ingstad differed with Mallery ’s findings: He placed the ini-
tial Viking camp at L’Anse au Meadow, fifteen miles far-
ther north than Mallery 's site on Sop’s Island.
Then Yale University jolted the traditionalists even
more by announcing that an old pre-Columbian map of the
area it had was authentic, and that it clearly showed Viking
sites in Newfoundland.
Now the Viking saga refers to Leif’s initial camp as
having been in wooded hills on a long lake, that a river
flowed into or through this lake, and that there was an
island opposite the coast of the promontory they had
landed on. There have been considerable geological changes
in North America since the eleventh century, of course, the
most important one, from our point of view, being the
change in the level of the ocean. It is estimated that the
water receded about four feet every hundred years, and
thus what may have been water in the eleventh century
would be dry land by now. This is important to keep in
mind, as we shall presently see when our own investigation
into the Viking sites gets under way.
While Ingstad did find Norse remains at the site he
felt was Leif Ericsson’s first American camp, Mallery did
not do as well at the site he had picked for the encamp-
ment, Pistolet Bay, fifteen miles to the south. His choice
was based solely on his interpretation of the Viking sagas
and on the old maps. The Yale map, discovered by a rare
book dealer in Europe and studied at the university for
eight long years before their decision was made, shows an
island with two large inlets, which Yale thinks represent
the Hudson Strait and the Belle Isle Strait. The map bears
the inscription in Latin, "Island ofVinland, discovered by
Bjarni and Leif in company.” The map was made by a
Swiss monk in 1440.
There seems to be general agreement among scholars
now that the Vikings did sail across the ocean from Green-
land, then down the coast of Labrador until they reached
Newfoundland, where they made camp. Mallery claims
that the Sop’s Island site farther south from both L’Anse
au Meadow and Pistolet Bay, where he had dug up the
remains of houses and many iron artifacts, was inhabited
by Vikings for a considerable period of time, and he dates
the houses from the eleventh century to the end of the
fourteenth century. The generally accepted archaeological
view is that the Vikings lived in Greenland from about
1000 to 1 500 A.D. The North American colonization
period does seem to fall into place with this view.
Whether the iron artifacts found in North America
were actually made there or whether they were brought
there by the Vikings from their Scandinavian or Greenland
settlements is immaterial: The iron implements do date
back to the early Middle Ages, and if Mallery is correct,
the Vikings may even have been the forefathers of an iron-
making civilization he says existed in North America before
Columbus.
* * *
While Mallery 's claims of Norse penetrations to Vir-
ginia and Ohio are supported only by isolated finds, there
is much stronger evidence that a famed runic stone found
at Alexandria, Minnesota in 1898 may be the real McCoy.
Until very recently, this stone containing an unknown
runic inscription had been considered a fantasy product, as
the “establishment” scholars could not conceive of Viking
invaders coming that far inland. Another such stone, how-
ever, was found in 1912 at Heavener, Oklahoma, quite
independently from the first one.
Who Landed First in America?
565
* * *
For over fifty years the puzzle remained just that,
with occasional discussions as to the authenticity of the
stones settling absolutely nothing. Then in 1967, a new
approach was used to break the secret. A retired Army
cryptographer named Alf Monge got together with histo-
rian O. G. Landsverk to study the two stones anew. The
result of their collaboration was a truly sensational book
entitled Norse Cryptography in Runic Carvings. Now these
men were not crackpots or Johnny-come-latelies in their
fields. Mr. Monge was the man who broke the principal
Japanese codes during World War II and was highly hon-
ored by Britain for it. Dr. Landsverk is a Norwegian expert
on Viking history. The two men worked together for five
years before announcing the results to the world.
First, they deciphered a stone found near Byfield,
Massachusetts, which apparently contained a date within
the long Runic legend. The Norsemen had used code to
convey their message. Since the native Eskimos and Indians
could not read, this was not because of enemy intelligence,
but the Vikings considered cryptography an art worth prac-
ticing, and practice it they did. They did not know Arabic
numbers, but they used runes to represent figures.
The Massachusetts stone contains the date of
November 24, 1009 A.D. as the date of the landing there.
The stone unearthed in Oklahoma had the date of Novem-
ber 11, 1012 A.D. on it, and a second stone contained the
dates 1015 and 1022. The traditional date of Leif Erics-
son’s arrival in America is 1003 A.D.
Monge and Landsverk now reconstructed the dates of
the various Norse expeditions. According to them, the
Vikings definitely were in Oklahoma as early as 1012 and
in Minnesota as late as 1362. It is noteworthy that these
dates again coincide with Mallery’s findings: He placed the
period of the Sop’s Island houses between the eleventh cen-
tury and 1375 A.D.
That the Viking landings in North America were no
brief, isolated affair had become clear to me from studying
the record and its various interpretations. The press played
up the cryptographer’s discoveries, but even so astute a
journal as Newsweek failed to see an important point in the
new material: The two explorers were confident that the
real Vinland was located in Massachusetts!
The Vikings had come to North America, then sailed
along the coast — not necessarily all at once, but perhaps
after a number of years initially in one area — and reached
the Southwest. Sailing up the Mississippi, they could have
traveled inland by way of the Arkansas and Poteau Rivers
until they reached Oklahoma. Other groups might have
started out from Hudson Bay and the Great Lakes region
and reached Minnesota in that way.
Thus the puzzle of the runic stones had finally been
solved. What had caused scholarly rejection for many
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
years, was actually proof of their genuineness: the "mis-
spellings” and "inconsistencies” in the runic writings of the
stones found in inland America were actually cryptograms
and code writing, and the dates based on the Catholic
ecclesiastical calendar with which the newly Christianized
Norsemen were already familiar, are repeated several times
in the messages, so that any doubt as to the correctness of
these dates has been dispelled forever.
Though the Mayor of Genoa and Spanish admirers of
Christopher Columbus have grudgingly admitted defeat on
technical grounds, they still maintain that the Vikings did
nothing for history with their forays into America, while
their man, Columbus, did a lot. Well, of course, when one
considers how the Spaniards killed and robbed the Native
Americans, or whenever they allowed them to live, treated
them as slaves, one wonders if that great expedition of
1492 was really such a blessing after all. While the Vikings
certainly defended themselves against native attacks, we do
not seem to find any record of the kind of colonialization
the Spaniards became famous — or, rather, infamous — for.
I felt that the evidence for the Newfoundland sites
was far too strong to be ignored. Surely, a Viking camp
had existed there, but was it the first camp? Admittedly,
the description of the site in the sagas did not fit exactly
with the layout of Newfoundland. Were the archaeologists
not using their finds and ignoring the physical discrepan-
cies of the reported sites? Certainly they had evidence for
Viking presences there, but the case was by no means
closed.
* * *
Long before the Monge-Landsverk collaboration, a
book by Frederick Pohl bearing on the matter was pub-
lished. Pohl’s account, published in 1952, is called The Lost
Discovery, and it was followed in 1961 by another book,
They All Discovered America, by Charles Michael Boland.
Both books point out that Cape Cod might be the site of
Leif Ericsson’s landfall. According to the latter work, it
was in 1940 that explorer Hjalmar Holand suggested to
Pohl that the New England shoreline should be investi-
gated carefully to find a place that fit the description given
in the sagas of Ericsson’s first camp: a cape, a river flowing
from or through a lake into the sea, and an island that lay
to the northward off the land.
Pohl did just that, and after long and careful research
decided that the site was on Cape Cod. He found that the
Bass River, in the east-central section of the cape, did
indeed flow through a lake into the sea. The lake is called
Follins Pond, and when Pohl investigated it more closely
he discovered some ancient mooring holes at the shore and
in the lake itself. These mooring holes were quite typical of
the Viking methods in that they enabled them to secure
their longboats while at the same time being able to strike
the lines quickly in case of need to get away in a hurry.
The most important one of the holes Pohl found in a rock
skerry fifty feet from shore, in the center of Follins Pond.
566
* * *
What remained to pinpoint was the offshore island
Leif had seen. Pohl thought that Great Point, now a part
of Nantucket, was that island. He reasoned that it was fre-
quently cut off from Nantucket after a storm or at high
tide and thus appeared as an island rather than the sandspit
it is today.
* * *
Boland, dissatisfied with Pohl’s theory of the landing
site despite the mooring holes, searched further. Digging in
an area adjacent to Follins Pond in 1957, Boland found
some colonial remains, but no Norse material. Very little
interest could be aroused in the official body responsible
for digs in this area, the Massachusetts Archaeological
Society. In 1950, the Society members had dug at Follins
Pond briefly, finding nothing, unless an obscure, handmade
sign near one of the houses in the area referring to “Viking
Sites” — presumably to lure tourists — is considered a
“result.” In 1960 the society returned at the invitation of
Frederick Pohl and did some digging at Mills Pond, next
to Follins Pond. The results were negative.
Boland carefully searched the cape further and finally
concluded that the campsite had been to the north of the
cape. Not Great Point, but the "fist” of the cape, the
Provincetown area, was the “island” described in the
ancient sagas! Boland took the Salt Meadow and Pilgrim
Lake south of that area to be the lake of the landfall. He
was reinforced in this belief by an opinion rendered him
by expert geologist Dr. Rhodes W. Fairbridge of Columbia
University: The waters of the Atlantic were two to three
feet higher one thousand years ago than they are today.
This, of course, is not as extreme a rising as the increase
in the level calculated by Mallery, who thought the land
rose as much as four feet every century, but all scholars
are agreed that the ocean has indeed receded since the
Viking era.
There is, however, no river flowing from or through a
lake in this area, even if the island image is now a more fit-
ting one. Boland’s view also satisfies the requirement of
position: The saga speaks of an island that lay to the north
of the land. If the Bass River, which does flow through
Follins Pond, were the proper site, where is the island to
the north?
The same argument that Boland uses to make
Provincetown his island also holds true of Great Point:
The ocean was higher in the eleventh century for both of
them, and consequently both could have been islands at
the time. But looking from the mouth of the Bass River
toward Great Point is looking south, not north — unless the
navigators were confused as to their directions. But the
Vikings knew their stars, and such an error is highly
unlikely.
Boland’s arguments in favor of the north shore of
Cape Cod are indeed persuasive, except for the description
of the river flowing through a lake. Had there perhaps been
two camps? Was the saga combining the account? If we
could have some other method of testing the site Pohl
thought was Leif Ericsson’s first camp, perhaps we could
then follow through with extensive diggings, rather than
relying so much on speculation and guesswork.
Cape Cod as a Viking site is not too well known,
although the Viking presence in America in general terms is
reasonably established among the general public. I decided
to try an experiment in ESP to determine if a good psychic
might not pick up some significant clues at the site.
The rules would be strict: The psychic would have
no access to information about the matter and would be
brought to the site in such a way that she could not get
any visual or sensory clues as to the connotation or connec-
tions of the site with the problems under investigation.
Whatever she might “get,” therefore, would be primary
material obtained not in the ordinary way, but by tuning in
on the imprint present at the site. Further, I made sure not
to study the material myself to avoid having information in
my subconscious mind that might conceivably be “read”
by the psychic. All I did know, consciously, until after our
visit to Cape Cod, was that a Viking connection existed
between the site and the past. But I didn’t even know how
to get to Follins Pond, and as subsequent events proved, it
took us a long time to locate it.
I asked Sybil Leek, who had been my medium in
many important cases in the past years, to be ready for
some work with me in the late summer of 1967. Mrs. Leek
never asks questions or tries to find out what I expect of
her. A professional writer herself, she does her psychic
work as a kind of contribution to science and because she
agrees with my aims in parapsychology. She is not a “psy-
chic reader” in a professional sense, but the ESP work she
does with me — and only with me — is of the highest cal-
iber. When I called Sybil, I mentioned that I would need
her presence at Cape Cod, and we arranged for her to meet
me at the Hyannis airport on August 17, 1967. My wife
Catherine and I had been doing some research in New
Hampshire and would be driving our Citroen down frorfi
there. My wife is a marvelous driver, and we arrived at the
airport within ten minutes of the appointed hour. It was a
warm, humid afternoon, but Sybil felt in good spirits, if I
may pun for the nonce.
I explained to her at this point that we had a “ghost
case” to attend to in the area that evening; prior to driving
to the place where we would spend the night, however, I
wanted to do some sightseeing, and perhaps there was a
spot or two where I’d like her to gather impressions. We
drove off and I consulted my map. Follins Pond was
nowhere to be found. Fortunately, I had had some corre-
spondence with the gentleman who owned a ghost house
we were to visit later that day, and he, being a resident of
the area, knew very well where the pond was located.
Who Landed First in America?
567
Sybil was in the back of the car, resting, while we
drove steadfastly toward the eastern part of Cape Cod.
There were no signs whatever indicating either the Bass
River or any ponds. Finally, we drove up to a gas station
and I asked for directions. Despite this, we got lost twice
more, and again I had to ask our way. At no time did Sybil
take part in this, but when she heard me mention Follins
Pond, she remarked, somewhat sleepily, “Do you want to
go swimming?” It was hot enough for it, at that.
The neighborhood changed now; instead of the garish
motels with minute swimming pools in back and huge col-
ored neon lights in front to attract the tourist, we passed
into a quiet, wooded area interspersed with private homes.
I did not see it at the time, but when we drove back later
on, I found, tucked away in a side street, a blue sign point-
ing in the general direction we had come from, and reading
"Viking Rocks.” I am sure Sybil did not see it either on
our way down or back, and it may be the work of some
enterprising local, since the Viking “attractions” on the
cape do not form part of its official tourist lure or lore.
* * *
We had now been driving over twice the time it was
supposed to have taken us to get to the pond; we had
crossed a river marked Bass River and knew we were going
in the right direction. Suddenly, the curving road gave
upon a body of water quietly nestling between wooded
slopes. The nearest house was not visible and the road
broke into a fork at this point, one fork continuing toward
the sea, the other rounding the pond. The pond, more like
a small lake, really, was perhaps a mile in circumference,
heavily wooded on all sides and quite empty of any sign of
human interest: no boats, no landings, no cottages dotting
its shores. Somewhat toward the center of the water there
was a clump of rocks.
We halted the car and I got out, motioning to Sybil
to follow me. Sybil was dressed rather stylishly — black
dress, black, fringed feather hat, and high-heeled shoes. It
was not exactly the best way to go around an area like this.
The shore of the pond was wet and soft, sloping steeply
toward the water. With the tape recorder at the ready, I
took Sybil toward the water.
“What is your immediate impression of this place?” I
inquired.
“We should go right to the opposite bank,” Sybil
said, "and come around that way.”
I didn’t feel like getting lost again, so I decided to
stay, for the present at least, on this side of the pond.
"The water has gone over some building,” Sybil
added, trying to focus her psychic sense now. “There is
something in the middle of the lake.”
What sort of thing?
"Something like a spire," she said. A church here in
the middle of the pond? Then were there any people here?
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
“Yes,” she replied, "people have settled here, have
been living here ”
"How far back?”
"Difficult to say at this stage, for there is another
overlaying element here.”
“You mean two different period levels?”
“Yes. But the main thing is something rising high
like a church spire. Something very sharp in the center. It
isn’t necessarily a church spire, but something like it. It
could be a masthead, something very sharp and triangular,
at any rate. It was big and very important to the people
who were here. People coming and going. And there is a
lane here, one of the oldest used paths to where we are. I
seem to be getting the date of 1784.”
Although I did not know it at the time, we were close
to the site where colonial material had been unearthed by
Boland in 1957.
“Can you go back farther than that?" I inquired.
There was a moment of silence as Sybil closed her
eyes. Standing delicately balanced on a low bluff directly
overlooking the water, she was now swaying a little and I
began to worry that she might fall into the pond, especially
if she should go into trance. I therefore held my arm ready
to catch her, should this happen. But somehow she main-
tained her equilibrium throughout the entire investigation.
“I feel a foreign invasion,” she said now, slowly,
searching her way step by step into the past. “Not people
who live here but people who come here to destroy some-
thing. . .from another place. . .this is not pleasant, not a
happy invasion. . .a war. . .taking things. . ..”
“Where do they come from?”
“From far.. .1 can see several longboats. ...”
Longboats! The term used for Viking boats. How would
Sybil consciously know of the Viking connection at this
spot?
"Longboats. . .fair men. . .this is very long time
ago. . .the things they do are not related to this place at
all ... own ideas of metal and killing .... ”
* * *
One of the significant points of Viking presences in
America is their use of iron for weapons, something totally
unknown to the natives of the Western Hemisphere at that
time and certainly until well after Columbus.
"The construction. . .is very important. . .about these
boats. . .metal pieces on the boats.. ..”
“Can you hear any sounds?”
“I don’t understand the language.”
"What type language is it?”
“It is a northern language. . .Germanic. . .Nordic. . .
Helmut is a name that comes.. ..”
“Why are they here?”
“Long time. . .not discover. . .they have long skeleton
boats. . .one is definitely here, that was the pointed thing I
saw. . .in the lake. . .it is big, it’s in the middle. . .and
around it are the metal pieces. . .the boat is a frame. . .
568
there are round shields. . .personal things. . .a broken boat. . .
something peculiar about the front of the boat. . .strange
gods. ...”
* * *
It is a fact that the Viking ships had peculiar, animal-
shaped bows, and metal shields were hung on their sides in
rows. We know this from Norwegian examples. Sybil
“saw” this, however, in the middle of nowhere on Cape
Cod. A ship had foundered and its remnants lay on the
bottom of Follins Pond. Strange gods, she had just said.
What gods?
“A man had a feeling for a different god than people
knew,” Sybil replied.
* * *
I later recalled how Leif had espoused the new Chris-
tian faith while his father, and probably many others of his
people, clung to the old pagan beliefs.
“What happened to them?” I said.
“They were stranded here and could not get back,”
Sybil replied, slowly. "I don’t think they really intended to
come.”
Blown off course on their way to Greenland, the
sagas report — not intentionally trying to find Vinland!
“They arrived, however. . .didn’t know where they
were. . .it was like an accident. . .they were stranded. . .
many of them ran away from the boat. .
"Was there water here at that point?”
“There was water. Connected with the sea. But this
lake is not sea. The sea went away. The lake came later.
This is a long time ago, you are not thinking how long
it is!”
“Well, how long is it?”
“This is longer than we’ve ever been,” Sybil
explained, “fifteen hundred years. . .or something. . .long
time. . .this was nothing, not a place where anything was
made ... no people ”
“What happened to them?”
"Die here. . .the boat was very important. . .boat was
broken. . .some went away, one boat remained. . .the others
could not go so they stayed here. . .longboat in the lake
and those big round metal things. ...”
“Do you get any names?”
“Helmut....”
"Anything else?”
“This was first sea, then land, then on top of the land
it was earth. . .as if something is hidden. .
“How did it all happen?”
“A lot of boats came here at the same time. They
came from the fjords. . .toward the cold parts. . .they got
here by accident. . .they left things behind while others
went away . . .this one boat, or perhaps more but I see
one. . . with the things that they used. . .no writing. . .just
things. . .something strange about the metal. . .an eagle,
but it is not the American eagle. . .big bird, like a vul-
ture. . .some signs on the round metal parts. . .the bird is
very prominent...."
* * *
Was she trying to make out a rune? The raven was a
prominent symbol among the Vikings. Also, she had cor-
rectly identified the invaders by origin: from the fjords,
from the cold country. Norsemen. But what possible clues
could she have had? She was standing at the shores of a
nondescript little lake or pond in Cape Cod.
I became very excited at this point, or as excited as
my basically scientific nature would permit me. Obviously,
Sybil Leek had hit paydirt in identifying the spot as a
Viking site — something not at all certain up to that point,
but only a conjecture on the part of Frederick Pohl.
"Is there any other form or symbol you can recog-
nize?” I inquired. Sybil was more and more in a trancelike
state of immersion into another time stream.
"Constellation. . she murmured, and when I didn’t
grasp the meaning, added, “a group of stars. . .shield. . .
this man came by the stars. No papers.”
“Was this Helmut, was he the leader of the group?”
“No., .not the leader.”
“Who was the leader?”
“Ingrist. ..I can’t understand it.... Helmut and...
Aabst. . .ssen. . .ssen or son. . .confusing. ...”
“Are these earthbound spirits?” I asked.
“Yes, this is a very drastic thing that happened. Not
ghosts in the usual sense, but a feeling, a sadness. . .a
remote, detached feeling that still remains around here. It
is connected with something that is not known but has to
be known. It is very important to know this. Because this
place was known before it was known. But there is no
writing.”
* * *
How clearly she had delineated the problem at hand:
known before it was known — America, of course, known to
the Vikings before it was known to Columbus!
“And there is no writing?” I asked again.
“No, only symbols,” Sybil replied, “birds, and a big
sun. ...”
All these are the old pagan symbols of the Norsemen.
“How many men are there?”
“Many. . .but one man is important. . .Helmut
and. . .sson. . .son of someone.”
“Son of whom?”
“Frederickson or something. . .it’s two names and I
can't read it. . . . Frederickson is part of the name. . .a little
name in front... k-s-o-n. ...”
“What is the relationship between Helmut and
Frederickson?”
“Family relationship. Because this was the lot of one
family.”
Who Landed First in America?
569
"Which one is the leader?”
"Well, I think, Frederickson; but Helmut is very
important.”
“Which one stays and which one goes back?”
“Helmut stays.”
“And Frederickson? Does he go back?”
“I don’t know what happens to him. But he has
influence with Helmut.”
Suddenly she added, "Where would sund be?”
At first I thought she had said “sand”; later, it
dawned on me that sund, which in English is “sound,” was
a Viking term of some importance in the saga, where the
body of water near the first campsite is described.
“This is a very serious place,” Sybil continued. “You
must discover something and say, this is right. Someone
arrived a thousand years ago without papers or maps and
did not know where they were.”
“How far back did this happen, Sybil?”
“Eight-eight-four. . .eight-eight-four are the figures in
the water,” she replied, cryptically. “The discovery of
something in the lake is very important.”
If 884 was the number of years into the past when
the boat foundered here, we would arrive at the year 1083
A.D. That is exactly eighty years later than the accepted
date for Leif Ericsson’s voyage. Could Sybil have misread
one of the digits? Not 884 but 804? If she could call Erics-
son “Frederickson” — such a near-hit was not unthinkable
in so delicate and difficult an undertaking as we were
attempting. On the other hand, if 884 denotes the actual
date, was the calendar used a different one from the A.D.
calendar?
“Where would one look for the ship?”
“From the other side, where I wanted to go,” Sybil
said, more herself again than she had been for the past fif-
teen minutes.
“This is quite a deep lake, really,” she added,
"toward the middle and then come to the left. From the
other side where that road is.”
She was nearly pinpointing the same rock where
Frederick Pohl had found Viking moorings!
“What would they find?”
“Old wood and metal stuff that nobody has seen
before. Nobody knew was here. It was an accident. If you
find it, it will be important to a lot of people. Some will
say you tell lies.”
I thought of the mayor of Genoa, and the Knights of
Columbus. What would they be marching for on Colum-
bus Day? His rediscovery of America? Sybil was still
involved with the subject.
“The sund...,’’ she mumbled.
“Where is the sund?" I asked, beginning to under-
stand now the meaning of the word more clearly.
"Beyond the lake,” Sybil replied, as if it were obvious
to anyone but me.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
"On which side of it?”
“The far side. . .Sund.. .there are some things there.”
She warmed up to this line of thought now. “There
will be a line ... of things to find once one is found ... .
When one thing is found there will be many others. ...”
She insisted the boat and the shields with the bird on them
would be found in the water; if a line were drawn from
there to the shore and beyond, more would come to light.
“Longboat. . .big. . .Helmut. ...” Again she seemed to be
going under and swaying from side to side. “Longboats in
the sun. . .shadows....”
I decided to get Sybil out of her psychic state before
she fell into the water. When she opened her eyes, which
had been shut all this time, she blinked into the setting sun
and yawned. Nothing she had said to me during the inves-
tigation had remained in her memory.
"Did I say anything interesting?” she queried me.
I nodded, but told her nothing more.
We got into our car and drove off toward Hyannis,
where the ghost hunt of the evening was about to begin.
The next morning I pondered the information Sybil
had brought me at Follins Pond. In particular, the term
sund, which Sybil had pronounced closer to “sand,” puz-
zled me. I decided to check it out through whatever maps I
might have available. I discovered several startling facts.
To begin with, the area south and southwest of the coast of
Greenland was known by two names: Herjolfsnes, or sand.
If the sund were situated "to the far side” of the lake, as
Sybil had said, could it not be that this was a reference to
the area whence the boats had sailed? The sand or sund is
the coast where Eric the Red’s eastern settlement stood in
the eleventh century.
If Boland was looking for the sund much closer to
Cape Cod, assuming it to be the bay between Princetown
and the Massachusetts coast, was he not overlooking the
other body of water? We don’t know that the bay north of
Cape Cod was ever named the sund, but we do know that
the straits south of Greenland were thus called at the time
of the Leif Ericsson adventure. Mallery’s conviction that
Newfoundland was the original Vinland did not find the
problem of the river flowing through or from a lake insur-
mountable. There are a number of small bodies of water
and small rivers in Newfoundland that might fit. None of
them, however, as well as the Bass River and Follins Pond
in Cape Cod.
Sybil had clearly and repeatedly identified a lesser
leader named Helmut as being connected with the Follins
Pond site. I discovered that one Helhild or Helhuld sailed
the coast of Labrador around 1000 A.D. That this state-
ment in the sagas is taken seriously can be seen by the fact
that Helhild’s voyage and name are included in some his-
toric maps used in higher education for many years. More-
over, Helhild started his trip at the sund, south of
Greenland.
This Helhild was the same leader who later joined
Ericsson in a trip that lead to the discovery of Vinland.
570
Helhild’s first name was Bjarni, the Bjarni mentioned on
the ancient map. Evidently he was the second in command
on the latter expedition. Now one might argue that
Labrador is also part of North America and thus Bjarni
Helhild was the original Viking discoverer of America. But
we do not know of any landings on the Labrador trip,
whereas we do have exact details of landings during the
expedition headed by Ericsson and Helhild jointly. It may
well be that the Labrador trip consisted merely of sailing
down the hostile and unknown Labrador coast.
Frederickson and Helmut are common modern
names, and to a person unfamiliar with Viking names they
would sound reasonably close to Ericsson and Helhild or
Helhuld. Sybil, as I have already stated several times, did
not know she was on a spot with Viking traditions or con-
notations; thus there could not be any subconscious knowl-
edge suggesting Norse names. Whatever came through her,
came because it was there.
What are the implications of this adventure into the
past? Surely, a dig in Follins Pond should be undertaken.
It might very well yield Norse artifacts and perhaps even
remnants of the Viking boat Sybil saw clairvoyantly. It
seems to me that the question of the Vinland location
misses an important point altogether: Could it not be that
Vinland meant to the Vikings all of North America, the
new land beyond the seas, rather than a specific settlement?
I find it difficult to reconcile the conflicting views of
respectable researchers and the archaeological evidence to
boot, with any one area under discussion. The Vikings
were at Newfoundland, at more than one site and over an
extended period of time; but they were also in evidence in
Cape Cod and again in more than one locality. Over a
period of several centuries enough immigrants must have
come over to allow them to spread out over the newly dis-
covered land. Some might have gone around Florida to
Minnesota and Oklahoma, while others explored the
Northeast and founded settlements along the way.
I think the end is not yet and that many more camp-
sites of Norse origin will be discovered on our side of the
Atlantic. Certainly, the Vikings discovered America long
before Columbus did it all over again. It is a shame at that:
He could have consulted the ancient maps even then in
existence and seen that somebody had been there before.
But of course Columbus wasn't looking for America. He
was trying to find a better passage to India. The Vikings,
on the other hand, knew where they had landed, as time
went on, even though their original landfall was accidental.
Sybil Leek has shown that the Viking connotations of
the Follins Pond area should be taken seriously. Hopefully,
when this report appears in print, archaeological follow-ups
of her psychic suggestions will have been initiated. Since
neither Sybil nor my wife nor I had any previous knowl-
edge of a Helmut or of the true meaning of the word sund,
one cannot dismiss these revelations by our psychic as
being drawn from anyone’s subconscious knowledge or
mind. Thus there is really no alternate explanation for the
extraordinary results of our psychic experiment. No doubt,
additional experiments of this kind should prove fruitful
and interesting: For the present, let it be said that the
Vikings were at Follins Pond.
Whether this was their only contact with America is
a moot question. It certainly was the site of one of their
landfalls in the early eleventh century. The Vikings may
justly claim the distinction of having been the true discov-
erers of the New World!
* * *
Or were they?
There is a strong tradition among the Irish that St.
Brendan and a group of navigators made crossings to the
American coast in boats built of timber and skins. Similar
boats, about twenty-two feet long, are still in use in west-
ern Ireland. Recently, two brave Canadians tried to repeat
the feat in an identical canoe. The original crossing by St.
Brendan took place in the sixth century — about five hun-
dred years before the Vikings!
Allegedly, Brendan felt himself responsible for the
drowning of one of his monks, and the voyage had been a
kind of pilgrimage to atone for it.
But even St. Brendan was not first. According to my
historian friend Paul Johnstone, Brendan did indeed cross
all the way to the Florida coast, but the crossing by a cer-
tain Rossa O’Deshea, of the clan MacUmor, had managed
it with eleven others, and gotten back safely again to Ire-
land, as early as the year 332 A.D.! The trip, according to
Johnstone, was an accident, just as the Vikings’ initial
crossing had been. On a return trip from Britain to the
west of Ireland, the Gaelic navigators were blown off
course and wound up in North America. Jess Stearns
Edgar Cayce curiously also speaks of an Irish navigator
named Rosa O’Deshea.
Johnstone also mentions earlier Atlantic crossings by
other Irishmen, such as a certain Dechu in 500 A.D. and a
Finnian in the first half of the sixth century, a little before
Brendan’s crossing in 551 A.D.
Unfortunately, we have as yet no concrete evidence of
Irish settlements in the New World, although we may
some day find such material proof, of course. But these
Irish traditions are interesting and far from fictional. It
stands to reason that every nation of sailors would at one
time or other sail westward, and the wind being what it is,
might have some of her natives blown off course.
The Romans, and before them, the Greeks and espe-
cially the Phoenicians, were great navigators. We suspect
that the pre-Greek Phoenicians came to Britain from Asia
in the second and first millennia before Christ. For all we
know, even Rossa O’Deshea was not the first one to dis-
cover America.
But the Vikings, comparatively Eric-come-latelies
when one speaks of the Irish navigators, managed at least
Who Landed First in America?
571
to leave us concrete evidence not only of having been here,
but of having lived here for many years. Thus, until new
evidence comes along, I’d vote for the Norsemen as being
the discoverers of the New World.
* * *
I never discussed the case or my findings with Sybil
Leek. On December 30, 1967, I received an urgent call
from her. She had just had a peculiar dream and wished to
communicate it to me for what it was worth. The dream
took place in her Los Angeles house at 5:30 A.M., Decem-
ber 29, 1967. She knew it was about Cape Cod and “the
lake,” as she called the pond, and that we should look for a
peculiar rock in which “there are set big holes and it has a
lot to do with the thing in the lake. I don’t remember any
rocks but I think they are in the sea, not the lake. There is
a connection. When we go to Cape Cod again I must look
around that bit of coast. I saw so many things clearly in
my dream. I wasn’t even thinking of the place when I
dreamt this, but I talked with a large man last night, and it
was he who said, ‘Look for the rock,’ and showed me the
holes; they are big and deep. Also, there is more than we
think in that lake and not only the lake, we have to go
from the lake to the sea and look around there. What
would the holes in the rock mean? I have a peculiar feeling
about this and know it is important.”
Sybil, of course, had no way of knowing about the
mooring holes in the rock in the middle of Follins Pond.
She knew nothing about my sources, and I had not talked
about it in front of her at any time. But it was clear to me
from this experience of hers that she had made a real con-
tact while we were in the area and that those whom she
had contacted wished us to find the physical evidence of
their presence in the waters of the pond.
Sybil had sent me a note giving all these bits of infor-
mation she had obtained in her dream. At the end of her
note, she drew a kind of seal, a large letter E in a circle —
and said, this is important, is it a name?
I looked at the medieval form of the initial E and
could almost feel Leif Ericsson’s heavy hand.
m 123
The Haunted Organ at Yale
Yale University IN New Haven, Connecticut, is an aus-
tere and respectable institution, which does not take such
matters as ghostly manifestations very lightly. I must,
therefore, keep the identity of my informant a secret, but
anyone who wishes to visit Yale and admire its magnifi-
cent, historical organ is, of course, at liberty to do so, pro-
vided he or she gets clearance from the proper authorities.
I would suggest, however, that the matter of ghostly
goings-on not be mentioned at such a time. If you happen
to experience something out of the ordinary while visiting
the organ, well and good, but let it not be given as the rea-
son to the university authorities for your intended visit.
I first heard about this unusual organ in 1969 when a
gentleman who was then employed as an assistant organist
at Yale had been asked to look after the condition and pos-
sible repairs of the huge organ, a very large instrument
located in Woolsey Hall. This is the fifth largest organ in
the world and has a most interesting history.
Woolsey Hall was built as part of a complex of three
buildings for Yale’s 200th anniversary in 1901 by the cele-
brated architects, Carere and Hastings. Shortly after its
completion the then university organist, Mr. Harry B. Jep-
son, succeeded in getting the Newberry family, of the
famous department store clan, to contribute a large sum of
money for a truly noble organ to be built for the hall.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
Even in 1903 it was considered to be an outstanding
instrument because of its size and range. By 1915, certain
advances in the technology of pipe organs made the 1903
instrument somewhat old-fashioned. Again Jepson con-
tacted the Newberry family about the possibility of updat-
ing their gift so that the organ could be rebuilt and the hall
enlarged. This new instrument was then dedicated in 1916
or thereabouts.
By 1926 musical tastes had again shifted toward
romantic music, and it became necessary to make certain
additions to the stops as well as the basic building blocks
of the classical ensemble. Once again the Newberry family
contributed toward the updating of the instrument. The
alterations were undertaken by the Skinner Organ Com-
pany of Boston, in conjunction with an English expert by
the name of G. Donald Harrison. Skinner and Harrison did
not get on well together and much tension was present
when they restored and brought the venerable old organ
up-to-date.
Professor Harry Jepson was forced to retire in the
1940s, against his wishes, and though he lived down the
street only two blocks from Woolsey Hall, he never again
set foot into it to play the famous organ that he had caused
to be built. He died a bitter and disappointed man some-
time in 1952.
One of the university organists, Frank Bozyan,
retired in the 1970s, with great misgivings. He confided to
someone employed by the hall that he felt he was making a
mistake; within six months after his retirement he was
dead. As time went on, Woolsey Hall, once a temple of
beauty for the fine arts, was being used for rock-and-roll
572
The haunted organ at Yale
groups and mechanically amplified music. Undoubtedly,
those connected with the building of the hall and the organ
would have been horrified at the goings-on had they been
able to witness them.
The gentleman who brought all of this to my atten-
tion, and who shall remain nameless, had occasion to be in
the hall and involved with the organ itself frequently. He
became aware of a menacing and melancholic sensation in
the entire building, particularly in the basement and the
organ chambers. While working there at odd hours late at
night, he became acutely aware of some sort of unpleasant
sensation just lurking around the next corner or even
standing behind him! On many occasions he found it nec-
essary to look behind him in order to make sure he was
alone. The feeling of a presence became so strong he
refused to be there by himself, especially in the evenings.
Allegedly, the wife of one of the curators advised him to
bring a crucifix whenever he had occasion to go down to
the organ chambers. She also claimed to have felt someone
standing at the entrance door to the basement, as if to keep
strangers out.
1 visited Yale and the organ one fine summer evening
in the company of my informant, who has since found
employment elsewhere. I, too, felt the oppressive air in the
organ chambers, the sense of a presence whenever I moved
about. Whether we are dealing here with the ghost of the
unhappy man who was forced to retire and who never set
foot again into his beloved organ chamber, or whether we
are dealing with an earlier influence, is hard to say. Not for
a minute do I suggest that Yale University is haunted or
that there are any evil influences concerning the university
itself. But it is just possible that sensitive individuals visit-
ing the magnificent organ at Woolsey Hall might pick up
some remnant of an unresolved past.
m 124
The Ghost On Television
UNTIL 1965 I HAD HEARD OF two kinds of ghosts con-
nected with television: those impersonated by actors and
those caused by the interference of tall buildings. Now I
was to learn of still another kind of ghost on television, this
one being the real McCoy. It all started with a lecture I
gave at the British College of Psychic Studies in London in
1965. After my lecture on ghosts, which was illustrated by
slides of apparitions, I was approached by a tall,
intellectual -looking lady who wanted to tell me about a
very strange haunted house in East Anglia. This was my
first meeting with Ruth Plant, who explained that she was
a writer and researcher, with a background in social sci-
ence. Her beliefs lay in the Spiritualist philosophy, and she
had had any number of psychic experiences herself. I asked
her to drop me a note about the house in East Anglia. I
expected it to be just another haunted house, probably con-
taining the usual complement of footsteps, doors opening
The Ghost On Television
573
or closing by themselves, or possibly even an apparition of
a deceased relative. By my standards, that constitutes a
classic, conventional haunting.
The following January, Miss Plant lived up to her
promise. She explained that the house in East Anglia was
called Morley Old Hall, and though it was principally of
the Stuart period, it stood on much earlier foundations,
going back to pre-Saxon times. It was situated near Nor-
wich in the northeast of England and apparently belonged
to a friend of hers who had bought it with a view to restor-
ing it. It had been in lamentable condition and not suitable
to be lived in. Her friend, by the name of Ricky Cotterill,
was essentially a pig farmer; nevertheless, he and his young
wife and their baby managed to live in the sprawling man-
sion, or rather in that part of it which he had been able to
restore on his own funds, and the excitement of living with
so much history more than adequately made up for the
deprivations he was subjecting himself to. Miss Plant
explained that the house was way off the beaten track and
was, in fact, hard to find unless one knew the countryside.
There were two moats around it, and archeological digs
had been undertaken all over that part of the country for
many years, since that part of East Anglia is one of the
oldest and most historic sections of England.
At the time of her first communication with me, in
January, 1966, Miss Plant had not as yet undertaken any
research into the background of the house or its surround-
ings. She thought the house worthy of my attention
because of what had happened to her and a friend during a
visit.
“I went to stay there with a Norwegian friend, Anne
Wilhelmsen, whose father was a cultural attache of Norway
in London, and who was herself a university graduate,”
Ruth Plant explained. "This was two years ago at Easter.
We had intended to stay at the local hotel, but Mr. Cotter-
ill, the owner of the mansion, found that the hotel was
entirely full.”
Under the circumstances, the owner moved out of the
room he had been occupying and let the two ladies use it
for the night. As he knew of Miss Plant’s interest in
ghosts, he assured her that to the best of his knowledge
there were no ghosts there, since he had lived there for
three years and had seen nothing. As a matter of fact, the
two ladies slept well, and in the morning Miss Plant got up
and walked across the big room connecting the two wings
with the kitchen, all of it being on the first floor.
“When I came back, I felt impressed to pause at the
large window which looked down the front drive, in spite
of the fact that it had no glass in it and the day was bit-
terly cold. I felt very peaceful and contemplative and I sud-
denly heard a Catholic prayer, the Hail Mary, and was sure
that the ‘presence’ I felt was that of the lady of the house.
After I had noted this, I went back into our bedroom and
was surprised to find Anne sitting up in bed looking very
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
574
worried. She said she had just heard the rustle of bed-
clothes and heavy breathing while she lay there. She had
sat up in bed to listen more closely, and immediately the
sound ceased, only to come back again when she lay down.
We told our host about this over breakfast, but he could
not enlighten us further. So I went into the village and in
talking to people found out that several people who had
lived in the house had experienced very much the same
thing. One man had actually seen the lady quite clearly at
the window, and others had heard her, like Anne.”
The "Lady at the Window” fascinated Ruth Plant,
especially as she didn’t know her identity. As was her cus-
tom then, and is now, she decided to have a sitting with a
reputable medium to see whether the medium might pick
up something spiritual around her and possibly shed some
light on the identity of the lady ghost of Morley Old Hall.
This time she had a sitting with a certain Mr. Bogoran,
one of the regulars sitting at the College of Psychic Studies,
Queensbury Place. "I didn't mention anything about the
ghost, but said I had a friend who was trying to restore a
beautiful old Stuart house and I wondered if anyone on the
other side could offer any helpful advice.”
Instead of advice on how to restore the house,
medium Bogoran described the house itself in minute detail
and then added that he saw a ghostly lady standing at one
of the windows. This of course came as a surprise to Miss
Plant, but even more of a shock was in store for her: Mr.
Bogoran volunteered two additional statements of interest.
One, that the owner of the house, her friend, would be on
television within a few weeks, and two, that there was
another ghost in the house, a monk who was attached to
the house, not because he had been happy there like the
ghostly lady, but because he had been involved in a killing.
Since Mr. Cotterill, the owner of the house, had
absolutely no connection with television, the first statement
evoked nothing but doubt in Ruth Plant’s mind. Picture
her surprise when several days after her sitting with Mr.
Bogoran, Ricky Cotterill telephoned to tell her that he had
been approached by a local television station to have an all-
night session at the house which would be filmed for tele-
vision. The reason for his call was to invite her to Norwich
to appear as part of the program. In the excitement of this
development, Ruth Plant forgot all about the ghostly
monk.
When she arrived at the Hall, she met Tony Cornell,
a psychic researcher from Cambridge. Ruth and Mr. Cor-
nell did not see things the same ways: she sensed him to be
skeptical and negative and suspected his presence in the
house was more to debunk the ghosts than to find them. It
turned out later that Mr. Cornell was, as the program pro-
ducer put it, "Our handiest accredited psychic investiga-
tor,” called into the case not necessarily because of his
commitment to the reality of ghosts, but because his offices
were not too far away, and time was of the essence. Ruth
brought along a sound tape of her sitting with Mr. Bogo-
ran, but it was not used in the film. She gave the required
interviews and thought no more about it. A few weeks
later, the filmed report of Morley Old Hall went on the air.
Ruth Plant saw it at a local hotel, where it was rather badly
focused, and she could hardly recognize herself or anyone
else. Nevertheless, something odd happened during that
screening.
"During the performance, there was a loud bang on
the set,” Ruth Plant stated, "which seemed to have no nor-
mal cause. My basset hound, who had been fast asleep
with her back to the screen, jumped up in great apprehen-
sion and stood gazing at the screen as though she saw
someone we could not see.”
A few days later Ruth Plant telephoned Mr. Cotterill,
and it was only then that she heard the amazing results of
the television of the film. It appeared that no fewer than
twenty-three people from the general public had written
into the broadcasting station and asked who the bearded
monk was, standing behind Mr. Cornell while he was
speaking!
Now no one had mentioned anything about a ghostly
monk, but everyone connected with the venture knew that
a ghostly lady had been observed by a number of wit-
nesses. Consequently, she would have been on the minds
of those participating in the experiment, if a mind picture
could indeed find its way onto a television film.
The idea of a ghost appearing on television naturally
excited me. Immediately I got in touch with Michael Rob-
son, producer of the documentary and one of the execu-
tives of Anglia Television. Michael Robson, who had been
to Morley Old Hall many times before the documentary
was made, offered to let me see the actual film when I
came to England. “Our film unit had an all-night vigil in
the Hall,” he explained in a statement dated September 2,
1966, “with the chairman of the Cambridge Psychical
Research and Spontaneous Cases Committee, Mr. Tony
Cornell. Various things of interest occurred during the
night, in particular a moving tumbler, but what caused all
the excitement was this: Mr. Cornell and I were discussing
the Hall on film by a mullioned window as dawn was
breaking. No sooner had the film been transmitted than a
great many people wrote in asking who the figure was that
appeared between Mr. Cornell and myself. All their
descriptions were the same: the face and trunk of a
monkish-type figure looking between us. Mr. Cornell and I
examined the film closely afterwards ourselves and saw
nothing: but in view of the large number of people who
claimed to have seen the figure, Mr. Cornell thought it an
interesting example of collective hallucination, and took
away the letters for closer study.”
It turned out that Mr. Cornell was not a parapsychol-
ogist with an academic connection, but merely an inter-
ested ghost-fancier. With the help of Miss Plant, and
considerable patience, I managed to obtain the letters
which Mr. Cornell had taken with him and examined them
myself. His explanation of the phenomenon as a "mass hal-
lucination” is, of course, an easy way out of coming to
grips with the problem itself — a genuine psychic phenome-
non. But the twenty-three witnesses are far more eloquent
in their description of what they experienced than any
would-be scientist could possibly be in trying to explain
away the phenomenon.
Mrs. Joan Buchan of Great Yarmouth wrote: “My
husband and I saw a figure of a monk with a cowl over his
head and with his hands clasped as though in prayer. It
could be seen quite clearly, standing quietly in the window.
It didn’t appear to be looking at the men conversing, but
behind them.”
"I saw the figure of a man which appeared to me to
be that of a monk; he had on a round hat, a long cloak,
and his hands were together as in prayer,” observed Miss
A. Hewitt of Southrepps.
“I saw the figure quite distinctly, considering I only
have a twelve-inch screen and the sunlight was pouring
into my room. The figure appeared behind the profile of
the man who was talking, as if looking through the win-
dow,” stated L. M. Gowing. “I thought perhaps it was due
to the light, but the man talking moved and seemed to
partly cover it. When he went back to his former position,
it was there clearer than before.”
“Both my daughter and myself certainly saw the out-
line of a priest to the right of the speaker and to the left of
the interviewer,” wrote Mrs. G. D. Hayden of Bromham.
Not only did Mr. and Mrs. Carter of Lincolnshire say, "It
was very clear,” but Mrs. Carter sent in a drawing of the
monk she had seen on the television. From Norwich, where
the broadcast originated, came a statement from a viewer
named Elviera Panetta who also drew the bearded monk,
showing him to have a long, haggard face. “Both my
mother and I saw the monk looking through the window;
he is cowled, bearded, and his hands are slightly raised.”
One viewer, Miss M. C. Grix, wrote to the station inquir-
ing whether “it was a real person standing in the window
just behind the man who was talking, dressed in black and
looking as if he had his hands together in prayer,” to which
Nora Kononenko of Suffolk added, “It first looked to me
like a skull with a hood, and then, as the gentlemen went
on talking, it seemed to come forward and peer in. At that
moment it distinctly changed into a gaunt-looking face,
with a horrible leer upon it.” The station decided to run
the film again, as testimonies kept pouring in. After the
second run, even more people saw the ghostly monk on the
screen.
“Your repeat of the alleged haunted house shook me
considerably,” wrote Mrs. A. C. Mason, "not because of
what I had seen in the original broadcast, but because your
Mr. MacGregor gaily quipped, ‘Well, did you see any-
thing?’ I was astonished that anyone else couldn’t see what
was so clear to me. I did see the monk both times.” Some
viewers sent in simple statements, unsolicited and to the
point. “I saw the monk in the window just as plain as
The Ghost On Television
575
could be. It was there at the time and I can assure you I
did not imagine it,” wrote Mrs. Joan Collis of Suffolk.
“He didn’t seem to be hooded but had long hair and
was bearded,” stated Mrs. Janet Halls of Norwich, and
Mrs. F. Nicolaisen of Cambridge volunteered that "I had
seen the figure on the previous showing but didn't mention
it for fear of being laughed at. This time I traced it out for
my husband, but he still couldn’t see it, much to my
annoyance.”
If all these people were suffering from mass halluci-
nation, it is certainly strange that they hallucinated in so
many different ways, for many of the reports differed in
slight but important details. "Towards the end of the
showing, my sister and I distinctly saw an image of a
cowled monk from head to waist,” wrote Miss W. Caplen
of Lowestoft. Probably Mrs. J. G. Watt of Cambridge put
it best when she wrote, “I had no idea what sort of ghost I
was expected to look for, and I saw nothing until the two
men were discussing the house. But outside the window I
then saw clearly, behind them, the figure of a monk. He
wore a monk’s habit and was bare-headed, with the monk’s
haircut associated with the monks of olden days, bald patch
with fringe, either fair or gray hair. His face was that of a
young man and had a very serene look on his face. His
arms were hanging down in front of him, with his right
hand placed lightly on top of his left. I saw this all very
plainly and naturally and I thought everyone else would be
able to, so I thought the television people were having a
game with the viewers, and I thought it was all a hoax.
Next day a friend told me of Anglia TV’s purpose of rerun-
ning the film, and I realized it was serious. The strange
thing is that our television set is not what it used to be,
and we don’t get a good picture — and yet I saw this monk
very clearly.”
By now it was clear to me that twenty-three people —
or at last count thirty-one — had actually seen or thought
they had seen the figure of a monk where none was sup-
posed to be. Many others, if not the majority of viewers,
however, did not see the monk. Obviously, then, it was on
the film, and yet visible only to those with psychic gifts.
This raised interesting questions: while we know that
ghosts appear only to those capable of seeing them, can
apparitions also be photographed selectively, so that they
can be seen only by those who are psychic, while others
not so gifted will not be able to see them in the photograph
or film? Also, was the case of the ghost on television
unique, or are there other such instances on the record?
According to the London Express of December 19,
1969, five shop girls saw a ghostly figure on a closed-circuit
TV set. “The girls and customers watched fascinated for
forty-five minutes as the figure of a woman in a long Vic-
torian dress stood at the top of the stairs in the boutique in
High Street, Kent, occasionally waving her hand and pat-
ting her hair. Several times the figure walked halfway down
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
576
the stairs and then went back up again to the upper floor of
the boutique, which had been converted only a few months
ago from an old house.” The first one to see the ghostly
apparition on the closed-circuit television setup was
eighteen-year-old Sally White, who pointed her out to her
colleague, Janet Abbs, saying, “You’ve got a customer.”
But Janet Abbs walked right through the figure. One of the
other girls, Andree Weller, said “As the figure went
upstairs it disappeared into a sort of mist and then reap-
peared again.” The incident happened at lunchtime, and
though five girls saw the woman, when they walked
upstairs where they had seen her, they found the place
empty. When they returned downstairs and looked at the
screen, there was the ghost again. Unlike the monk of
Morley Old Hall, who appeared for only a few seconds on
screen, the Victorian lady of High Street, Chatham, Kent,
stayed for a whole hour, apparently enjoying her perfor-
mance hugely.
However, what none of the viewers who had written
in had pointed out was the fact that the figure of the monk
was not in proportion to the size of the two flesh-and-
blood people talking on the screen at the time: the monk
seemed considerably smaller than they were. Ruth Plant
found the emergence of the second ghost most exciting.
She decided to consult two other London mediums, to see
whether they might pick up something concerning his
identity. One of them was Trixie Allingham, who immedi-
ately “saw” a ghostly monk around the house and informed
Ruth that he had been attacked by someone who came in
while he was praying. The monk had defended himself by
striking the intruder with a chalice. She felt that the priest,
with the help of a soldier, had later buried the body and
the chalice. George Southhal, primarily a drowsing
medium, volunteered that there was a chalice buried on the
premises and described a set of cups, the largest of which
was reserved for a man of importance. He saw Morley as a
place similar to a pilgrims’ retreat. At the time of Miss
Plant’s sitting with George Southhal, neither of them knew
as yet that it had been a little-known pre- Reformation
practice to give a special chalice to a prior or bishop, since
he was not supposed to use the chalice used by ordinary
priests. All the mediums Ruth Plant sat with were
emphatic about some buried treasure and secret passages
leading from the house to a nearby church. The latter
could be confirmed during later research. As for the trea-
sure, it hasn’t been found yet, but the effort continues.
I decided to arrange for a visit to Norfolk at the earli-
est opportunity. That opportunity presented itself in Sep-
tember of 1966 when a film producer offered to come with
me to inspect potential sites for a documentary motion -
picture. I suggested Morley Old Hall and notified Ruth
Plant to get everything ready: arrange for a visit to the
Hall, suggest a suitable hotel nearby, notify Anglia TV of
our desire to see the controversial television documentary,
and, finally, to make everybody happy, let the local press
have a go at us — the American ghost-hunter and his
entourage paying a call to the local ghost. Miss Plant was
to serve as technical advisor to the film. (Unfortunately, the
film was never made, because the producer and I could not
see eye to eye on a treatment that would allow the story to
be told in exciting but scientifically valid terms.)
We rode up to Norwich from London. The project's
film producer, Gilbert Cates, who was a firm nonbeliever,
could not see how such things as ghosts were possible,
while the third member of the party, the distinguished
motion picture scenarist Victor Wolfson, argued equally
strongly that such things as spirits were indeed not only
possible but likely. At one point the discussion got so
heated that I began to worry whether we would ever arrive
together in Norfolk. Finally, Victor Wolfson changed the
subject. With a shrug, he commented, “I don’t think I can
convince Gil. He’s underdeveloped.” Gil, a good sport
under all circumstances, smiled. As for me, I began to
wonder about the wisdom of having brought my two fellow
adventurers at all.
Ruth Plant had advised us to bed down for the night
in Norfolk, but my producer friend was so eager to be
close to the “action” that he insisted we stay at the little
Abbey Hotel at Wyndmondham, which is very near to
Morley. We arrived at the hotel, tired and dirty, just in
time to have an evening meal.
Walking early, I looked out onto the church and
cemetery below my windows. It seemed very peaceful and
far removed from any ghostly encounters. I took a look at a
local map supplied to me by Ruth Plant. The city of Nor-
wich, where we would view the television film, was nine
miles to the east, while Morley Old Hall was a little over
twelve miles to the west.
The abbey church at Wyndmondham was an impres-
sive edifice for a village of this small size. Early in the
twelfth century, William D’Albini, who had been given the
town and manor of Wyndmondham, which included Mor-
ley, for his help with the Norman invasion of England,
established here a monastery consisting of a prior and
twelve Benedictine monks. The Benedictines, wearing black
habits, were the most aristocratic and wealthy of all the
religious orders, and, because of that, frequently came into
conflict with poorer, humbler religious orders. It also
appeared that Richard, William’s brother, was made Abbot
of St. Alban’s, in Hertfordshire, one of the largest Benedic-
tine monasteries in England, and Wyndmondham was a
sort of daughter house to St. Alban’s.
“But the relationship between the two houses was
never good, and the jealousies and rivalries between them
only ceased when, in 1448, Wyndmondham became an
abbey in its own right,” writes the Reverend J. G. Tansley
Thomas in his History of Wyndmondham Abbey. I had the
occasion to study all this while waiting for the car to pick
me up for the short journey to Morley Old Hall.
After twenty minutes or so, there appeared a clump
of bushes, followed by tall trees — trees that showed their
age and the fact that they had not been interfered with for
many years. All sorts of trees were growing wild here, and
as the road rounded a bend, they seemed to swallow us up.
We rumbled over a wooden bridge crossing a deep and
pungent moat. Directly behind it was a brick breastwork,
overgrown by all sorts of plants. This was the second,
inner moat, I was told later; the outer moat was farther
back and scarcely noticeable today, although in Saxon times
it was a major bulwark. The car stopped in front of the
imposing mansion, built of red brick and topped off by
grayish-blue shingles in the manner of the seventeenth cen-
tury. Part of the surrounding wall was still standing, and
there were two very tall trees inside the inner moat, which
gave Morley Old Hall a particularly romantic appearance.
The Hall rises three stories, and windows had been
replaced in many of them, attesting to the owner’s skill at
restoring what he had bought as a virtual ruin. We walked
up a beautifully restored staircase, to the second story,
where the Cotterill family lived at the time. Much of the
mansion was still uninhabitable. Some rooms consisted of
bare walls, while others still had ancient fireplaces in them,
staring at the visitor like toothless monsters.
Ruth Plant had managed to arrange it so that the
principal witnesses to the phenomena at the Hall would be
present for my interrogation, and so it was that we assem-
bled upstairs in the library — not the magnificent Stuart
library of old, but a reasonable facsimile. I first turned to
Frank Warren, a man in his middle seventies who had
once lived in the house, long before it passed into the pre-
sent owner's hands. He had come from the nearby village
to talk to me, and later I paid a courtesy call on his little
cottage, adorned with beautiful flowers from one end to the
other: Frank Warren was, and is, a dedicated gardener.
Like so many people of the area, he is "fay,” that is, psy-
chic, and he recalls vividly how he saw and actually
touched his pet dog two months after the animal had died.
But the human ghost at Morley Old Hall was another
matter.
“I was working in the garden,” he began, “and the
lady of the house said, 'I wish you’d clip around that win-
dow; those pieces annoy me.’ So I started to clip. It was a
beautiful day, with the sun shining. All at once, just like
that, there appeared a lady in the window, as close to me
as you are and she looked at me. She was tall, and I
noticed every detail of her dress. She looked at me and the
expression on her face never changed. Her lips never
moved and I thought to myself, ‘I can't stand it. I’ll go and
do some work in the vegetable garden.’ When I returned
she was gone, so I completed my job at the window. Well,
I used to go and have a meal with the housekeeper. I said,
‘There is something I’d like you to tell me: who is the
other lady living in this house?’
“‘Well,’ she replied, ‘there is no other lady living in
this house. You know exactly who is in this house.' I
The Ghost On Television
577
replied that I didn’t, because I had seen somebody here 1
had never seen before.”
Apparently the housekeeper was frightened by the
idea of having ghosts about the place, for Lady Ironside,
who was then the owner of the Hall, summoned the gar-
dener about the matter. "I can’t help it,” he replied to her
protestations. “I saw her with my own eyes.” It was
wartime and Lady Ironside was hard put to keep servants
about the place, so she asked the gardener please to keep
quiet about the ghost.
‘‘Did you ever see the lady ghost again?” I inquired.
"A fortnight afterwards I went past the other win-
dow, on the opposite side, and there sat the housekeeper
reading a book, and beside her sat the same lady. The
housekeeper didn’t see her. She wore a plain black dress,
which seemed a bit stiff and went right to the ground, so I
couldn’t see her feet. I had a quarter of an hour to examine
her, and I didn’t see her feet.”
Gordon Armstrong had come from London to talk to
us at Morley Old Hall. “This is my second visit,” he
began. “I was here toward the end of July last year, 1965. I
was working in London at the time and hitchhiked my way
through the night and arrived at Morley in the small hours
of the morning. Having walked up the road, I came into
the house — it must have been somewhere around 2 o’clock
in the morning — and at the time I had already heard a
ghost being there, or rumored to be there, so I was half
expecting to see one. Of course, I had never seen a ghost
before, so I was rather apprehensive. When I came up the
stairs in the dark, with only a small flashlight to help me, I
heard a sound that reminded me of a cat jumping from one
landing to another. This was on the third-floor landing.”
"Did you see a cat?” I asked.
“No, I didn’t see a cat. I thought I was alone, that is,
until I heard someone breathing in one of the rooms. Part
of the floor was only rafters, without floorboards, so one
could hear what went on on the floor below. It was one of
the rooms on the second floor where the noise came from. ”
“What did the breathing sound like?”
“I thought I heard a man breathing rather heavily.”
“What did you do next?”
"I was sitting up there on these rafters, and it was
pretty dark. I didn’t feel like meeting anyone, so I slept
against a wall up there. I must have been asleep for a cou-
ple of hours. The wind was blowing, and I woke up once
and went back to sleep again, and when I came to the sec-
ond time it was just getting light. I went down and
explored the house further and found the room where the
noise had come from, and there was a sort of couch there,
so I lay down for a bit and dozed off for another couple of
hours. I looked at the room and realized that no one had
slept there during the night.”
Ruth Plant remarked at this point that the area where
Mr. Armstrong had heard the heavy breathing was the
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
same spot where her friend from Norway had also heard
breathing, though she thought it could have been a woman,
not necessarily a man.
Later on, the television people ran the controversial
documentary for us. None of us saw the monk. We
stopped action at the spot where thirty-one people said that
they had seen the bearded monk, but all we could see were
two men in conversation.
Nevertheless, the question of identifying the two
ghosts at Morley intrigued me. This was one of the oldest
and most fought-over spots in all of England, and the emo-
tional imprint of many periods was undoubtedly still very
strong. In antiquity the Iceni lived in this area. Their
famous Queen Boadicea battled the Romans here in the
first century. Later the Saxons made it a stronghold, and
there is undoubtedly much undiscovered treasure in the
ground. “A few years ago a ploughman turned up a won-
derful collection of Saxon silver not far from Morley,”
Ruth Plant, ever the historian, explained. Scandinavian
raiders had been there at an early stage: the word mor in
Morley means mother in Norwegian. In 1066 a survey of
all the land in England was undertaken. Known as the
Domesday Book, it listed Morlea as belonging to one
William de Warrenne. He was a wealthy Norman baron
who took part in the Battle of Hastings. The Domesday
Book also states that the land was let out to a priest and
five freemen. Eventually the manor passed from the War-
renne family into the hands of the Morleys, and in 1 545 it
was sold to Martin Sedley, a Roman Catholic, whose fam-
ily held it until 1789, when the direct line died out. It
appears that the house fell into disrepair soon after, for,
according to Ruth Plant, the Norfolk Directory of 1836
describes it even then as a “farmhouse encompassed by a
deep moat.” White’s Norfolk Directory of 1864 named a
certain Graber Brown as Lord of the Manor, and called
Morley Old Hall “an Elizabethan house with a moat
around it now used as a farmhouse.” Eventually General
Lord Ironside, World War I hero, bought it, but he passed
on soon afterwards, and it passed into the hands of the
Cotterills.
Since we could not stay on in Norfolk beyond the
two days assigned to our visit, I entrusted further research
to Ruth Plant. She concentrated on the monk and, whether
through historical intuition or her psychic ability, shortly
came up with some strange facts about one of the abbots of
nearby Wyndmondham Abbey. “I unearthed the extraordi-
nary fact that one of the abbots went completely mad and
was so violent he was put into chains and died in them at
Binham Priory. I believe I can find out more about this if I
go to St. Alban’s Abbey where the records are kept.”
I encouraged Ruth to undertake that journey, and a
few months later she contacted me again.
Ruth had managed to get hold of a rare book in a
London library which contained a commentary on the
records of St. Alban's Abbey done by an eighteenth-
century vicar. It contained the story of a prior of Wynd-
mondham whose name was Alexander de Langley. “He
578
went violently mad while in office at Wyndmondham and
was recalled to St. Alban's,” Ruth Plant informed me. “He
lived around 1130 and died in chains at Binham Priory,
about ten miles from Morley. I am sure Alexander de Lan-
gley, the mad prior, is the ghostly monk.” In a further
effort to throw light on the two ghosts at Morley, Ruth
visited Lady Ironside, who resided at Hampton Court.
“I had agreed with Ricky Cotterill not to mention the
ghostly side, "Ruth Plant explained to me. “But she
greeted me by remarking about ‘that lovely Morley and the
lovely lady who is seen standing at the window looking at
the view.’ She then asked me if I had ever visited it, mak-
ing it quite clear she knew nothing of my psychic experi-
ences concerning it. She added that many people have
claimed to have seen her, though she didn't think that any
of them would still be alive in the village to talk about it
now.”
But who was the ghostly lady at the window? Ruth
Plant showed Lady Ironside the letters written to Anglia
TV. One of the letters describes not a monk but a ghostly
woman wearing a mantilla. Lady Ironside felt that the
ghost must be Anne Shelton, daughter of one of the great
supporters of Mary Tudor, which would account for the
impression received by Ruth Plant that the female ghost
was Catholic, and for her hearing a Hail Mary.
"As regards the monk, Lady Ironside told me that
when they went there, Frank Warren’s brother Guy, who
farmed the place, told them, ‘There is an old monk about
the place, but you have no need to take any notice of him.’
But she knew nothing about the coffin lid mentioned by
Frank Warren.”
Apparently, when Frank Warren was first being
interviewed by Ruth Plant, he recalled Lord Ironside’s
coming out of the house one day carrying the stone lid of a
coffin saying, “This belonged to a monk.”
“But Lady Ironside mentioned that men, while exca-
vating, had found a square stone with the name ALBINI on
it in Roman capitals. And since Wyndmondham was
founded by Albini, the Norman baron who later became
the Earl of Arundel and still later the Duke of Norfolk, the
question is, was this the chapel of the Albinis, and was
Morley a cell of Wyndmondham Abbey and of the Bene-
dictine order?”
There you have it: a sixteenth-century Tudor lady,
staying on forever in what was once her home, curiously
looking out at a forever changing world; and a twelfth-cen-
tury monk, gone mad, forced to die in chains ten miles
from where he used to live. Perhaps he was drawn back to
his house because it was there that he had committed his
crime — killing a man, even if in self-defense, with a holy
object as his weapon, thus compounding the crime. Was it
the crime that had turned Alexander de Langley into a
madman, or was it the madman in him that made him
commit the crime?
* 125
The Gray Man of Pawley’s Island
(South Carolina)
Susan D. of Columbia, South Carolina, was born in
Texas and was twenty-eight years old. Her father was in
the service at first and after the war her parents moved to
South Carolina, where her father’s family had lived for
generations. Susan is the eldest of three sisters. They grew
up in a small town in the upper section of the state and the
moved to Columbia, where her father became the superin-
tendent of a state boarding school for unusual students. At
that point Susan was seventeen. Later she entered a local
college and stayed for two years. She is presently living
with her husband, who is also in education, and they have
a little boy. Because of a background of premonitions she
had some interest in studying psychic phenomena, but this
interest was rather on the vague side.
The first complete incident Susan can remember hap-
pened when she was just twelve years old. At that time she
had spent the night with her grandmother, also named
Susan. During the night the little girl dreamed her grand-
mother had died. She was awakened from her dream by her
cousin Kenneth with the sad news that her grandmother
had indeed died during the night.
There had always been a close relationship between
her and her father, so when her father was taken to the
hospital with a heart attack in 1967 she was naturally con-
cerned. After a while the doctors allowed him to return to
his home life, and by the time her little boy was a year old
in March 1968 her father seemed completely well and there
was no thought of further illness on the family’s mind.
Two days after they had all been together for the first
birthday celebration of her little boy she awoke in the mid-
dle of the night with an overpowering anxiety about her
father’s well-being. She became convinced that her father
would leave them soon. The next morning she telephoned
her sister and started to discuss her concern for her father.
At that moment her father interrupted her call by asking
her sister to get her mother immediately. He died on the
way to the hospital that very afternoon.
Susan's father had a very close friend by the name of
Joe F. with whom he had shared a great love of college
football games. Joe F. had passed on a short time before. A
The Gray Man of Pawley’s Island
(South Carolina)
579
little later, Susan and her husband attended one of the
games of the University of South Carolina. This was in the
fall of 1968. On the way to their seats Susan looked up
toward the rear section of the arena and quickly turned her
head back to her husband. She was so upset at what she
saw that it took her a moment to calm down and take her
seat. There, not more than eight feet away from her, stood
her late father just as he had looked in life. Moreover, she
heard him speak to her clearly and in his usual tone of
voice. Her husband had not noticed anything. She decided
not to tell him about it. As she slowly turned her head
back to where they had come from she noticed her father
again. This time Joe F., his lifelong friend, was with him.
The two dead men were walking down the walkway in
front of the seats and she had a good opportunity to see
them clearly. They seemed as much alive then as they had
ever been when she knew them both in the flesh.
Susan D. has an aunt by the name of Mrs. Fred V.
They had frequently discussed the possibility of life after
death and psychic phenomena in general, especially after
the death of the aunt’s husband, which had come rather
unexpectedly. It was then that the two women realized that
they had shared a similar extraordinary experience. Mrs.
Fred V. had also gone to a football game at the University
of South Carolina, but her visit was a week later, for a dif-
ferent game than Susan’s had been. Since the two women
had not met for some time there had been no opportunity
to discuss Susan’s original psychic experience at the foot-
ball game with her aunt. Nevertheless, Mrs. V. told her
niece that something quite extraordinary had happened to
her at that particular football game. She too had seen the
two dead men watch the game as if they were still very
much in the flesh. To Mrs. V. this was a signal that her
own husband was to join them, for the three had been very
good and close friends in life. As it happened she was
right. He passed on soon afterwards.
Susan D. has heard the voice of her father since then
on several occasions, although she hasn’t seen him again. It
appears that her father intercedes frequently when Susan is
about to lose her temper in some matter or take a wrong
step. On such occasions she hears his voice telling her to
take it easy.
* * *
One of the best known ghosts of South Carolina’s
low country is the so-called Gray Man of Pawley's Island.
A number of local people claim they have seen him gazing
seaward from the dunes, especially when a hurricane is
about to break. He is supposed to warn of impending dis-
aster. Who the Gray Man of Pawley’s Island is is open to
question. According to A Perceptive Survey of South Car-
olina Ghosts by Worth Gatewood, published in 1962, he
may be the original Percival Pawley who so loved his
island that he felt impelled to watch over it even after he
passed on. But Mr. Gatewood gives more credence to a
beautiful and romantic account of the origin of the specter.
According to this story, a young man who was to be mar-
ried to a local belle left for New York to attend to some
business but on his way back was shipwrecked and lost at
sea. After a year’s time the young woman married his best
friend and settled down on Pawley’s Island with her new
husband. Years later the original young man returned,
again shipwrecked and rescued by one of his former
fiancee’s servants.
When he realized that his love had married in the
meantime, he drowned himself at the nearby shore. All this
happened, if we believe it happened, a long time ago,
because the Gray Man has been seen ever since 1822, or
perhaps even earlier than that. A Mrs. Eileen Weaver,
according to Mr. Gatewood’s account, saw the specter on
her veranda and it was indeed a dim outline of a man in
gray. There had been unexplained footsteps on her veranda
and doors opening and closing by themselves, untouched
by human hands.
A businessman by the name of William Collins who
did not believe in ghosts, not even in South Carolina
ghosts, found himself on the lookout to check on the rising
surf on the morning of famed Hurricane Hazel. As he was
walking down the dunes he noticed the figure of a man
standing on the beach looking seaward. Collins challenged
him, thinking that perhaps he was a neighbor who had
come out to check on the rising tide, but the stranger paid
no attention. Busy with his task, Collins forgot about this
and by the time he looked up the stranger had gone.
According to the weather forecast, however, the hurricane
had shifted directions and was not likely to hit the area, so
Collins and his family went to bed that night, sure the
worst was over. At 5 o’clock in the morning he was
aroused from bed by heavy pounding on his door. Opening
it, he could feel the house shake from the wind rising to
tremendous force. On his veranda stood a stranger wearing
a gray fishing cap and a common work shirt and pants, all
of it in gray. He told Collins to get off the beach since the
storm was coming in. Collins thanked him and ran upstairs
to wake his family. After the excitement of the storm had
passed Collins wondered about the man who had warned
him to get off the island. Intelligently he investigated the
matter, only to find that no one had seen the man, nor had
any of his neighbors had a guest fitting his description.
The state highway patrolman on duty also had not seen
anyone come or go, and there is only one access road, the
causeway over the marshes.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
580
* 126
Haunted Westover (Virginia)
With one EXCEPTION no state in the Union is more
often concerned with hauntings, in the public mind, than is
Virginia. That is so because the rolling hills south of
Washington, dotted as they are with magnificent manor
houses, many of them dating back to colonial days, seem to
be the kind of atmosphere ghosts prefer. The sole excep-
tion to this public image are the New England mansions
perched perilously atop storm-swept cliffs where, usually
during storms, the ghosts of sea captains still walk and the
unwary traveler is frightened to death. That, at least, is the
impression still rampant among the uninstructed, although
it is perfectly true that there are sea captains in New Eng-
land manor houses walking long after their time on earth
has expired.
But Virginia, which is primarily horse country and
was settled originally by people from the Anglo-Saxon
countries, is very much like England in many respects.
Even the ghosts, such as they are, that continue a shadowy
existence in some of the estates and plantation houses are
similar in their habits to those found in English stately
homes. Almost “the first state in the Union” because of its
early connection with the creation of the country and
because it was the home of so many of the leaders of the
Revolutionary War, Virginia must be considered the closest
to an oligarchic state in America. Divided among a small
number of illustrious families, Virginia has for a long time
been a feudal barony of sorts, and to this very day the
great houses attest to the way this first among the thirteen
colonies developed. Even though the plantations that were
once the lifeblood of these houses are no longer in exis-
tence, the houses themselves continue to flourish because
the Virginians have a keen sense of history and tradition.
Many of the houses, of course, have been restored because
of decay. Nevertheless, there are still some which have
stood the test of time and survived from their seventeenth-
or eighteenth-century origins almost intact to this day.
Foremost among such manor houses is the magnifi-
cent estate of Westover on the James River. Built originally
in 1730 by William Byrd II, the man who founded Rich-
mond, it stands amid an 1 1 ,000-acre working farm. The
formal gardens surrounding the house are open to the pub-
lic, but the house itself is not. A magnificent eighteenth-
century ceiling in the entrance hall matches the paneling of
the walls. Throughout the manor house there is evidence of
grandeur. This is not the home of a country squire but of a
statesman of great wealth. When William Byrd was killed
during the Revolutionary War, a descendant of the widow
sold the original furniture in 1813. Eventually the house
passed into the hands of Mrs. Bruce Crane Fisher. Her
grandfather had bought the house in 1921 and became the
eleventh owner since the plantation had been in existence.
Mrs. Fisher has furnished the house in recent years with
authentic eighteenth-century English and European furni-
ture to restore it as closely as possible to the original
appearance. The Georgian house stands amid tall old trees
and consists of a central portion and two wings. The cen-
tral portion has three stories of elegant brickwork and two
tall chimneys. The two wings were originally not connected
to the center portion of the house, but the right wing had
to be restored in 1900 since it had been damaged by fire
from a shelling during the Civil War. At that time the two
wings were connected to the house and are now accessible
directly from the main portion. The main entrance faces
the James River and has the original wrought-iron entrance
gate with stone eagles surmounting the gateposts. Thus,
with minimal additions and restorations, the house today
presents pretty much the same picture it did when it was
first built in 1730.
Colonel Byrd took his beautiful daughter Evelyn,
pronounced Eeveiyn in Virginia, to London for the corona-
tion of King George I. That was in 1717 when the great
men of the colonies, when they could afford it, would come
to the mother country when the occasion arose. Evelyn, at
the time, was eighteen years old and her father decided to
leave her in England to be educated. Soon he received dis-
quieting news from his confidants at the London court. It
appeared that Evelyn had seen with a certain Charles Mor-
daunt and that the two young people were hopelessly in
love with each other. Normally this would be a matter for
rejoicing, but not so in this case. Charles was an ardent
Roman Catholic and the grandson of the Earl of Petersbor-
ough. Colonel Byrd, on the other hand was politically and
personally a staunch Protestant, and the idea of his daugh-
ter marrying into the enemy camp, so to speak, was totally
unacceptable to him. Immediately he ordered her to return
to Westover and Evelyn had no choice but to obey. As
soon as she arrived at the family plantation she went into
isolation. She refused to see any other suitors her father
sent her or to consider, or even to discuss, the possibility of
marriage.
This went on for some time, and Evelyn quite liter-
ally "pined away” to death. Some weeks before her death,
however, she had a very emotional discussion with her best
friend, Anne Harrison. The two girls were walking up a
hill when Evelyn, feeling faint, knew that her days were
numbered. She turned to her friend and promised her that
she would return after her death. Mrs. Harrison did not
take this very seriously, but she knew that Evelyn was not
well and her death did not come as a shock. The following
spring, after Westover had somehow returned to a degree
of normalcy and the tragic events of the previous year were
not so strongly in evidence, Mrs. Harrison was walking in
the garden sadly remembering what had transpired the year
before. Suddenly she saw her old friend standing beside her
in a dazzling white gown. The vision then drifted forward
two steps, waved its hand at her and smiled. An instant
Haunted Westover (Virginia)
581
later it had vanished. At the time of her untimely death
Evelyn Byrd had been twenty-nine years of age, but in the
apparition she seemed much younger and lovelier than she
had appeared toward the end of her life. The specter has
reappeared from time to time to a number of people, both
those who live in the area and those who are guests at
Westover. A lady who lives nearby who has been there for
nearly three decades saw her in the mid-1960s. She had
been coming out of the front door one summer and was
walking down the path when she looked back toward the
house and saw a woman come out behind her. At first she
thought it was a friend and stopped at the gate to wait for
her. When the woman came closer, however, she didn't
recognize her. There was something very strange about the
woman coming toward her. There seemed to be a glow all
about her person, her black hair, and the white dress.
When the woman had arrived close to her she stopped and
seemed to sink into the ground.
On December 11, 1929, some guests from Washing-
ton were staying at Westover, and on the evening of their
arrival the conversation turned to ghosts. The house was
then owned by Mr. and Mrs. Richard H. Crane, who
explained that they themselves had not seen the ghost dur-
ing their tenancy. One of the house guests retired to the
room assigned to her on the side of the house overlooking
the great gates from which one has a fine view into the for-
mal gardens. Sometime that night Mrs. Crane awoke and
went to the window. There was no apparent reason for her
behavior. It was quite dark outside and very quiet. As she
glanced out the window she saw the figure of Evelyn Byrd.
She described the apparition to her hosts as filmy, nebu-
lous, and cloudy, so transparent that no features could be
distinguished, only a gauzy texture of a woman’s form.
The figure seemed to be floating a little above the lawn and
almost on the level of the window itself. As she looked at it
almost transfixed, the apparition acknowledged her by rais-
ing her hand and motioning to her to go back into the
room and away from the window. The gesture seemed so
imperative that the house guest obeyed it.
When I requested permission to investigate the house
I was politely denied access. Perhaps the present owners
are afraid that I might induce the lovely Evelyn to leave
Westover for a better life in paradise, and that would never
do, for Westover is, after all, the nearest thing to paradise
on earth, at least to an eighteenth -century lass whose lover
has gone away. Had I had the opportunity to come into
contact with her through some reputable medium, perhaps
I might have reunited the two in a land and under condi-
tions where her stern father Colonel Byrd could no longer
keep them apart.
Another famous Virginia mansion is Blandfield,
which has more than one ghost. In the late 1960s the Rich-
mond Times Dispatch made a survey of some of the better
ghost houses in the area. Tom Howard interviewed a num-
ber of people who owned such houses and he also jour-
neyed up to Blandfield to interview the owner. Here is his
report.
Blandfield, an eighteenth century mansion in Essex
County, has been frequented by a variety of spooks for
two centuries. They’ve come as eerie lights in the night
and wispy figures of men and women stalking through
the halls.
Mrs. William Nash Beverley, wife of the owner,
related that about five years ago house guests reported
apparitions on two occasions. The first was in a long,
flowered dress walking across the upstairs hall. Everyone
searched the home, but the stranger wasn’t found. Two
days later, a second guest saw a woman, in a long, dark
skirt, cross a downstairs hall, and enter a room. Again
an investigation found no one, said Mrs. Beverley.
The most recent episode came several months before,
she said. Mrs. Beverley recounted the experience. She
and two dogs were in the downstairs library one after-
noon and the only other person in the house was an ill
relative who she knew was asleep in an upstairs bed-
room. Suddenly, heavy footsteps sounded in the room
directly overhead. Startled, she listened. The dogs
sprang to their feet, hair bristling.
“First I thought I would take a shotgun and go up,"
said Mrs. Beverley. “Then I thought how silly that was.
But I was uneasy, so I put a leash on each dog and we
rushed up the steps. As I went up the steps, the dogs
became more excited, their hair stood straight up.”
She went straight to the bedroom of her relative, who
was lying quietly in bed, still asleep. The dogs strained
at the leash and pulled toward the room where she
heard the heavy footsteps. She opened the door and the
dogs bounded in fiercely. . .but there was no one there.
She explored every hiding place in the room, but found
no trace of a living human being. The dogs quieted
down and she decided that, at last, she had heard one of
the famed Blandfield ghosts.
There is a rocking chair ghost at Shirley plantation in
Chase City and another rocking chair ghost at Ash Lawn,
once the home of President James Monroe, and the ghost
of Governor Kemper is said to still inhabit Walnut Hill,
his erstwhile home. I have reported a number of such cases
in an earlier book called Ghosts I’ve Met. In fact, the area
around Charlottesville, which I investigated personally in
1965, abounds with authentic hauntings.
It is just possible that someone who is psychic and
who might have passed the building now housing the
Health, Education and Welfare Department in Char-
lottesville might feel peculiar, perhaps a chill or two, per-
haps only a sense of displacement in time.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
582
* 127
The Case of the I.R.A. Ghosts
It WAS A sunny, pleasantly comfortable day when the first
expedition on Irish soil started out from the elegant con-
fines of Dromoland Castle. Soon we left behind the inter-
national feeling of the main highway, and made our way
towards the southern shore of the river Shannon which at
this point is as wide as a lake.
We left behind us the bleak masonry of Limerick
City, with its factories and wharves, and people going off
to work. For it was a weekday and the non-tourist popula-
tion of Ireland had other things to do than loaf around.
At Tarbert, we left the winding shore road and
struck out inland, directly south for Listowel. We arrived
in this sleepy old town around noon, just in time to have
lunch at the local inn, its only hotel of some size, set back
to the side of the old square still covered by cobblestones
as in centuries gone by.
It was quite a sight we gave the townspeople, Cather-
ine, elegant as ever, Sybil Leek in purple, and me, heavily
burdened with tape recorders and cameras. It is to the eter-
nal credit of the people of Listowel that no one ever asked
us any questions, or perhaps this is part of the Irish spirit
— to accept people as they are. At any rate, we had a pleas-
ant meal and I went to the telephone to see what I could
do about some local help.
Now the telephone is something of a rarity in West-
ern Ireland. I mean one that works.
Our first encounter with this intrusion of the twenti-
eth century into Irish life came at Kilcolgan Castle, that
non -castle we never got to sleep in. There was a phone
there which I at first took for a toy. It was light and the
cord seemed to lead nowhere, but little did I know that this
was it — the phone. It actually works at times, except that
several hours each day it is off. The trouble is, they never
tell you when. Consequently it is best to have emergencies
only after you’ve checked the phone.
Here in Listowel I also discovered that you needed
certain coins to operate the telephone properly. So I went
into the bar to get some change, for to carry a large supply
of pennies around was not my idea of light travelling.
The traditional Irish friendliness was quite evident
here, and more so in the bar. There were only two guests
having a drink at the counter, one of them an Irish priest
originally from San Francisco, who had decided to return
to Listowel and really live. I had been given the name of a
playwright named Eamon Keane who might be in a posi-
tion to help me find Mr. Maloney’s haunted houses. I had
heard about these haunted houses from Mr. Maloney him-
self in New York.
* * *
I was doing a radio program in New York in May
1965 on which I suggested that any Irishman with an
authentic experience involving ghosts should contact me.
One of those who rose to the occasion was Patrick
Maloney of Queens Village, about an hour from my home.
Mr. Maloney had lived in New York for forty-three years,
but had originally come from Listowel, Ireland. Mr. Mal-
oney is a man in his early sixties, full of good cheer and
about as factual as any man in his position would be. For
Mr. Maloney is the supervisor of hospital aides in one of
the larger mental institutions near New York. His work
demands a great deal of common sense, dealing, as he does,
with those who have lost theirs. As if his relationship with
things medical were not enough to give Mr. Maloney a
sense of caution, he is also an accomplished amateur magi-
cian and a student of hypnosis. He knows all about the
tricks of the mind and the tricks of clever prestidigitators.
He has met such famous magic craftsmen as Dunninger
and Harry Blackstone, and to this day attends weekly
meetings of the magicians’ circle in New York, to keep up
on the latest tricks and to sharpen his sense of illusion.
Now if there is one group of diehard skeptics, it is
the magicians. To most magicians, all psychic manifesta-
tions must be fraudulent because they can make some of
them. But the inability of most sleight-of-hand artists to
accept the reality of ESP is based on a philosophical con-
cept. To them, all is material, and if there are illusions they
did not create, then their whole world is no longer secure.
To his eternal credit, Patrick Maloney is an exception
to this breed. That this is so is due largely to his own psy-
chic experiences. He is a Roman Catholic in good standing,
married, and a grandfather many times over. One of his
married daughters also has had psychic experiences, prov-
ing again that the talent does sometimes get handed down
in a family, usually on the female side.
“I always keep an open mind; that's the way we
learn,” he commented in his note to me.
Born in Ireland in 1901, he went to National School
and finished the eighth grade. Later he lived in England
for a few years prior to settling in America. It was during
his youth in Ireland that he became aware of his psychic
gifts.
I met Patrick Maloney and we went over his experi-
ences in great detail.
“It was the year 1908 when I had my first memorable
experience,” he began, "and I was about seven years old at
the time. We were living in the town of Listowel, County
Kerry, in an old house on Convent Street. The house is
still standing; it is built of limestone and has a slate roof.
"That day I was home, taking care of one of my
younger brothers who was still a baby in a crib. My
mother had gone down to the store, so while she was out, I
went upstairs to look at some picture books which were
kept on the first landing of the stairs. Upstairs there were
The Case of the I.R.A. Ghosts
583
The ira ghost cross in Ireland where the
ambush was
two empty rooms, one facing the other, and they were not
used by us.
“I was going over the picture books, when something
made me look up.”
"There, on the second landing, was a little man no
more than five feet tall, beckoning me with his right hand
to come to him!”
"I can see him as clearly today as if it had just hap-
pened. He wore black clothes and his skin was dark, the
color of copper, and on his head he had a skull cap with
brass bells, and all the time he was laughing and motioning
me to come up.”
“Weren’t you scared?” I interjected. What a strange
sight this must have been in the sleepy little town of
Listowel.
Mr. Maloney shook his head.
“Not at all,” he said. “Maybe I was too young to be
afraid properly, but I knew as young as I was that this was
a strange thing, so I put my books down and went back
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
downstairs. I had seen the little man come from a totally
empty room and walk into another equally empty room,
and I knew there was something queer about all this. But I
never told my mother about it until I was a grown man.”
“Did your mother offer any explanation?”
“No, she didn’t. She just listened quietly and never
said a word. To this day I have no idea who the little man
was.”
I wondered about it myself and made a mental note
to have a look at the house on Convent Street, Listowel.
But the encounter with the unknown that puzzled
him most happened in 1918 when Patrick Maloney was 17
years of age. At that time there was a great deal of what
the Irish euphemistically call “the trouble” — guerrilla war-
fare between the British occupation forces and the outlawed
I.R.A., the Irish Republican Army. This group of citizen-
soldiers contributed considerably to Irish independence
later, and there is scarcely a spot in all Ireland where there
isn’t a grave or two of these “freedom fighters.” Unfortu-
nately, when the Irish Republic came into being and nor-
mal relations returned between the English and their
584
erstwhile enemies, the I.R.A. decided to continue the
struggle.
Principally, the six northern counties known as
Ulster are the bone of contention. The Irish government in
Dublin would like to have solved the problem peacefully
and gradually, but the I.R.A. could not wait, so there was
violence once again, frequently to the detriment of famed
landmarks, until eventually the I.R.A. was outlawed by its
own government.
The "Black and Tans’’ of 1918 engaged in battles
and skirmishes all over the land. Nobody could be sure
that a stray bullet would not hit an innocent bystander.
About two miles outside the town of Listowel, there was a
gate in the side of the road. Behind it, the British were
waiting. An I.R.A. patrol, consisting of three men, was
approaching the spot. In the ensuing ambush, two of the
Irish irregulars were killed by the British. Years later, a
large Celtic cross was erected over the graves, but the story
itself, being similar to so many tragedies of like nature all
over Ireland, became dimmed, and even the local people
scarcely remember the spot.
That moonlight night in 1918, however, a young
Paddy Maloney and a friend, Moss Barney, of Ballybun-
non, Kerry, were bicycling down that road, eager to get to
Listowel for the night. They had been to a place called
Abbyfeale, about five miles away, to see a circus. It was the
month of June, and around one in the morning, with the
moon illuminating the road rather well. At that time, the
monument did not exist, of course, and the shooting was
still within memory. But the two travellers gave it no
thought. It did not concern them; they were in a gay mood
after a pleasant evening at the circus.
When they reached the spot in the road where the
ambush had happened, something stopped them in their
tracks. No matter how hard Patrick tried to ride on, he
could not move from the spot.
“It felt as if someone were in back of us, holding on
to our bicycles. I felt clammy and moist, and the sense of a
presence behind me trying to prevent me from going down
that road was very strong. I had the sensation that someone
was trying to keep us from running into trouble farther down
the road.
“I tried to bicycle as hard as I could, but to no avail.
Yet, the road was level, with a stretch of wooded section
for at least 500 feet. I felt myself weaken, and the cold
sweat broke out all over me. I tried to tell Moss about my
difficulties but found my tongue was paralyzed.
“With a last surge of power, I pushed on and finally
broke away from the ‘thing’ behind me. As soon as we
came out of the wooded section our bikes were free as
before. We both jumped off and I started to tell Moss
what I had experienced — only to find that he, too, had felt
the same uncanny weight. He, too, was unable to talk for a
while.
“’I’ll never ride this road again at night,’ he finally
said, and meant it.”
“Did you have other psychic experiences after that?”
I asked, for it was plain to me that Patrick Maloney was
mediumistic to a degree, having experienced such physical
manifestations.
“Many times,” he acknowledged.
"When I worked as a psychiatric aide in one of the
hospitals here,” Maloney added, “I had a most unusual
experience. It was late at night and I was very tired. I went
into a linen room there, and I lay down on a table to rest a
bit, afraid I might fall asleep during the night when I was
on duty. I was only down about five minutes, with a blan-
ket underneath me, when someone came along and pulled
that blanket from under me. Now I weigh over two hun-
dred pounds, and yet it all happened so fast I had that
blanket on top of me before I knew it.”
“Was there anyone else in the room?” I inquired.
"Nobody in the room, nobody in the ward, just
myself.”
“What did you do?”
“I jumped up and looked around. The patients were
all sleeping. So I went back to rest. Then it happened
again, only this time it felt like a big, heavy hand feeling
my back. That did it. I came out and locked the room up.”
“What did you make of it?” I said.
"When I went to investigate the ward, I found a
patient dead. He had died in his sleep. He was an ex-
boxer. He had been under my personal care.”
“I guess he wanted to let you know he was going
on,” I said. "Any other uncanny experiences?”
"Oh yes,” Maloney said matter-of-fact like, "my son
died in 1945, and a couple of months after he died, I was
sitting in my home watching television. I was comfortable,
with my legs stretched out, when I felt a person cross by
my legs very fast. It made a swishing sound. I looked at
my wife, but she had not moved at all. I knew it was my
son, for he had a peculiar walk.”
Maloney has had numerous true dreams, and often
knows when a person is "not long for this world.” Like the
co-worker at the hospital whom he had dubbed the “dead
man.” For two years he did not realize why he felt that
way about his colleague. Then the man committed suicide.
In 1946 he returned to Ireland again after a long
absence. Suddenly, in his hotel room, he heard his wife
Catherine’s voice clear across from America. That week,
her mother died.
Maloney takes his gift casually. He neither denies it
nor does he brag about it. He is very Irish about it all.
* * *
When the priest from San Francisco heard I was try-
ing to phone Eamon Keane for an appointment, he
laughed.
"Nonsense,” he intoned, “just go to his house and
introduce yourself. We’re all very friendly here.”
The Case of the I.R.A. Ghosts
585
Mr. Keane, it turned out, also had an unlisted num-
ber. Imagine, an unlisted number in Listowel! But play-
wrights will have ideas.
Lunch being done with, we proceeded to find Mr.
Keane. I had also been informed that in addition to play-
writing, he owned a bar. We walked up the road and
found ourselves in front of a bar marked "Keane’s.” Had
we come to the right place? We had not.
"You want my brother,” the owner said, and off we
went again, a block farther up the road, to another bar, also
marked “Keane’s.” In fact, I don’t recall much else on that
street except bars — here called pubs.
Mr. Keane was most helpful. He knew what I was
looking for, and he offered to take me to a man who had
had some experiences and could tell me about them first-
hand. So we left again and drove down a few blocks to a
small house the ground floor of which was occupied by a
store. The owner of the store, it developed, was the man to
see. He dealt in fishing tackle.
John Garen had lived here for fifty-seven years and
he had an accent to prove it.
I asked if he knew of any ghosts.
“Right here in this street, sir,” he replied, “there is a
house with a little brook beside it, and there was a family
by the name of Loughneanes living in it. It’s on Convent
Street and called Glauna Foka.”
“What does this mean?” I asked, my Gaelic being
extremely weak.
“Glen of the Fairies,” Mr. Garen replied. "I’ve never
seen any, but it seems that chairs and everything that was
inside the house would be thrown out the windows, and
you’d hear the glass crashing, and when you'd come
around there ’d be nobody there. The people had to move
out because of it. This was about sixty years ago.”
I thanked Mr. Garen for his information, such as it
was, and wished him the top of the afternoon. Then we
drove on and stopped in front of the house on Convent
Street where Patrick Maloney had seen the little fellow
with the fool’s cap.
The house had obviously been reconditioned and did
not show its age at all. It was a two-story affair, with a gar-
den in back, and Sybil Leek went across the street to have
a quiet look at it. We could not get in, for the present
owners were not too keen on the subject of ghosts. Mr.
Garen asked us not to mention his name, in particular, for
in a town the size of Listowel, everything gets around
eventually.
“What do you sense here?” I asked Sybil, who of
course knew nothing whatever of Patrick Maloney, his
experiences, or even Mr. Garen’s recent talk.
“There undoubtedly have been some manifestations
in the upper right-hand room,” Sybil said succinctly, “and
I think this has an association with water. I think the pre-
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
vious owner was in some occupation in which water was
very important. Someone associated with a mill; I think.”
Sybil did not know that there was a brook beside the
house, nor that there had once been a mill not far away.
"How long ago do you think this happened?”
“About two hundred years ago,” she replied. “On the
side of the house where there is no building at the
moment, I can see, in my mind’s eye, a smaller building,
rather flat.”
“How far back do you feel manifestations took place
here?”
“About four years ago, then around 1948, and before
that, about a hundred and twenty years ago. There has
been some tragedy connected with water. I sense some
wheels around that mill, and a name that sounds like
Troon to me.”
We drove on, out of Listowel now, towards where
the mill once stood.
“On the right side,” Sybil murmured, and Mr. Keane
confirmed the location.
Since we could not get into the house itself I decided
it was best to look into still another house Patrick Maloney
had told me about. Mr. Keane excused himself and hurried
back to his bar. We drove on into the open countryside
looking for a farm house of which we knew little, if
anything.
Mr. Maloney had provided me with a rough, hand-
drawn map and it came in handy.
“The house in Greenville Road,” he had explained,
“near the mill, had some poltergeist activity when I was
there. The kitchen is haunted, and the bedroom also.
Clothes used to be pulled off people in bed and the room
used to fill up with roaches — millions of them — and then
they would vanish into thin air; faces were seen at the win-
dows, looking in. Fights were taking place, tables pushed
around and chairs also, and the cups and saucers would
dance on their shelves in the closet. The Connors who
lived there are all dead now, and others live there, but I
don’t know them. This was about forty-five years ago.”
All this came to mind again as we rode down the
bumpy road looking for the old Connors house.
A smallish one-story farm house was pointed out to
us by an elderly man working beside the road. It turned
out to be a Connors house all right, but the wrong Con-
nors. Our Connors were farther down the road, and finally
we found the house that fit Maloney’s description and
map.
Someone had evidently just moved in recently and
was in the process of fixing it up. This activity had not yet
extended to the garden around the house, which was lovely
in its wild ways, totally untouched by human hands for
years, evidently.
There was a broad iron gate closing off the garden
from the road. The sun was not so high any more and the
picture was one of utmost peace and tranquillity. Carefully
— for there are more dogs in Ireland than anywhere else in
586
the world — carefully I opened the gate and walked towards
the house. My feet sank into the wet ground but I carried
on. At the door I was greeted by a young woman in her
late twenties who bid us welcome in the typical Irish coun-
try way of welcoming a stranger. Catherine and Sybil came
along a moment later, and we had a look at what was once
the haunted house of the Connors.
“Mrs. Healy,” I began, "you moved in here a few
days ago. This used to be the Connors house — am I right?”
“That is correct,” she replied in almost brogue-free
speech. "It is a pretty old house, but it has been recondi-
tioned recently.”
The house was a happy one to her; at any rate nei-
ther she nor her husband nor their small child had noticed
anything unusual — yet.
Sybil stepped inside the house now. It was really
nothing more than a smallish kitchen, a hall, and a bed-
room, all on the same floor. Immediately she felt in another
era.
“When the woman was talking to you just now,”
Sybil said, “I heard another voice. A man’s voice. It’s a
strong voice, but I can’t understand it.”
“Is it Gaelic?” I asked.
“I should think so. It’s the inflection of the voice that
is peculiar to me. It is a hard, strong voice. There is water
connected with this place.”
"Any tragedy?”
"The man is connected with it. Turn of the century.
He had some trouble with his head, probably due to a
blow. The injury affected his life very drastically. Ulti-
mately led to his death, but was not immediately responsi-
ble for it. A very angry person, I’d say.”
We did not want to overstay our welcome at the farm
house, so I thanked Mrs. Healy for letting us visit.
“There is just one more thing,” she said pensively.
"You see this gate over there?” We nodded, for I had
admired it from the start.
“Well,” Mrs. Healy said somewhat sheepishly, “no
matter how often I close it, it just does not want to stay
closed.”
* * *
The afternoon was growing slowly old, and we still
had two other places to visit. We drove back through Lis-
towel and out the other end, following Patrick Maloney’s
crudely drawn map. Nobody in Listowel could direct us
towards the monument at the crossroads we were seeking,
and we wasted an hour going up and down wrong country
roads. It is not easy to get directions in the Irish country-
side, for few people know more than their immediate
neighborhood. Finally we hit paydirt. Ahead of us there
was a crossroad that seemed to fit Maloney’s description,
with the wooded area on one side. But no Celtic cross in
sight!
I was puzzled. Leaving Sybil with Catherine in the
car, I set out on foot to explore the land beyond the road.
About twenty yards inside the area, I suddenly came upon
the monument. Our driver, whose name was Sylvester, also
was puzzled. He had never heard of such a monument in
this place. But there it was, set back from prying eyes, a
gray-white stone wall, about two feet high, beyond which
stood a tall Celtic cross. Before the cross were three graves,
inscribed only in Gaelic. Beyond the graves the hill sloped
gently towards the faraway Kerry Coast.
The weather had become rainy and dark clouds were
hanging overhead.
I asked Sybil to come forward now, and before she
had a chance to look at the marble plaques on the ground,
I asked for her impressions at this shrine.
“There is peace here, but only on the outside. On my
right there seems to be an old building in the distance. I
feel it is connected with this spot. It is a tragic, desperate
spot, with a lot of unhappiness, helplessness — something
had to happen here. There is mental torture.”
“Did anyone die here?” I said. Sybil stepped forward
and looked at the graves.
“Yes,” she replied immediately, “as you see yourself
the inscriptions are in Gaelic and I don’t understand
Gaelic, but I think this was forty years ago, between forty
and fifty years ago — there was fighting, and it was unex-
pected. Coming again from the right of me, some mortal
conflict involving death of several people — ”
"How many people?”
"I can see two,” Sybil replied, and it occurred to me
at once that she had no knowledge of the fact that two
I.R.A. men had perished at this spot.
“Are there any presences here still?”
“The two, because these are the people that I feel.
Why, I don’t know, but again, the building on my right
seems to interest the people and myself. Two men. Perhaps
they're only guarding something. Something to watch in
this area, always watching the countryside. Perhaps they
had to watch the countryside and still must do so!"
“Quite,” I said, thinking of the detail the patrol had
been assigned — to watch the countryside.
Sybil closed her eyes for a moment.
“Why are they still here, so long after?” I inquired.
“Yes,” she replied, "it is still of importance to them
in this time and place, as it was then.”
“But there is peace in the country now.”
“I don’t think there is peace in this particular part of
the country,” Sybil countered, and I knew, of course, that
the I.R.A. is far from dead, especially in the rural areas.
“Do you get any names for these men?”
“No, but I can describe them to you. One is a broad-
set man, and he has a rough face, country man, or forced
to take to the country, not well kept, must have been hid-
ing; he has a thick neck, and very brown eyes, perhaps five
The Case of the I.R.A. Ghosts
587
feet eight. There is someone with him, not related, but
they’ve been together for some time. The building on the
right has some connection with them.”
There was a small house on the hill about a hundred
yards farther back from the road.
“What outfits are these men in, Sybil?”
"I don’t see uniforms,” she replied, “very ordinary
dress, trousers.”
“Are they regular soldiers?”
“No — ordinary clothes of about forty-five years ago.”
That would make it 1920 — pretty close to the year
1918 in which Patrick Maloney had had his ghostly experi-
ence here.
"Are they serving any kind of outfit other than
military?”
“Serving something, but I don’t know what. No uni-
forms, but they are serving.”
“How are they then serving, by what means?”
“Something noisy. I think they’ve been shot. One in
the shoulder, near the heart.”
“Can we help them in any way?”
"Somehow this place is. . .as if someone must always
watch from here. This watching must go on. I don’t know
why they have to watch. They do.”
“Are they aware of the present?”
"I don’t think so. The one I described is more in evi-
dence than the other. Perhaps he was leading. There is a
need for silence here.”
I then asked Sybil to inform the two men that the
war was long over and they should return home to their
families, that in fact, they were relieved of duty.
Sybil told them this, and that the crossroads were
now safe. They had done their job well.
“Any reaction?” 1 asked after a moment.
“The main man still stands,” Sybil reported, "but the
other one is gone now.”
Again, I asked Sybil to send the man away.
“Patrick is his name,” Sybil said, and later I checked
the name in the largest panel on the ground — Padraic it
was.
A moment later, Sybil added: "I think he goes to the
right now — what was to the right?”
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully.
Half a mile up the hill, the ruined house stood
silently.
“That’s where they had to go back to. He is gone
now. There is nothing.”
And so it is that the two ghostly I.R.A. men finally
went home on extended leave.
m 128
The Last Ride
CORONADO Beach IS A pleasant seaside resort in southern
California not far from San Diego. You get there by ferry
from the mainland and the ride itself is worth the trip. It
takes about fifteen minutes, then you continue by car or
on foot into a town of small homes, none grand, none ugly
— pleasantly bathed by the warm California sunshine,
vigorously battered on the oceanside by the Pacific, and
becalmed on the inside of the lagoon by a narrow body of
water.
The big thing in Coronado Beach is the U.S. Navy;
either you’re in it and are stationed here, or you work for
them in one way or another: directly, as a civilian, or indi-
rectly by making a living through the people who are in
the Navy and who make their homes here.
Mrs. Francis Jones is the wife of an advertising man-
ager for a Sidney, Ohio, newspaper, who had returned to
Coronado after many years in the Midwest. She is a young
woman with a college background and above-average intel-
ligence, and has a mixed Anglo-Saxon and Austrian back-
ground. Her father died a Navy hero while testing a dive
bomber, making her mother an early widow.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
Gloria Jones married fairly young, and when her hus-
band took a job as advertising manager in Sidney, Ohio,
she went right along with him. After some years, the job
became less attractive, and the Joneses moved right back to
Coronado where Jones took up work for the Navy.
They have a thirteen-year-old daughter, Vicki, and
live a happy, well-adjusted life; Mr. Jones collects coins
and Mrs. Jones likes to decorate their brick house sur-
rounded by a garden filled with colorful flowers.
One January, Mrs. Jones sought me out to help her
understand a series of most unusual events that had taken
place in her otherwise placid life. Except for an occasional
true dream, she had not had any contact with the psychic
and evinced no interest whatever in it until the events that
so disturbed her tranquility had come to pass. Even the
time she saw her late father in a white misty cloud might
have been a dream. She was only ten years old at the time,
and preferred later to think it was a dream. But the experi-
ences she came to see me about were not in that category.
Moreover, her husband and a friend were present when
some of the extraordinary happenings took place.
Kathleen Duffy was the daughter of a man working
for the Convair company. He was a widower and Kathleen
was the apple of his eye. Unfortunately the apple was a bit
rotten in spots; Kathleen was a most difficult child. Her
father had sent her away to a Catholic school for girls in
Oceanside, but she ran away twice; after the second time
she had to be sent to a home for “difficult” children.
588
Gloria Jones met Kathleen when both were in their
teens. Her mother was a widow and Mr. Duffy was a wid-
ower, so the parents had certain things in common. The
two girls struck up a close friendship and they both hoped
they might become sisters through the marriage of their
parents, but it did not happen.
When Kathleen was sent away to the Anthony
Home, a reform school at San Diego, Gloria was genuinely
sorry. That was when Kathleen was about sixteen years of
age. Although they never met again, Kathleen phoned Glo-
ria a few times. She wasn’t happy in her new environment,
of course, but there was little that either girl could do
about it.
In mounting despair, Kathleen tried to get away
again but did not succeed. Then one day, she and her
roommate, June Robeson, decided to do something drastic
to call attention to their dissatisfied state. They set fire to
their room in the hope that they might escape in the confu-
sion of the fire.
As the smoke of the burning beds started to billow
heavier and heavier, they became frightened. Their room
was kept locked at all times, and now they started to bang
at the door, demanding to be let out.
The matron came and surveyed the scene. The girls
had been trouble for her all along. She decided to teach
them what she thought would be an unforgettable "lesson.”
It was. When Kathleen collapsed from smoke inhalation,
the matron finally opened the door. The Robeson girl was
saved, but Kathleen Duffy died the next day in the
hospital.
When the matter became public, the local newspa-
pers demanded an investigation of the Anthony Home.
The matron and the manager of the Home didn’t wait for
it. They fled to Mexico and have never been heard from
since.
Gradually, Gloria began to forget the tragedy. Two
years went by and the image of the girlfriend receded into
her memory.
One day she and another friend, a girl named Jackie
Sudduth, went standing near the waterfront at Coronado, a
! sunny, wind-swept road from which you can look out onto
the Pacific or back toward the orderly rows of houses that
make up Coronado Beach.
The cars were whizzing by as the two girls stood
idly gazing across the road. One of the cars coming into
view was driven by a young man with a young girl next to
him who seemed familiar to Gloria. She only saw her from
the shoulders up, but as the car passed close by she knew
it was Kathleen. Flabbergasted, she watched the car dis-
appear.
"Did you know that girl?” her friend Jackie inquired.
“No, why?”
"She said your name,” her friend reported.
Gloria nodded in silence. She had seen it too. With-
out uttering a sound, the girl in the passing car had spelled
the syllables “Glo-ri-a” with her lips.
For weeks afterward, Gloria could not get the inci-
dent out of her mind. There wasn’t any rational explana-
tion, and yet how could it be? Kathleen had been dead for
two years.
The years went by, then a strange incident brought
the whole matter back into her consciousness. It was New
Year’s Eve, twelve years later. She was now a married
woman with a daughter. As she entered her kitchen, she
froze in her tracks: a bowl was spinning counterclockwise
while moving through the kitchen of its own volition.
She called out to her husband and daughter to come
quickly. Her daughter’s girlfriend, Sheryl Konz, age thir-
teen, was first to arrive in the kitchen. She also saw the
bowl spinning. By the time Mr. Jones arrived, it had
stopped its most unusual behavior.
Over dinner, topic A was the self-propelled bowl.
More to tease her family than out of conviction, Mrs. Jones
found herself saying, “If there is anyone here, let the can-
dle go out.” Promptly the candle went out.
There was silence after that, for no current of air was
present that could have accounted for the sudden extin-
guishing of the candle.
The following summer, Mrs. Jones was making
chocolate pudding in her kitchen. When she poured it into
one of three bowls, the bowl began to turn — by itself. This
time her husband saw it too. He explained it as vibrations
from a train or a washing machine next door. But why did
the other two bowls not move also?
Finally wondering if her late friend Kathleen, who
had always been a prankster, might not be the cause of this,
she waited for the next blow.
On New Year’s Day that following year, she took a
Coke bottle out of her refrigerator, and set it down on the
counter. Then she turned her back on it and went back to
the refrigerator for some ice. This took only a few
moments. When she got back to the counter, the Coke
bottle had disappeared.
Chiding herself for being absent-minded, she
assumed she had taken the bottle with her to refrigerator
and had left it inside. She checked and there was no Coke.
“Am I going out of my mind?” she wondered, and
picked up the Coke carton. It contained five bottles. The
sixth bottle was never found.
Since these latter incidents took place during the
three years when they lived in Sidney, Ohio, it was evident
that the frisky spirit of Kathleen Duffy could visit them
anywhere they went — if that is who it was.
In late May of that year, back again in Coronado,
both Mr. and Mrs. Jones saw the bread jump out of the
breadbox before their very eyes. They had locked the
breadbox after placing a loaf of bread inside. A moment
later, they returned to the breadbox and found it open.
While they were still wondering how this could be, the
bread jumped out.
The Last Ride
589
A practical man, Mr. Jones immediately wondered if
they were having an earthquake. They weren’t. Moreover,
it appeared that their neighbors' breadboxes behaved
normally.
They shook their heads once more. But this time
Mrs. Jones dropped me a letter.
On June 3, 1 went to San Diego to see the Joneses.
Sybil Leek and I braved the bus ride from Santa Ana on a
hot day, but the Joneses picked us up at the bus terminal
and drove us to the Anthony Home where Kathleen had
died so tragically.
Naturally Sybil was mystified about all this, unless
her ESP told her why we had come. Consciously, she knew
nothing.
When we stopped at the Home, we found it boarded
up and not a soul in sight. The day was sunny and warm,
and the peaceful atmosphere belied the past that was prob-
ably filled with unhappy memories. After the unpleasant
events that had occurred earlier, the place had been turned
into a school for mentally challenged children and run as
such for a number of years. At present, however, it stood
abandoned.
Sybil walked around the grounds quietly and soaked
up the mood of the place.
“I heard something, maybe a name,” she suddenly
said. “It sounds like Low Mass.”
Beyond that, she felt nothing on the spot of Kath-
leen’s unhappy memories. Was it Kathleen who asked for a
Low Mass to be said for her? Raised a strict Catholic, such
a thought would not be alien to her.
“The place we just left,” Sybil said as we drove off,
“has a feeling of sickness to it — like a place for sick people,
but not a hospital.”
Finally we arrived at the corner of Ocean Avenue
and Lomar Drive in Coronado, where Gloria Jones had
seen the car with Kathleen in it. All through the trip, on
the ferry, and down again into Coronado Island, we
avoided the subject at hand.
But now we had arrived and it was time to find out if
Sybil felt anything still hanging on in this spot.
“I feel a sense of death,” she said slowly, uncertainly.
“Despite the sunshine, this is a place of death.” It wasn’t
that there was a presence here, she explained, but rather
that someone had come here to wait for another person.
The noise around us — it was Sunday — did not help her
concentration.
"It’s a foreign face I see,” Sybil continued. “Someone
— a man, with very little hair — who is alien to this place. I
see an iris next to his face.”
Was the man using the symbol to convey the word
Irish perhaps? Was he an ancestor of Kathleen’s from over
there?
1 turned to Mrs. Jones.
"I think what you witnessed here was the superimpo-
sition on a pair of motorists of the spirit image of your late
friend. These things are called transfigurations. I am sure if
the car had stopped, you would have found a stranger in it.
Kathleen used her so that you could see her familiar face, I
think.”
Perhaps Kathleen Duffy wanted to take one more
ride, a joy ride in freedom, and, proud of her accomplish-
ment, had wanted her best friend to see her taking it.
There have been no further disturbances or prankish
happenings at the Jones house since.
# 129
The San Francisco Ghost Bride
Not FAR FROM the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill, San
Francisco, where the popular television series Hotel was
taped, is a spot considered haunted by many. Here on Cal-
ifornia Street, in front of an average apartment house going
back some years, the ghost of Flora Sommerton walks.
Many have seen the girl, dressed in her bridal gown, walk-
ing right through living people and totally oblivious of
them, and they, of her. Some years ago Mrs. Gwen H., a
lady I worked with on a number of cases, was riding up
the hill with a friend, in a cable car. Both ladies saw the
strange girl in her bridal gown walking fast as if trying to
get away from something — or someone.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Haunted Places
590
Where the ghostly bride of Nob Hill
was spotted
Which is exactly what she tried to do. Flora Som-
merton, a San Francisco debutante, was eighteen when she
disappeared from her family’s Nob Hill mansion one night
in 1876. It was a major society scandal at the time: Flora
simply had refused to marry the young man her parents
had picked for her to marry.
Flora never came back nor was she ever found,
despite a vast search and huge reward offered for her
return or information leading to her. The years went by
and eventually the matter was forgotten. Flora’s parents
also died and it was not until 1926 when the truth finally
came out. That year Flora died in a flophouse in Butte,
Montana, still dressed in her bridal gown. Ever since, she
has been seen walking up Nob Hill desperately trying to
escape an unwanted marriage.
If you will slowly walk up California Street, late at
night when there is little traffic, perhaps you too might run
into the wide-eyed lass from 1876 and if you do, be sure to
tell her it is time to let go, and that she is finally free.
The San Francisco Ghost Bride
591
CHAPTER EIGHT
Haunted People
TRUE CASES INVOLVING a ghost that attaches itself to a specific person are not nearly as com-
mon as haunted houses, but they do exist. These are not in any sense free spirits, because the
attachment represents an emotional problem that has not been fully resolved.
But the ghost or earthbound spirit who attaches itself to a person in the physical world does have
wider opportunities to manifest, or “get through,” than the traditional haunted house ghost. Such phe-
nomena may therefore occur in several places.
These ghosts, who are not nearly as rational as free spirits — can also make contact through deep
trance mediums when communications between spirits and living people can be quite innocuous and
friendly. When the spirit has unresolved problems, however, or makes demands, it can be upsetting
and requires consultation with an expert.
Some cases I have investigated include the following.
Haunted People
593
» 130
The Strange Death of Valerie K.
Sometimes being a psychic investigator puts a heavy
moral burden on one, especially where there may be a pos-
sibility of preventing someone’s death. Of course, you’re
never sure that you can. Take the case of Valerie K., for
instance. I am not using her full name because the case is
far from closed. The police won’t talk about it, but her
friends are only too sure there is something mysterious
about her death, and they will talk about it. They speak
mainly to me, for that’s about all they can do about it —
now.
To start at the beginning, one April I got a phone
call from Sheila M. — an English woman whom I had met
through a mutual friend — inviting my wife and me to a
cocktail party at her house on New York’s East Side. Now
if it’s one thing my wife and I hate it’s cocktail parties,
even on the East Side, but Sheila is a nice person and we
thought she was likely to have only nice friends, so I said
we’d come. The party was on April 20, and when we
arrived everybody was already there, drinking and chatting,
while the butler passed between the guests, ever so quietly
seeing after their needs.
Since I don’t drink, I let my wife talk to Sheila and
sauntered over to the hors d’ oeuvres, hopefully searching
for some cheese bits, for I am a vegetarian and don’t touch
meat or fish. Next to the buffet table I found not only an
empty chair, unusual at a cocktail party, but also a lovely
young woman in a shiny silver Oriental -style dress. In fact,
the young lady was herself Chinese, a very impressive-
looking woman perhaps in her middle twenties, with brown
hair, dark eyes, and a very quiet, soigne air about her. It
turned out that the girl's name was Valerie K., and I had
been briefly introduced to her once before on the telephone
when Sheila had told her of my interest in psychic
research, and she had wanted to tell me some of her expe-
riences.
We got to talking about our mutual interest in ESP.
She sounded far away, as if something was troubling her,
but I had the impression she was determined to be gay and
not allow it to interfere with her enjoyment of the party. I
knew she was Sheila’s good friend and would not want to
spoil anything for her. But I probed deeper, somehow sens-
ing she needed help. I was right, and she asked me if she
could talk to me sometime privately.
There were several eager young men at the party
whose eyes were on her, so I thought it best not to pre-
empt her time, since I knew she was not married. I gave
her my telephone number and asked her to call me when-
ever she wanted to.
About an hour later we left the party, and when we
got home I suppressed a desire to telephone this woman
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
and see if she was all right. I dismissed my feeling as
undue sentimentality, for the woman had seemed radiant,
and surely the reason for her wanting to see me would have
to be psychic rather than personal in the usual sense.
All through the weekend I could not get her out of
my mind, but I was busy with other work and decided to
call her first thing the following week.
Monday night, as I read the Daily News, my eye fell
on a brief article tucked away inside the newspaper, an
article telling of the death of two women a few hours
before. The paper’s date was Tuesday morning. The
deaths had occurred early Monday morning. One of the
two women was Valerie K.
With a shudder I put down the paper and closed my
eyes.
Could I have prevented her death? I will let you be
the judge. But first let me show you what happened in the
final hours of this girl’s life on earth. Every word is the
truth. . ..
Valerie K. came from a well-to-do Chinese family
residing in Hawaii. She was as American as anyone else in
her speech, and yet there was that undefinable quality in
the way she put her words together that hinted at Eastern
thought. After an unhappy and brief marriage to a Hong
Kong businessman, she came to New York City to try liv-
ing on her own. Never particularly close to her parents, she
was now entirely self-supporting and needed a job. She
found a job vaguely described as a public relations assis-
tant, but in fact was the secretary to the man who did pub-
licity for the company. Somehow she was not quite right
for the job or the job for her, and it came to a parting of
the ways.
The new person hired to take her place was Sheila.
Despite the fact that the English woman replaced her, they
struck up a friendship that developed into a true attach-
ment to each other, so much so that Valerie would confide
in Sheila to a greater extent than she would in anyone else.
When Valerie left the office, there was no job waiting
for her; fortunately, however, she had met the manager of a
firm owned by the same company, and the manager, whose
initial was G., took her on for somewhat selfish reasons. He
had a sharp eye for beauty and Valerie was something spe-
cial. Thus she found herself earning considerably more
than she would have been paid in a similar job elsewhere.
Soon the manager let her know that he liked her and she
got to like him, too. Between August and October of the
year before her death, they became close friends.
But in October of that year she called her friend
Sheila to complain bitterly of the humiliation she had been
put through. G. had found another woman to take her
place. Innocently, the new woman, Lynn, became the pawn
in the deadly game between the manager and the Chinese
beauty.
G. found fault with her very appearance and every-
thing she did, criticizing her and causing her to lose face —
an important matter not easily forgotten.
594
Still, she cared for the man and hoped that he would
resume his former attentions. He didn’t, and after a miser-
able Christmas which she partially shared with Sheila, the
axe fell. He fired her and gave her two weeks' pay, wishing
her the best.
When Sheila heard about this she suggested that
Valerie register at the unemployment office. Instead, the
proud girl took sleeping pills. But she either did not take
enough or changed her mind in time, for she was able to
telephone Sheila and tell her what she had done. A doctor
was called and she was saved. She had a session with a
psychiatrist after that and seemed much more cheerful.
But the humiliation and rejection kept boiling within
her. Nothing can be as daring as a person whose affections
have been rejected, and one day Valerie wrote a personal
letter to the owner of the companies she had once worked
for, denouncing the manager and his work.
As if nourished by her hatred, her psychic abilities
increased and she found she was able to influence people
through telepathy, to read others’ thoughts and to put her-
self into a state of excitement through a form of mediation.
All this of course was for the purpose of getting even,
not only with the manager but with the world that had so
often hurt her.
Nobody knew for sure if she ever got a reply to her
letter. But she was a regular at a Chinese restaurant near
her apartment and became friendly with the owners. There
she talked about her plans and how she would show the
world what sort of woman she was.
Meanwhile the manager found himself short of help
and asked her back. Despite her deep hatred for the man,
she went back, all the time scheming and hoping her for-
tunes would take a turn for the better. But she did confide
in Sheila that she had taken a big gamble, and if it worked
she’d be all right in more ways than one. The owner of the
restaurant saw her on Friday, April 21 — a day after the
party at which I had met her for the first time — and she
seemed unusually happy.
She would marry a prominent European, she told
him; she had been asked and would say yes. She was
almost obsessed at this point with the desire to tell the
whole world she would marry him; her parents in Hawaii
received a letter requesting them to have formal Chinese
wedding attire made up for her in Paris because she would
marry soon. Had the idea of getting even with G. robbed
her of her senses? It is difficult to assess this, as the princi-
pals involved quite naturally would not talk, and even I
prefer that they remain anonymous here.
That weekend — April 22 and 23 — the pitch of
her “wedding fever” rose higher and higher. A neighbor
who had dropped in on her at her apartment found her
clad only in a bikini and drinking heavily. She observed
her running back and forth from her telephone, trying to
reach the man overseas she said she would marry. But
she couldn’t get through to him. In the meantime, she
started giving possessions away, saying she would not need
them any longer now that she would marry so rich a man.
She also drew up a list of all those whom she would
help once she had become the wife of the millionaire. The
neighbor left rather perturbed by all this, and Valerie
stayed alone in her apartment — or did she?
It was 4 A.M. when the police received a call from
her telephone. It was a complaint about excessive noise.
When an officer — initialed McG. — arrived on the scene at
4:20 A.M., Valerie herself opened the door in the nude.
"Go away,” she said, and asked to be left alone. The
officer quickly surveyed the scene. She became rude and
explained she was expecting a phone call and did not wish
to be disturbed. The officer reported that she had been
alone and was drinking, and there the matter stood.
The minutes ticked away. It was early Monday
morning, April 24.
At precisely 5 A.M., the building superintendent
looked out his window and saw something heavy fall on his
terrace.
Rushing to the scene, he discovered Valerie’s broken
body. She had been killed instantly. The woman had taken
two roses with her — but one somehow remained behind on
the window sill of the open window from which she had
plunged to her death. The other sadly fluttered to earth
even as she did.
The police officers found themselves back at the
apartment sooner than they had expected, only this time
there was a cause for action. After a routine inspection of
the girl’s tenth floor apartment, her death was put down to
accidental death or suicide by falling or jumping from her
window. Since she had been drinking heavily, they were
not sure which was the actual cause of death.
Monday night Sheila called me frantically, wondering
what she should do. There was no one to claim the girl’s
body. Neither her sister Ethel nor her parents in Hawaii
could be reached. I told her to calm down and keep trying,
meanwhile berating myself for not having called Valerie in
time to prevent her death.
Eventually the parents were found and a proper
funeral arranged.
But the puzzle remained. Had she committed suicide
or not?
Did that call from Europe finally come and was it so
humiliating that Valerie could no longer face the world?
Was there not going to be a wedding after all — then at
least there must be a funeral?
Valerie had been particularly fond of two things in
life — flowers and jewelry. To her, losing a favorite piece of
jewelry was bad luck.
Lynn, the woman who now worked at Valerie’s
office, is a rather matter-of-fact person not given to emo-
tional scenes or superstitions.
The Strange Death of Valerie K.
595
Valerie owned a pair of jade earrings that G. had had
made for her in the days when they were close. About a
month before her death, Valerie gave those earrings to
Lynn as a gift. There was a special stipulation, however.
She must not wear them around the office, since people
had seen Valerie wear them and presumably knew their
history.
Lynn agreed not to wear them around the office, but
when she wore them outside a most unusual phenomenon
took place. Suddenly the earrings would not stay put. One
and then the other would drop off her ears as if pulled by
some unseen force. That was on April 13, and Valerie was
still alive though she had seemed very distraught.
Word of Lynn’s concern with the falling earrings got
back to the former owner, and finally Valerie called to
assure her the falling was a "good omen.” Then a week
later, on Saturday, April 22, she suddenly called Lynn
shortly before midnight and asked her to wear “her” ear-
rings at the office. Lynn promised she would wear them to
work Monday.
That was the day Valerie died. The following day,
Lynn was still wearing the earrings, which now seemed to
cling properly to her ears. She found herself in the ladies’
room, when she felt her right earring forced off and thrown
into the toilet. It felt as if it had been snatched from her
ear by an unseen hand.
Returning to her desk, she noticed that an unusual
chill pervaded the area where Valerie's desk had stood. It
disappeared at 4:30, which was the time Valerie usually left
for home.
All this proved too much for Lynn and she went on a
week’s vacation.
Sheila was still very upset when a male friend
dropped in to help her in this sorry matter. The gentle-
man, a lawyer by profession, had taken off his jacket when
he suddenly felt a cufflink leave his shirt. It was a particu-
larly intricate piece of jewelry, and no matter how they
searched it was never found.
Was the dead girl trying to show her hand? Too fan-
tastic, and yet....
There was no rational explanation for the sudden dis-
appearance, in plain light and in the presence of two peo-
ple, of so definite an object as a cufflink.
On Friday of that week, after the girl had been
buried, her sister, Ethel, who had finally arrived in town,
went to the apartment to find out what she could about her
sister’s effects.
As soon as she entered the apartment, she realized
that a terrific fight had taken place in it. Nothing had been
touched from the moment of death until her arrival, as the
apartment had been sealed. Three knives were lying on the
floor and the place was a shambles. On the table she
noticed two glasses, one partially filled with Scotch and one
almost empty. When she called the police to report the
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
strange appearance of the place, she was given the cold
shoulder.
Who was the person Valerie had entertained during
her last hours on earth?
The superintendent reported to the sister that Valerie
had received two letters since her death, but when they
looked in the mailbox, it was empty.
A friend, the owner of the restaurant Valerie had fre-
quented, notified the telephone company to cut off service
and forward the final bill to her. She was told the bill could
not be found.
And so it went. Was someone covering up his traces?
Sheila heard these things and went to work. To her, some-
thing was terribly wrong about her friend’s death and she
was going to find out what. Questioning both the restau-
rant owner and the girl’s sister again, she came upon
another strange fact. The ash trays Ethel had found in the
apartment had two different types of cigarettes in them -
L&M and Winston. Valerie always smoked L&M, but who
smoked Winston?
The police seem not particularly interested in pursu-
ing the matter. They think it was Valerie herself who called
them the first time, and that she just decided to end it all
in a drunken stupor. That at least is the impression they
gave Sheila.
The following day, Saturday, the window was still
open. The rose Valerie had left behind was still on the sill,
despite the windy weather of April.
That night when Sheila was putting on her jacket,
she felt somebody helping her into it. She was alone, or so
she thought.
It occurred to her then that Valerie’s spirit was not at
rest and that I might be able to help. The very least I
could do was talk to her now, since fate had prevented me
from getting to her in time.
I arranged with Betty Ritter to be ready for me the
following weekend, without telling her where we would be
going, of course. The date was May 6, the time 3 P.M., and
Sheila was to meet us at the apartment that once belonged
to Valerie, but now was cleaned out and ready for the next
occupant. The superintendent agreed to let us in, perhaps
sensing why we had come or not caring. At any rate he
opened the tenth floor apartment and left us alone inside.
As we reached the elevator of the East Sixty-third
Street building, Betty Ritter suddenly remarked that she
felt death around her. I nodded and we went upstairs.
As soon as we had stepped through the door into
Valerie's place, Betty became a psychic bloodhound. Mak-
ing straight for the window — now closed — she touched it
and withdrew in horror, then turned around and looked at
me.
“There is a man here jumping around like mad,” she
said, but there is also someone else here — I am impressed
with the initial E.” She then took off her coat and started
to walk toward the bathroom. There she stopped and
looked back at me.
596
"I hear a woman screaming. .1 saw blood. . .now I
see the initial M. . .she was harmed. . .it is like suicide. . .
as if she couldn't take it any more.”
Betty had difficulty holding back her emotions and
was breathing heavily.
“She left two behind,” she said. "I see the initials L.
and S.”
Betty Ritter, not a trance medium but essentially a
clairvoyant, is very strong on initials, names, letters, and
other forms of identification and she would naturally work
that way even in this case.
“I heard her say, ‘Mama, Mama’ — she is very
agitated.”
“I also get a man’s spirit here. . .initial J.”
“How did this girl die?” I interjected at this point.
“She couldn’t take it any more. She shows the initial
R. This is a living person. She gulped something, I think.”
I thought that Betty was picking up past impressions
now and wanted to get her away from that area into the
current layer of imprints.
“How exactly did she die?” I queried the medium.
Betty had no idea where she was or why I had brought her
here.
“I think she tried. . .pills. . .blood. . .one way or the
other. . .in the past. She was a little afraid but she did plan
this. She is very disturbed now and she does not know how
to get out of this apartment. I get the initial G. with her.”
I asked Betty to convey our sympathies to her and
ask her if there was something she wished us to do.
While Betty talked to the spirit woman in a low
voice, I reflected on her evidence so far. The initials given
— E. was the first initial of Valerie’s sister’s name, Ethel,
M. was Mary, her mother, and G. the manager of the
company with whom she had had a relationship — it all
seemed to make sense. Betty Ritter had also correctly “got-
ten” the attempted suicide by pills and pointed out the
window as a “hot” area.
What was to follow now?
“She is crying,” Betty reported. “She wants her loved
ones to know that she didn’t mean it. She shows me the
head of an Indian and it is a symbol of a car — a brand
name I think — it’s red — the initial H. comes with this and
then she shows me writing, something she has left unfin-
ished. She asks her mother to forgive her because she could
not help herself.”
I decided to ask Valerie some important questions
through the medium. Was she alone at the time of her
death?
“Not alone. Initial A. A man, I feel him walking out
of the door. Agitating her, agitating her.”
“Was he with her when she died or did he leave
before?”
“She says, ‘I slammed the door on him.’ And then
she says, ‘And then I did it.’”
“Why?”
“I had gone completely out of my mind . . .could not
think straight ... he drove me to it .... ”
"This man is a living person?”
“Yes.”
"Is he aware of what happened to her?”
"Yes.”
“Did she know him well?”
“Yes, definitely.”
“What was his connection with her?”
Betty was herself pretty agitated now; in psychic par-
lance, she was really hot.
“I see a bag of money,” she reported, “and the letters
M.orW.”
I handed her some personal belongings of Valerie’s,
brought to the scene in a shopping bag by Sheila and now
placed on the stove for Betty to touch. She first took up a
pendant — costume jewelry — and immediately felt the
owner’s vibrations.
“How I loved this,” she mumbled. “I see D. R.,
Doctor. . .this was given to her and there is much love here
in connection with this ... this goes way back . . . . ”
Somehow the personalities of Betty Ritter and Valerie
K. melted into one now and Betty, not quite herself,
seemed not to listen any more to my queries, but instead
kept talking as if she were Valerie, yet with Betty’s own
voice and intonation.
“There’s so much I wanted to say and I couldn’t at
the time. ...”
Now returning to herself again, she spoke of a man in
spirit, who was very agitated and who had possessed the
woman, not a ghost but someone who had died. . .an older
man who had a link with her in the past. J. W. Dark-
skinned, but not Negro — India or that part of the world.”
It struck me suddenly that she might be talking of
Valerie’s late husband, the man she had married long ago
in Hong Kong; he was much older than she at the time.
“I have a feeling of falling,” Betty suddenly said, “I
don’t know why. May have something to do with her.”
I decided to let her walk around the entire apartment
and to try to pick up “hot” areas. She immediately went
for the lefthand window.
"Something terrible happened here. . .this is the
room. . .right here. . .stronger here.. ..”
"Is there another woman involved in this story?” I
asked.
“I see the initial M.” Betty replied, “and she is with
a man who is living, and there is also some jealousy
regarding a woman’s boyfriend. . .she could not take it.”
1 decided to start the exorcism immediately.
“It’s such a short time ago that she went,” Betty
remarked. “She wants to greet Mary. . .or Marie. . .and an
L. To tell L. she is relieved now. Just carry on as usual.”
L. was the initial of Lynn, the girl at the office who
had encountered the strange happenings with the earrings.
The Strange Death of Valerie K.
597
I decided to test this connection.
“Did she communicate with L. in any way?" I asked.
“Yes,” Betty nodded, “I see her by L.’s bed. . .per-
haps she frightened her. . .but now she knows. . .didn’t
mean to frighten her. . .she is leaving now, never wants to
get back again. ...”
We were quiet for a moment.
“She’s throwing us kisses now,” Betty added.
“She would do that,” Sheila confirmed, “that was the
way she would do it.”
And that was that.
Betty lit a cigarette and relaxed, still visibly shaken
by the communications for which she had been the carrier.
We put Valerie’s pitiful belongings back into the
paper bag and left the apartment, which now looked shiny
and new, having been given a hasty coat of paint to make
it ready for the next occupant.
No further snatching of jewelry from anyone’s ears
occurred after that, and even Sheila, my friend, no longer
tried to reopen the case despite her belief that there was
more to it than met the eyes of the police.
We decided to allow Valerie a peaceful transition and
not to stir up old wounds that would occur with a reopen-
ing of the case.
But somehow I can’t quite bring myself to forget a
scene, a scene I only “saw” through the eyes of a laconic
police detective making a routine report: the tall, lovely
Asian woman, intoxicated and nude, slamming the door on
the police. . .and two liquor glasses on her table.
Who was that other glass for. . .and who smoked the
second cigarette, the brand Valerie never smoked?
Who, then, was the man who left her to die?
» 131
The Warning Ghost
Not ALL GHOSTS have selfish motives, so to speak, in
reasserting their previous ownership of a home: some even
help later occupants, although the limits of a ghost’s ratio-
nality are very narrow. For one thing, if a ghost personality
is aware of later inhabitants of a house and wants to com-
municate with them — not in order to get them out but to
warn them — such a ghost is still unable to realize that the
warning may be entirely unnecessary because time has
passed, and the present reality no longer corresponds to the
reality he or she knew when his or her own tragedy
occurred.
Still, there is the strange case of Rose S., now a resi-
dent of New York State, but at one time living in Fort
Worth, Texas. Miss S. is a secretary by profession, and
during the mid-1960s worked for a well-known social
leader. That summer, Miss S. moved into an old house in
Fort Worth, renting a room at one end of the house. At
the time, she wanted to be near her fiance, an army pilot
who was stationed not far away.
The old house she chanced upon was located on
Bryce Avenue, in one of the older sections of Fort Worth.
The owner was renting out a furnished room because the
house had become too large for her. Her husband, an attor-
ney, had passed away, and their children were all grown
and living away from home.
The house seemed pleasant enough, and the room
large and suitable, so Miss S. was indeed happy to have
found it. Moreover, her landlady did not restrict her to the
rented room, but allowed her to use the kitchen and in fact
have the freedom of the house, especially as there were no
other tenants. The landlady seemed a pleasant enough
woman in her middle or late sixties at the time, and except
for an occasional habit of talking to herself, there was noth-
ing particularly unusual about her. Miss S. looked forward
to a pleasant, if uneventful stay at the house on Bryce
Avenue.
Not long after moving in, it happened that the land-
lady went off to visit a daughter in Houston, leaving the
house entirely to Miss S. That night, Rose S. decided to
read and then retire early. As soon as she switched off the
lights to go to sleep, she began to hear footsteps walking
around the house. At the same time, the light in the bath-
room, which she had intended to leave on all night, started
to grow dimmer and brighter alternately, which puzzled
her. Frightened because she thought she had to face an
intruder, Miss S. got up to investigate, but found not a liv-
ing soul anywhere in the house. She then decided that the
whole thing was simply her imagination acting up because
she had been left alone in the house for the first time, and
went to bed. The days passed and the incident was forgot-
ten. A few weeks later, the landlady was again off for
Houston, but this time Miss S.’s fiance was visiting her. It
was evening, and the couple was spending the time after
dinner relaxing.
Miss S.’s fiance, the pilot, had fallen asleep. Sud-
denly, in the quiet of the night, Miss S. heard someone
whistle loudly and clearly from the next room. It was a
marching song, which vaguely reminded her of the well-
known melody, the Colonel Bogey March. Neither TV nor
radio were playing at the time, and there was no one about.
When she realized that the source of the whistling was
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
598
uncanny, she decided not to tell her fiance, not wishing to
upset him.
Time went on, and another periodical trip by her
landlady left Miss S. alone again in the house. This time
she was in the TV den, trying to read and write. It was a
warm night, and the air conditioner was on.
As she was sitting there, Miss S. gradually got the
feeling that she was not alone. She had the distinct impres-
sion that someone was watching her, and then there came
the faint whining voice of a woman above the sound of the
air conditioner. The voice kept talking, and though Miss S.
tried to ignore it, she had to listen. Whether by voice or
telepathy, she received the impression that she was not to
stay in the house, and that the voice was warning her to
move out immediately. After another restless night with
very little sleep, Miss S. decided she could take the phe-
nomena no longer.
As soon as the landlady returned, she informed her
that she was leaving, and moved in with friends tempor-ar-
ily. Eventually, her experiences at the house on Bryce
Avenue aroused her curiosity and she made some quiet
inquiries. It was then that she discovered the reasons for
the haunting. On the very corner where the house stood, a
woman and a girl had been murdered by a man while wait-
ing for a bus. As if that were not enough to upset her,
something happened to her fiance from that moment on.
Following the incident with the whistling ghost, of which
her fiance knew nothing, his behavior towards her changed
drastically. It was as if he was not quite himself anymore,
but under the influence of another personality. Shortly
afterwards, Miss S. and her pilot broke off their engage-
ment.
♦ 132
Jacqueline
JOHN K. IS TWENTY-SIX years old, lives in Flollywood and
works as a freight cashier at a steamship company. "I don’t
quite know where to begin,” he said when he contacted me
in May 1971 . Fie explained that he felt he was being
harassed by reincarnation memories or by someone he
thought was in some mysterious way connected with his
personality. Since I am always on the lookout for "eviden-
tial” reincarnation cases, I was naturally interested. In
October of the same year we met at the Continental Hotel
in Hollywood. Mr. K. turned out to be a slight, quiet-
spoken young man far from hysterical and not particularly
involved with the occult. Gradually I pieced his amazing
story together and discovered what lay at the base of his
strange and terrifying experiences.
John K. was born in a small town in the Ozarks with
a population of only forty-two people. The house he was
born and raised in was quite old, built before the Civil
War. His family lived there until he reached the age of
twelve, when they moved to another small town in south-
western Arizona. There his father was employed by the
government on a nearby Army base. At the age of twenty,
Mr. K. dropped out of college after his junior year and
headed straight for Los Angeles, where he has lived ever
since.
His first twelve years in the Ozarks were spent on a
farm with five brothers and two sisters. The family lived a
very primitive life. There was no indoor plumbing; heat
was provided by a coal stove, and each Saturday night the
entire family would take turns bathing in the same tub of
water. At first there was no electricity in the house. For the
first three grades, Mr. K. went to a one-room schoolhouse.
“Our teacher was very young and had not yet finished her
college education but was permitted to teach us anyway.”
Mr. K. explained, “The reason I am relating all of
my earlier surroundings to you is to point out the fact that
the first twelve years of my life I lived a very isolated exis-
tence.” Until he reached the age of ten, Mr. K. had not
seen a television set; entertainment in his family consisted
mainly of playing cards and talking. He attended the local
Southern Baptist Church, into which he was duly baptized;
however, after the family left the farm they dropped out of
organized religion.
From an early age John K. received the impression of
a presence which no one else could see. None of his imme-
diate family had ever been out of the country, yet he was
aware of the presence of a French lady whose name, he
came to know, as Jacqueline. When he mentioned the pres-
ence of this woman to his family he was laughed at and
told that he had a fantastic imagination, so he stopped talk-
ing about it. At an early age he also developed the ability
to dream of events that later happened exactly as seen in
his dreams. These prophetic dreams did not forecast great
events but concerned themselves with everyday matters.
Nevertheless, they were upsetting to the boy. He never
remembered his dreams, but when the event became objec-
tive reality he started to shiver and realized he had seen it
all before. This, of course, is called deja vu and is a fairly
common ESP phenomenon. He could not discuss his
dreams with his family, since psychic experiences were not
the kind of thing one could talk about in the Ozarks in the
early fifties. But he hated to stay in the house alone; he had
a terrible fear of darkness and of the house itself.
Jacqueline
599
One afternoon when he was ten years old, he hap-
pened to be in the house alone, upstairs in the back bed-
room. All of a sudden he knew there was a presence there,
and the most horrifying fear swept through him, as if he
were being choked to death. The walls seemed to vibrate,
and he heard a loud sound for which there did not seem to
be any natural explanation. Eventually he was able to break
out of his terror and flee down the stairs.
There was something else that seemed strange about
John K. from an early age on. He could never relate to
men and felt completely at ease only with women — his
grandmother, his mother, and his older sister. When he
was very young, he began playing with his older sister, six
years his senior, and enjoyed playing girls’ games tremen-
dously. He would never join his brothers in boys’ games.
He loved wearing long flowing dresses, fashions of an ear-
lier time that he had found in the attic. Whenever he wore
these dresses, he felt completely at ease and seemed to have
a rather sophisticated air about him. The strange thing was
that he insisted on wearing only those dresses of an earlier
period of history; the shorter dresses of the current era
interested him not at all. At those times he felt as though
he were another person.
It was during those early childhood days that he first
became aware of Jacqueline. Especially when he played
with his sister, he felt that he was sexually just like her.
He continued to wear dresses around the house until the
time he started to school. Often when he came home
from school he would go upstairs and put on his dresses.
Finally, his father became aware of the boy’s tendency
and threatened to send him to school wearing a dress if he
didn’t stop, so John stopped. However, the impression of a
female life inside him and the desire to wear long dresses
persisted.
"Needless to say,” Mr. K. explained in complete
frankness, “I was not the average run-of-the-mill boy, and
I turned out to be very effeminate and was teased con-
stantly by my schoolmates.” Rejected by the other boys, he
began to turn within himself and did not bother to explain
his ideas to others. Although he had never traveled outside
the four southern states surrounding his native village, he
began to feel very emotional about France, particularly
Paris. "I somehow seemed to have fond memories of a life
of many human pleasures, a life of a woman who was very
aware and felt a need to express herself totally,” John K.
explained, adding that he knew by that time that Jacque-
line, whoever she might have been, had led the life of a
prostitute. He thus had a sense of heavy religious condem-
nation, of being a wicked sinner with the threat of hell
hanging over him.
When the family finally moved to Arizona, he
thought that perhaps some of his agonies would subside.
But the conflict between his present surroundings and the
world of Jacqueline increased almost daily. At the age of
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
fourteen he felt that since he could not belong to this world
he might as well kill himself and return to where he really
belonged. He wrote a farewell note to his mother, the only
one to whom he could relate at the time, his sister having
married and his grandmother having grown old and feeble.
In the note he told his mother that he was going to return
to where he belonged, that he felt he had come from
another planet and it was time for him to go back. He then
ran a rope over one of the rafters in his room, put a chair
under it, and placed the noose around his neck, ready to
jump. Then fate intervened in the person of one of his
mother’s friends who had stopped by unexpectedly. Since
his mother was asleep, John had to answer the door. The
visit lasted a long time, and by the time the lady had left
he was no longer in the mood to take his own life.
From then on he did rather well in school, although
most people thought him too shy and introverted. He
never dated girls, since he felt himself female. But he did
make friends with one particular boy and remained close
friends with him for ten years. Later, the boy moved to
Los Angeles. When John K. dropped out of school in his
junior year of college, he came to Los Angeles and moved
in with his friend. At the time he was twenty years old. He
still felt like a female and was still continually aware of
Jacqueline.
It was then that John became involved in the homo-
sexual world and had the first sexual experience of his life.
Whenever he had sexual relations, he felt strongly that he
was fulfilling the part of the woman.
About six months after he came to Los Angeles, he
started to have terrible dreams. One night when he was
totally awake he suddenly saw a woman standing at the
foot of his bed. She was wearing a long nightgown and had
long hair and was smiling at him. She seemed to float just
above the floor. At first John thought that it was his imagi-
nation and passed it off as a silly dream. The next night
the same thing happened. He realized the apparition
wanted to tell him something. Strangely enough, he wasn’t
particularly frightened. The third night the apparition
returned, and her smile had turned into a frown of deep
sorrow. She returned the following night, and this time her
face showed utter terror. Deep veins stood out on her face,
her eyes were bloodshot, and her mouth grinned hideously.
She returned once again the following night, and this
time her entire head had been turn off, and blood was
spilled all over her beautiful flowing gown. John was fully
aware of the utter torment of her soul. That same night
something grabbed hold of his arm and forcibly yanked
him out of bed and onto the floor. He screamed for help
from his roommate, who was in the next room, but the
young man had no compassion for his condition and yelled
out for John to shut up or he would have him committed.
After this incident John thought he was going mad and
wondered to whom he could turn for advice.
A few months passed. He was still living in Holly-
wood with the same roommate but by this time was a
600
prostitute himself. He had gone to college and found him-
self a good job, but he had had a strong urge to become a
prostitute, and so followed it. Whenever he engaged in
these activities he felt a very deep satisfaction. Also at this
time he resumed wearing female clothes, and since his
roommate was a make-up artist by profession, he would do
the make-up for him. John would never go into the streets
in this array; he would wear these clothes only at home.
His friends began to call him Jackie, for Jacqueline.
Whenever he put on the clothes, John became
another person. The first time he saw himself in complete
make-up and female clothing he felt that Jacqueline had
won at last. He now felt that she had taken total possession
of him and that he was cursed for life.
"It was not a simple case of transvestitism or going in
female drag,” John explained, “It was a complete soul sat-
isfaction on my part, and when Jacqueline came out she
controlled me completely. She was very strong and I was
very weak.”
It finally reached the point that when John came
home at night he would dress up in female clothing and
spend the entire evening in this manner. He even slept in
evening gowns. He removed all the hair from his body and
delighted in taking baths and dousing himself with per-
fumes. This went on for two years, until John felt that
something had to be done about it. He realized something
was wrong with him.
About that time another friend introduced him to
Buddhism. For three years he practiced the Buddhist reli-
gion, and through it was able to find many answers for
himself that had eluded him before. Because of his devo-
tion to Buddhism, Jacqueline finally left, never to return
again. A new male image began to emerge slowly but
surely as a result of his Buddhist practices, and once again
he was able to relate to the environment around him and
find a reason for living.
Through a friend, John received my address. He con-
tacted me in the hope I might hypnotize him and regress
him to an earlier life in which he might encounter Jacque-
line. John was firmly convinced that his predicament had
been due to an unfulfilled reincarnation problem, and that
perhaps through hypnosis I might put him further on the
road to recovery.
“I never felt fulfillment during my pre-Buddhist sex-
ual contacts while portraying Jacqueline,’’ he told me, “but
it did satisfy my Jacqueline personality completely. But she
is totally gone now and a new John is emerging — one who
is not afraid of the dark anymore and who can live alone
and stand on his own two feet, and who will someday
marry a girl and have a family. I am very optimistic about
the future.”
Although neither John nor his immediate family had
had any interest in or knowledge of occult practices, this
was not entirely true of others in his background. An Aunt
Mary had been a practicing witch, had owned many books
dealing with witchcraft of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies, and had been a sore subject in the family. Nobody
dared talk about her. But she had died before John was
born, and all knowledge John had of his Aunt Mary was
necessarily secondhand. Nevertheless, there had been ESP
talents in the family on his father’s side, mainly messages
from dead relatives, though John was never able to obtain
any details. In his family the occult was something not
suitable for family conversation.
After Jacqueline had left John, he kept having ESP
experiences unrelated to his ordeal. They were not world-
shaking experiences, but they did convince him that his ESP
faculty had remained unimpaired by the hold Jacqueline
had exercised upon him for so many years. A short time
before our meeting there had been a steamship strike and
he was laid off. He was wondering if he should get another
job outside the steamship industry when he had a strange
dream. In the dream he saw his boss at the steamship com-
pany coming out of his office and saying to someone, “Call
John K. back to work.” At the same time he saw the num-
ber 7 flash through the dream. Upon awakening he remem-
bered every detail. On September 7 his boss came out of
his office and told an aide, "Call John K. back to work,”
and, as foreseen in the dream, he returned to his former
position.
I was rather interested in his continuing ESP experi-
ences since I had begun to wonder whether Jacqueline was
indeed a reincarnation memory or perhaps something else.
We proceeded to begin hypnotic regression. I first took
John K. down to age twenty, when he remembered every
detail of his life. He even remembered the names of his
best friends and what was on his desk at the time. I then
took him back to age twelve and his life in Missouri. In
each case he even knew his exact height at the time. He
knew the names of the nearest neighbors, how many chil-
dren they had and even the name of their dog. Satisfied
that he was deeply in the third stage of hypnotic regres-
sion, I then took him back beyond the threshold of birth
into an alleged earlier life. I worked very hard and very
gradually to see whether we could locate some other per-
sonality that had been John K. in a previous lifetime, but
he saw nothing. I then asked him to look specifically for
Jacqueline.
"Do you know who she is?” I asked.
“She is someone who doesn’t like me.”
“Is she a real person?”
"Yes.”
“Have you ever lived in France?”
“No.”
I then took him as far back as the Middle Ages, fifty
years at a time, in case there were other incarnations.
When we got to the year 1350, he said he felt very strange
and put his hands upon his chest in a gesture I interpreted
as religious. But there was no recognition of another per-
son. I then took him, step by step, back into the present,
Jacqueline
601
finally awakening him, and then inquiring how he felt.
Since John was a good hypnotic subject, he remembered
absolutely nothing of what he had said during hypnosis.
"Do you feel different from the way you felt fifteen
minutes ago?” I inquired.
“Well, I had a headache before I came; I don’t have
a headache now.”
He felt well-rested and satisfied with himself. Jacque-
line had not put in an appearance, as she would have if she
had been part of John K. I then explained to the young
man that his ordeal had not been caused by reincarnation
memories or an unfulfilled earlier lifetime. To the contrary,
he had been victimized by an independent entity, not
related to him in any way, who had somehow sought him
out to serve as her medium of expression in the physical
world. Jacqueline, the French prostitute, whose choice of
clothes indicated that she had lived in the nineteenth cen-
tury, wanted to live in this century through another body.
For reasons of her own she had chosen a male body for her
experiment.
If there was any reincarnation connection between the
two, it remained obscure. There is, of course, the possibil-
» 133
The Wurmbrand Curse
One OF the STRANGEST cases I have ever investigated
took me from sunny California to the dank, dark recesses
of an Austrian castle, a case so strange that I am still hard
put to find a parallel in the annals of psychic research. And
yet all this happened only yesterday, in the practical 1960s,
barely two hours from a spanking new jetport.
It all began in Vienna in 1964, when my good friend
Turhan Bey told me of a haunted castle belonging to a
friend of his who resided in Hollywood. The friend’s name
was von Wurmbrand, and Turhan promised to introduce
us. But somehow the matter slipped our minds at the time.
Fate, however, had meant for me to meet this man,
apparently, for in November of the same year I received a
letter from Count Wurmbrand, telling me he had read
Ghost Hunter, and thought possibly 1 could help him solve
his psychic problem. What had called me to his attention
was not only my book but a silly newspaper article in the
Vienna Volksblatt, a newspaper of very minor importance
that had seen fit to ridicule my work. The article had dealt
with the ghost at Forchtenstein reported by me in Ghosts
I’ve Met.
Subsequently, I met the Count at the Hotel Roosevelt
in Hollywood. Over lunch, we talked of his predicament
ity that John K. had been in another life someone close to
Jacqueline, in her time, and had since reincarnated while
Jacqueline had not, and that the woman attached herself to
John K. just as soon as she could after his birth into the
present life. I myself tend to favor this theory. It is unfor-
tunate that this earlier John K. could not be rediscovered
either consciously or in hypnosis. But if this earlier incar-
nation had led a fully satisfactory life, the need to retain
traces of memory would not be there.
In the case of Jacqueline, her inner conflict between
what she was doing and the religious pressure exerted upon
her must have been the compelling factor in keeping her in
a time slot, or, rather, suspended in time, preventing her
from reincarnating herself. In her predicament and frustra-
tion she needed to express herself through someone in the
present, since she could not herself go on and be someone
else. Deprived of her medium, Jacqueline perhaps will have
found an avenue of escape into the next stage of existence
and hopefully will not be heard from again.
and I promised to come to Steyersberg, his ancestral castle,
that very summer. The Count, over six feet tall, was an
imposing figure of a man, very much old world, but with a
dash of the practical American intermingled with his his-
torical background.
This was not surprising, since he had resided in Cali-
fornia since 1927 and was an American citizen, married — a
second marriage for him — to an American woman consid-
erably his junior, with whom he lived at an impeccably
decorated house in the Hollywood hills.
The house, which I only got to know after the
Count’s untimely death, is a far cry from the enormous
expanse of the Steyersberg castle, but in its own way it was
a perfect home, perfect for the two people who lived there
happily for many years. For whatever the sinister aspects of
the story, they had no powers under the warming rays of
the California sun.
Degenhard von Wurmbrand was dressed conserva-
tively— for California, anyway — in a gray business suit, but
being Austrian, he was anything but stuffy. His conversa-
tion sparkled with wit and charm; his English of course
was excellent, and we spent a pleasant hour together.
Unfortunately I was under great pressure at the time from
television work, so I could not come to his home on Blue-
bird Avenue.
He was seventy-two years old and, as a former Impe-
rial officer, carried himself so erectly as to belie his years.
Nothing about him gave a hint of illness or weakness, a
point I find rather important in the light of later events.
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
602
It was his custom to visit his castle in the mountains
of Austria every summer, to join his sister, the widowed
Countess Kolowrat, in a few weeks of vacationing at a
place that had been in their family for centuries past. The
Wurmbrand family goes back to the Middle Ages, and its
members held high honors in the Austrian Empire.
After 1939, Degenhard did not return to his castle in
the summer because of the war, and only his American
ownership of the estate prevented the Russians from sack-
ing it toward the end of the Second World War. His
younger brother actually administered it until his death in
1960, while Degenhard continued a carefree existence in
Hollywood. But there was always a shadow, an ever pre-
sent threat that even the warmth of California could not
dispel.
Degenhard von Wurmbrand had grown up in the
enormous castle, a gray building of some sixty rooms
perched atop a tree-covered mountain some 49 miles south
of Vienna, not terribly far from the busy Schwechat airport
and yet remote in many ways — as we were to learn later
that year. But as the Imperial Count — his full title was His
Excellency, the Imperial Count of Wurmbrand-Stuppach —
grew up in the castle, he was soon to learn that it harbored
a terrible secret. He shared a room with his younger
brother in the oldest wing of the castle, a wing going back
well into the early seventeenth century and beyond.
Although Steyersberg has been completely modernized
and has a bathroom for each bedroom, no structural
changes whatever have changed its original appearance.
The room the two boys occupied, back at the turn of
the century, was a tower room looking out onto the moat
below and the rolling hills of Styria in the distance. It is in
what is now the top floor of that wing, looming consider-
ably above the surrounding landscape. I have looked out of
that window at the corner of the room where you can see
both eastward and southward, and the isolation, the feeling
of remoteness, is intense. The room the boys shared was
connected to another tower room by a dark corridor. Their
sister Huberta occupied that other room. Underneath, the
castle extended well into the rock.
Degenhard was now six years old and on his own, so
to speak; his younger brother still had a nurse who shared
the accommodations with the two children. The younger
boy was two.
It was dark early that evening and nothing but black-
ness could be seen outside the windows. The nearest vil-
lage is miles away and no lights break the enveloping
shadows. The nurse was reading a book — it was only about
7 p.m. — and the only light in the large room came from a
small kerosene lamp on her night table. The younger boy
was already asleep but Degenhard could not close his eyes.
Somehow this night seemed different to him. Perhaps the
budding sixth sense had already manifested itself at this
early age, for Count Wurmbrand later became very psychic
and was so to his end.
At any rate, the six-year-old was in bed, but fully
awake, when his eyes happened to glance toward the corri-
dor connecting the two rooms. Suddenly, he saw three
black crows emerge from the corridor — flying into their
room!
As the startled boy watched the strange birds which
had seemingly come out of thin air, one of the crows
alighted on the headboard of his brother’s bed, while two
perched on his bed. This was enough for him — instantly
he pulled the blanket over his head. When he came up for
air a moment later, there was no trace of the birds, and the
nurse was reading quietly. She had not seen anything. Evi-
dently the birds had meaning only for members of the
Wurmbrand family!
When I visited Steyersberg Castle with my wife
Catherine on September 6, 1965, Count Wurmbrand took
me to that very room. Except for the soft carpeting now
covering the floor wall to wall and the up-to-date bathroom
fixtures, it had not changed very much. The view from the
windows was still breathtaking.
Again, it was dark outside, as the air was heavy with
rain which had come down continuously all day. It was
now four in the afternoon but the atmosphere was forbid-
ding and depressing. The instant I set foot into that part of
the castle, I felt myself pulled down and somehow found
myself speaking in hushed tones. The Count suddenly
looked very, very tired and old — quite different from the
athletic Lord of the Manor who had greeted us at his gates
earlier that day. Was the atmosphere of the room trans-
forming him too?
We discussed the past of the rock upon which the
castle was built; originally erected in 1 180, it passed into
the Wurmbrand family in 1530 but it had fallen into disre-
pair when Degenhard’s father rebuilt it. Degenhard himself
added the bathrooms and other American touches, making
it probably one of the best appointed old castles in the
world.
Then our conversation turned to the ghostly crows.
“I have wondered all my life what it meant,” the
Count said. “I can see them even now!”
The specter of the crows — and other uncanny experi-
ences, noises, footsteps where no one walked — troubled
him through the years. But it was not until 1950 that he
learned a little more about his predicament and what it
meant.
“There was a German clairvoyant in California at the
time,” the Count explained, “and out of curiosity I went to
see her. Immediately she drew back and asked me, ‘What
is this black entity I see behind you?’ She thought I was
possessed."
"Possessed?” I said. Had a ghost left the castle and
travelled all the way to Hollywood? Impossible. Ghosts
stay put.
The Wurmbrand Curse
603
The clairvoyant wondered where the Count could
have “picked up” this possessing force, and he could not
think of any meaningful incident — except the appearance of
the ghostly crows. The clairvoyant then made an appoint-
ment for Count Wurmbrand to see a Buddhist priest spe-
cializing in exorcising the possessed.
Did it do any good?” I asked. The plot was becoming
international.
“He did the ceremony three times,” the count
recalled, "but after the first attempt I questioned him about
the whole thing.”
The Buddhist priest, who knew nothing whatever
about the Count or his background, evidently was also a
medium. He described three ragged men around the
Count, men who protested their expulsion since they had
some unfinished business.
The Buddhist priest asked that they explain them-
selves, and the restless spirits informed him that two ances-
tors of the Count’s had done them wrong; having accused
them falsely of treason, these earlier Wurmbrands had then
tortured and killed the men in their castle. Even though
this had happened a long time ago, the victims wanted
revenge. They wanted the Count to kill, to commit a
crime. That was their way of getting even for a wrong done
in 1710!
Count Wurmbrand thought all this very strange, but
then he recalled with terrifying suddenness how he had
often felt an almost uncontrollable desire to kill, to commit
murder — he, a normally gentle, peace-loving man.
Another thought struck him as he walked out of the
Hollywood priest’s house. All the phenomena of an
uncanny nature had taken place in the room where he had
seen the three crows — and that room was in a direct line
above the dungeon. His father had ordered the ancient
dungeon walled up, and it is inaccessible to this day; to get
into it, one would have to break down a thick wall. If any-
one had been done to death at Steyersberg Castle, it was at
that spot.
Count Wurmbrand examined the historical records
concerning his ancestors. In 1710 the castle belonged to a
different branch of the family, and, oddly enough, two men
shared ownership and command, for they were also gener-
als in the Imperial army. Thus the ghosts’ reference to two
men having done them wrong made sense.
Nothing much happened to the Count in the subse-
quent years that would have reminded him of the ancient
curse. But in 1961 he returned to Austria again and there
he met a lady who had been a friend of his father’s and
brother’s. She was the only person interested in psychic
matters the Count knew, outside of himself, and she there-
fore confided in him without reservation in such areas.
It appeared that a seance had been held at the castle
in his absence, at which a then-famed Vienna medium was
present along with the lady and his brother. The man went
CHAPTER EIGHT; Haunted People
into trance in one of the rooms of the castle. Suddenly, the
electric lights dimmed quite by themselves for no apparent
reason. Then they clearly heard heavy footfalls where
nobody was seen walking. The lady had had enough and
left the room, leaving the continuance of the seance to his
brother.
After a while, Count Ernst also left and went to his
room. But the invisible footsteps followed him right to his
room. This so unnerved him that he asked the medium for
further advice. The man offered to do his best, and, with-
out having any foreknowledge of the events that had hap-
pened so many years ago in the boys’ bedroom above the
dungeon, went directly to that room although he could
have gone to some fifty others.
“This is where I want to sleep,” he explained, and so
he did. The following morning he was none the worse for
it.
The ghost had indeed communicated with him the
night before. He complained of having been wrongly
imprisoned for treason and tortured by the two ancestor-
generals. It was exactly the same story the Buddhist had
told Count Wurmbrand in Hollywood — with one notable
exception: here only one man claimed to have been
wronged, only one ghost.
“Was that all?” I asked. It had been quite a story.
“Not entirely,” Count Wurmbrand explained in a
voice that grew slowly more tired as night fell outside.
“The curse included a provision for happiness. No Wurm-
brand should ever have a happy marriage within these
walls, the ghost claimed. And no Wurmbrand ever has.”
I took some photographs in the haunted room, pho-
tographs that later showed remarkable superimpositions.
Although my camera, double-exposure-proof due to a lock
mechanism, cannot take anything but square pictures, I
came up with a triple picture of oblong shape, showing
areas of the room that were actually in back of me, areas
the camera could not possibly have photographed under
ordinary conditions — and there was no mirror or window
effect to account for it in the room. These pictures are now
among my psychic photographs and I treasure them highly.
Another remarkable thing about them, however, was
the way Count Wurmbrand looked in one of them. Very
tired and ill, as if the shadows that were to come were
already being etched on his face by supernormal means!
I did not want to strain my host, but there were some
loose ends I wanted to clear up before we returned to the
others. Because the Count’s sister was not too keen on the
subject, or so he left — wrongly, as I later discovered — he
and I had gone to the haunted room alone, leaving my wife
to discuss music and art with Countess Juliana Wurm-
brand and Countess Kolowrat, the sister.
“Outside of yourself, your brother Ernst and of
course the medium, has anyone else experienced anything
out of the ordinary in this castle?” I asked.
604
“During the years when I was in America, the lady I
mentioned before who had brought the medium here once
brought here a man who was not of the best character. He
was a member of the Nazi party, so intentionally she put
him into the haunted room. The next morning, he com-
plained bitterly about it. There had been terrific noises all
night and people ‘trying to come in all the time.’ Some
force had tried to force itself into the room, he claimed.”
Were there any records of the treason trial referred to
by the ghost? We went down into the library of the castle,
which was on the first floor and even nearer to the walled -
up dungeon. It was an ill-lit, long room filled with manu-
scripts, some in a state of disorder and all covered with
dust. A cursory examination yielded nothing of help.
“When was the last time you felt uneasy here?” I
asked, finally.
"I wouldn’t sleep in this room, I assure you,” the
Count answered. Earlier he had told me that the curse was
still hanging over him and he had never really felt safe
from it.
When he was at the castle, he simply avoided the
areas he considered haunted and lived only in the other
portions. There were the living and dining rooms, magnifi-
cent in their splendor and appointments, furnished as only
a very old family can furnish their house. His own apart-
ments were in one of the other wings, quite a walk from
the big fireplace that graced the large dining room to which
we now returned.
The day had been a long one, and one fraught with
strange incidents. Somehow it felt like the script of a Hol-
lywood horror movie, only we were not reading it — we
were in it!
I had accepted the invitation to come to Steyersberg
and been given exact instructions on how to get there.
Countless Kolowrat even sent me a picture postcard with
the many-turreted castle on it, so I could not possibly miss
it.
I hired a car in Vienna, only to discover on the very
morning of our intended visit that the car had broken
down and we could not go. I then telephoned Count
Wurmbrand and he sent his own car and chauffeur to
fetch us.
When we neared the Schlossberg, or castle hill, after
about an hour’s ride through the foothills of the Austrian
Alps, we found the country more and more isolated and
primitive.
As we started to climb the hill to get up to the top
where the castle could be seen already from some distance,
the chauffeur honked his horn to advise the castle of our
coming. When we rounded the final curve of the road, an
incomparable sight greeted us: just inside the gray stone
castle gates, as we rolled into the yard, there stood, await-
ing us at attention, the butler, dressed in white jacket and
dark pants, a maid in Victorian uniform, and a third
servant.
By the time we had gotten out of the car with all my
camera and tape equipment, Count Wurmbrand himself
was walking slowly toward us from the main entrance, giv-
ing us an old-fashioned welcome.
From that moment on, we spent a delightful day in a
world one regretted to leave. Unfortunately, we had already
— and foolishly — committed ourselves to leave Vienna in
the morning, so we could not stay over. We promised to
return the following summer with Sybil Leek and finish off
the ghost and the curse.
That, at least, was our intention, and we corre-
sponded with the Wurmbrands on and off, until we could
set a date for our return.
Then, suddenly, there was silence. In December of
1965, 1 received a black-bordered letter bearing an Aus-
trian postmark. Instinctively I knew what it meant before I
opened it.
It was the official notification that my friend had
passed away on November 17, and had been buried with
all honors due him in the patron’s church at nearby Kir-
chau, one of the villages "belonging” to the Steyersberg
domain.
I was not satisfied with this formal announcement: I
wanted to know more. Had not my friend been in excellent
health when we last saw him?
In June of 1966 I spent some time in Hollywood, and
it was then that I finally saw the California home of the
Wurmbrands. Countess Juliana brought me up to date on
events.
Her husband had been taken ill with a minor com-
plaint, but one sufficiently important to be looked after in a
good hospital. There was no danger, nor was he indeed
suffering very deeply. Several days went by and the Count
became impatient, eager to return to active life again.
Juliana visited him regularly, and if anything was wrong
with my friend, it was his distaste at being in the hospital
at all.
Then one night he had a small blood clot. Normally,
a quick treatment is possible and the outcome need not be
fatal. But that night, the doctor could somehow not be
found in time, and precious moments ticked off. By the
time help came, it was too late. Count Wurmbrand had
died of an unrelated accident, an accident that need not
have happened nor been fatal to him. Had the fingers of
fate, the far-reaching rays of a grim curse finally reached
their last victim?
For the Count died without direct male heir bearing
this illustrious name, and so it is that the Wurmbrand
Castle is no longer in the hands of a Count Wurmbrand as
I write this account of the strange curse that followed a
man from Austria to sunny California, and back again to
Austria. Who knows, if Degenhard von Wurmbrand had
remained in California in 1965 he might still be alive.
The Wurmbrand Curse
605
I know this to be so, for I spoke to him briefly in the
fall of 1964 when I passed through Hollywood. He was not
sure at the time whether he could see us at his Castle in
the summer of 1965 or not.
“Something tells me not to go,” he said gravely.
“Then you should not,” I advised. A man’s intuition,
especially when he is psychic and has had premonitions all
his life as Wurmbrand had, should be heeded.
But the Count had business in Austria and in the end
he relented and went, never to return to California. Thus it
was that, before I could do anything about it, the Wurm-
brand curse had found its mark.
* 134
Dick Turpin, My Love
DURING THE SUMMER OF 1973, 1 received a strangely
elaborate and pleading letter from a young woman by the
name of Cynthia von Rupprath-Snitily. The name itself
was fascinating enough to warrant my further interest, but
what the lady had to say concerning her strange experi-
ences with the unknown would have attracted me even if
her name had been Smith or Jones.
Cynthia had been born December 31, 1948 in
Chicago, and lived in the same house until twenty-one
years of age, leaving the area only to attend college at
Northern Illinois University in De Kalb, Illinois. Immedi-
ately I recalled my own visit to Northern Illinois Univer-
sity, a huge college set in a very small town in the middle
of the Illinois plains, a school which seemed forever to bat-
tle the narrow-mindedness of the surrounding town, while
catering to a very large student body bent on exploring the
further reaches of the human mind. Cynthia holds a Bache-
lor’s degree in both history and art, and is an art historian
by profession. "I have dealt with both fictitious legend and
concrete fact,” she stated, “and therefore I have knowledge
of the fine lines that sometimes separate these two entities.
I have thus carried over the cognizance to my everyday life
and have incorporated it into my style of thinking. In
truth, I am my own worst critic.”
In 1970 she married a man she had met at the Uni-
versity of Notre Dame and moved to his home town of
Seattle, Washington, where he was employed at Boeing
Aircraft. With the termination of the SST project, her hus-
band enlisted in the Air Force and at the time of contact-
ing me they were stationed at the Edwards Air Force Base
in California, about an hour's drive from Los Angeles.
Cynthia had always been a serious and sensitive per-
son, perhaps because she was an only child of parents forty
years older than herself. As a result she felt more at ease
with older people, preferring their company to that of her
own age. Due to her sensitivity, she was in the habit of
becoming rather emotional in matters of impact to her. In
order to offset this strong character trait and in view of her
profession, she tried very hard to develop a logical and
orderly method of approach to things, and to think matters
over several times before taking any specific course of
action. Thus, when she realized that she had psychic expe-
riences from childhood onward and saw them continue in
her life, she decided to analyze and investigate the phe-
nomena in which she was a central element. She soon real-
ized that her psychic ability had been inherited on her
mother’s side of the family; her maternal grandparents had
come to the United States from Croatia. Deeply embedded
in the culture of many Croatian people is the belief in
witchcraft, and the ability by some country folk to do
unusual things or experience the uncanny. But Cynthia’s
attitude towards these phenomena remained critical. “I am
not overwilling to accept such phenomena without further
investigation,” she explained. One case in particular
impressed her, since it involved her personally.
"This case is unusual because it has occurred to three
successive generations through the years. In the 1910s my
grandmother was living in Chicago performing household
tasks, when a neighbor dressed entirely in black came to
the door. The latter woman was commonly known as a
‘strega’ and my grandmother naturally was not too happy
to see her. The woman wanted to know what my grand-
mother was cooking in the pot on the stove. My grand-
mother refused and told the woman to leave, whereupon
the latter reported that she would return that night, ‘to find
that which she was seeking.’ That night while my grand-
parents, my mother, and my Uncle Bill were all sleeping in
the same bed, the door suddenly blew open and my mother
recalls seeing my grandmother literally struggling with
some unseen force on the bed. Mother remembers quite
vividly the movement of the mattress, as if something were
jumping up and down on it. Certainly the sensation was
stronger than a reclining figure could have inflicted. An
aura of evil seemed to have invaded the room and left as
quickly as did the ‘force.’ Years later, at the beginning of
1949, a similar event took place. My aunt was sitting in
our Chicago home, feeding me a bottle, when this force
again entered the scene, causing the two of us to be consid-
erably uplifted from the couch. Again the jumping per-
sisted and the evil presence was felt. The next performance
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
606
by this "thing” occurred in the early months of 1971 in
Seattle. It was around midnight and I was reading a novel,
while my husband, Gary, slept. I suddenly sensed some-
thing wicked within the confines of our room. I tossed it
off, but then there began that jumping motion. I became
quite alarmed as I realized neither my sleeping husband
nor my own reclined body could attest to such motion. I
woke my husband, who is not psychic, and he, too, became
aware of the jumping movement. It was now growing in
intensity, but when I called out the Lord’s name, the bed
suddenly ceased pitching. It wasn’t until April 1971, after
moving from Seattle, that I learned of the two previous
experiences.”
On her father’s side, Cynthia is descended from a
noble German family, originally from Hanover. Her father
had no interest or use for anything psychic. When Cynthia
was only a few months old, her Aunt Doris came to live
with the family as a temporary replacement for her mother,
who was then quite ill and in the hospital. The aunt was
sleeping on the living room couch, Cynthia’s father in the
front bedroom, and Cynthia herself in a crib placed in the
back bedroom. Everyone was very much concerned with
her mother’s health, and her aunt, being Roman Catholic,
had been praying almost around the clock. She had only
been asleep for a short time, when a cold breeze awakened
her and to her amazement, she saw a woman, fairly young
and dressed in a nun’s habit, walking slightly above the
floor through the living room and turn down the hall
toward Cynthia’s room. Concerned for the little girl’s
safety, the aunt quickly followed the woman into the room.
There she saw the nun place her hands on Cynthia’s crib,
look down at her and smile. She seemed quite unaware of
the aunt and, her mission apparently accomplished, turned
and walked down the hall. The aunt immediately checked
the baby, and seeing that the child was alright, went after
the apparition. When she arrived at the living room, the
figure had vanished, yet there remained a strong scent of
roses in the air which even Cynthia’s father noticed the fol-
lowing morning. The scent remained in the house, even
though it was winter, until Cynthia’s mother came home
from the hospital. There were no perfume sachets, fresh
flowers, or air fresheners which could have accounted for
the strange odor. The unusual scent has returned to the
house from time to time and can never be satisfactorily
explained; it usually coincides with an illness in the family,
and has often served as a kind of telepathic warning to
Cynthia’s mother, when Cynthia was ill while at college.
This particular event, of course, was told to Cynthia many
years later at a family gathering, but it served to underline
Cynthia’s own awareness of her unusual faculty.
"Perhaps the most vivid and memorable personal
experience occurred to me when I was in grade school,”
Cynthia explained. “I had always heard footsteps in the
1950s and ‘60s, starting in the aforementioned living room,
coming into the front bedroom and stopping at my bed,
both during the day and at night. My parents always
attributed the noises to the creaking of old floors, but the
house was only built in 1947. At times, the footfalls backed
away from the bed, thus disputing the “last footsteps
before going to bed” theory. I occupied a twin bed which
faced the hallway when the bedroom door was open. On
the left side of the bed, my side, was the wall shared by
both the living room and front bedroom; Mother slept in
the other twin bed adjacent to the driveway wall.
“During one particular night, I had gotten up to go
to the bathroom, and upon returning to my bed, snuggled
under the covers and shot a quick glance at my sleeping
mother. Suddenly, the room became exceptionally cold and
on looking toward the door, which I had forgotten to close,
I saw four figures coming from the living room through the
hallway wall and turn into our bedroom. In order to assert
that I hadn’t unconsciously fallen asleep since returning to
bed, I began pinching myself and looking from time to
time to the familiar surrounding room and my mother.
Thus I know I was fully awake and not dreaming. The
first figure entering the room was dressed, as were all the
others, in nineteenth century western American clothing.
She was a woman in her forties of average height, very thin
and dressed in a brown and white calico dress with high-
button collar and long sleeves; her dark brown hair was
parted in the middle and tied tightly on top of her head in
a bun. There was a prim, austere air about her. She moved
to the foot of the bed on my far left. Next came a very tall
and lanky man, brown hair parted in the middle, wearing a
brown three-piece suit, rather shabby. He took his place in
the middle, at the foot of my bed. Following him was a
woman whom I felt was out of place, even at the time of
the vision. She was dressed in the most outlandish purple
satin outfit, tucked up on one side as a barroom girl might
have worn in the Old West. Her blonde hair was curled in
ringlets, which were drawn up on one side of her head and
cascaded down on the other. I sensed loneliness and a very
gentle nature surrounding her as she took her place next to
the tall gentleman to my right. Lastly came a very dapper
if somewhat plump gray -haired gentleman. He carried a
small three-legged stool and a black bag, telling me he was
probably a medical man. Hatted and wearing a gray three-
piece suit complete with gold watch chain, he seated him-
self on his stool on the right-hand side of my bed. They all
seemed terribly concerned over my health, although I was
not ill at the time. When the ‘doctor’ leaned over the bed
and tried to take my hand into his, I decided I had experi-
enced just about all I wanted to with these strangers. My
voice quivered as I called out to my mother, who was a
very light sleeper, and whose back was facing me, inform-
ing her of the unknowns who had invaded our bedroom.
‘Mother, there are people in the room!’ I called again and
again. She reassured me sleepily and without turning over
that I was only dreaming, and to go back to sleep. During
these implorings on my part, the four strangers began
Dick Turpin, My Love
607
backing away from the bed as if they were alarmed by my
speaking. Whether they actually spoke or I heard them
telepathically, I cannot be certain, but I did 'hear’ them
repeatedly say, ‘No, please, we only want to help you. No,
no, don’t call out.’ My cries increased and with that they
turned and exited the same way they had entered, through
the wall into the living room.”
The house in which this vision took place had only
been built in comparatively recent times. The land had
formed part of a farm in the early nineteenth century, but
the costumes of the figures, Cynthia felt sure, belonged to
an earlier period. She wondered whether perhaps the land
had been part of a western wagon trail, and she was reliv-
ing a child’s death. On the other hand, she began to won-
der whether it referred to a previous existence of her own,
since she has very strong feelings about the nineteenth
century West.
Cynthia has had a number of precognitive dreams
concerning events that later took place. But the dream that
impressed itself more than any other upon her conscious-
ness had to do with the past. Actually, it was preceded by
what she described as “an insatiable interest in England”
she developed in early high school, long before the Beatles
became the rage of America. This was not a single dream,
easily forgotten, but a series of recurrent dreams, all related
one to the other, mounting in intensity as if something
within her was trying to come to the surface, informing her
of a long-forgotten memory.
“At times I noticed myself speaking in a north coun-
try British accent and I caught myself using English
spellings, drinking tea with cream, and the first time I
heard the song, ‘Greensleeves,’ I felt very moved and cer-
tainly melancholy. There is another song, called ‘North
Country Maid’ which has remained my great favorite. I
even went so far as to compose a 200-page term paper on
England for my sociology class. But long before this project
took place, I began dreaming of a cloaked man mounting a
horse in the moonlight and riding out of sight into the
English countryside. I was in the dream also, dressed in a
blue and tan peasant frock, laced up the front. I knew it
was me because I remember looking down at the dress I
was wearing. In other words, I was actually a participant,
not a sleeping spectator of myself, nor recognizing myself
as another person. At any rate, I seemed to be coming out
of a stable or barn, in which I had been lying on a large
pile of hay. I begin running towards the mounting horse-
man, as if to beg him not to leave. Then I would awaken,
only to dream the same dream several nights later.
“One night when I was particularly tired, I managed
to continue my dream state after the wench’s running, but
not for long. In the dream, I uttered between sobs, the
name of Dick, and then awoke. The dream continued in
this pattern until I, now exasperatedly curious, forced
myself to remain sleeping. Finally, one night, I was able to
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
hear the whole phrase — ’Dick Turpin, my love, wait! Don’t
go!’ Its mission now seemingly fulfilled by giving me a
name I had never heard before, the dream never returned
again.”
At that time, Cynthia had never heard of Dick
Turpin. But the dreams had roused her curiosity and she
started to research it. Her Encyclopedia Britannica was of
very little help, nor did any of the high school encyclope-
dias contain the name. But in her parents’ library she
located a 1940 edition of Nelson’s Encyclopedia. In it, she
found a brief listing of one Richard Turpin, an English
highwayman and associate of Tom King, who lived from
1706 to 1739, when he was executed by hanging.
About a year after the dreams had subsided, she was
riding with a girlfriend, when she suddenly felt a strong
urge to return home immediately. Still under a kind of
compulsion, she immediately turned on the television set
and picked a Walt Disney show, very much to her parents’
surprise, since they knew her to dislike the program. At
that moment, flashed on the screen were the words, “The
Legend of Dick Turpin”. Cynthia then proceeded to watch
the program, her eyes glued to the set, interrupting the
proceedings on screen with comments of her own. “No,
that wasn’t what happened,” she would say and proceeded
to correct it. What was remarkable was her ability to relate
what was about to happen on-screen and to mention char-
acters’ names before this information became available to
the viewers. Afterwards, she felt dazed and remembered
little of what she had said during the program.
I suggested that Cynthia meet me in Los Angeles so
that I could attempt to regress her hypnotically and deter-
mine whether her reincarnation memory was factual or
merely a romantic fantasy. We met just before Christmas,
1973, at my Hollywood hotel, the Continental Hyatt
House. We discussed Cynthia’s psychic experiences and I
discovered that she had had an accident in 1969 resulting
in a brain concussion. Did the accident influence her psy-
chic perceptions in any way? No, she replied, she had had
them for years prior to the accident, and they continued
after the accident. Had she ever been to England or was
she of English background? Both questions she answered in
the negative. Her interest in English history and literature
at college came after the recurrent dream had occurred to
her. Having established that neither Cynthia nor her family
had any English background nor leanings, I proceeded to
regress her hypnotically in the usual manner. It took only a
short time before she was under, ready to answer my ques-
tions while hypnotized.
After describing life as a Victorian gentleman in New
York, and giving the name of John Wainscott, and the year
1872 or 1892, she proceeded back into the eighteenth cen-
tury and the year 1703, to a man who had something to do
with a Delaware Street. The man’s name was Dick, and
evidently we had gotten to the subject of her recurrent
dreams.
608
"He is mounting a horse, and he’s throwing his cape
back so he can take hold of the reins. He’s got a hat on
with a plume on it, I am standing by the barn.”
"What is your relationship with this man? What is
your name?” I asked.
“A wench. . .my name is Sally.”
“What year is this?”
"1732.”
"What happens then?”
"He rides away like he always does.”
"What happens to you?”
"I cry.”
And that was all I could get out of her through hyp-
notic regression. But somehow it must have settled this
recurrent dream and the urgency connected with it within
Cynthia, for I heard nothing further from her since then.
* 135
The Restless Dead
Not ONLY HOUSES can be haunted, but people as well.
There are literally thousands of cases where people have
seen or heard the ghost of a dead person, usually a person
with unfinished business on his/her mind at the time death
overtook him/her.
Let me set down my criteria for such experience, so
that we understand what we are dealing with. When a per-
son dreams of a dead relative this may or may not have
significance. When the dream includes specific details
unknown to the dreamer at the time and later found cor-
rect, then the dreamer is getting a psychic message in the
dream state when his unconscious is free from the con-
scious mind and thus easier to reach.
I have examined hundreds upon hundreds of recent
cases and carefully eliminated the doubtful or hallucina-
tory. What remains is hardcore evidence.
California, land of sunshine and pleasant living, has a
great many such incidents, perhaps because death here is
something alien, something that does not quite fit with the
warmth and serenity of climate and outlook.
Take the case of Mrs. G. A., in Santa Susana, for
instance. Mrs. A. is not a person given to belief in the
supernatural. In fact, her total disbelief that the events that
shook her up in 1958 were in any way psychic caused her
to contact me. Somehow the “rational” explanation — grief
over the passing of her husband — did not satisfy her eager
mind and ultimately she wanted to know.
Her husband and Mrs. A. were working on their boat
in the backyard on a warm California day. Suddenly, she
heard him cry out “Honey,” as if in pain. He had been
working with an electric sander at the time. Alarmed, Mrs.
A. turned around in time to see him clutching the sander
to his chest. He had been accidentally electrocuted.
Quickly she pulled the electric plug out and tried to hold
him up, all the while screaming for help; but it was too
late.
The ironical part was that A. had had nightmares
and waking fears about just such an accident — death from
electrocution.
Two months went by and Mrs. A tried to adjust to
her widowhood. One night she was roused from deep sleep
by “something” in the room. As soon as she was fully
awake she perceived an apparition of her late husband, sus-
pended in the air of their room!
He did not make any sound or say anything.
Strangely enough, the apparition wore no shirt; he was
bare-chested, as he would not have been in life.
In a moment he was gone, and Mrs. A. went back to
sleep. In the morning she convinced herself that it was just
a case of nerves. The day wore on. It was 4:30 in the after-
noon and Mrs. A. was seated on her living room couch,
relaxing and waiting for a telephone call from her mother.
All of a sudden, she heard her car drive up to the door.
She realized at once that this could not be the case, since
she was not driving it, but it struck her also that this was
the precise time her husband always drove up to the door,
every afternoon!
Before she could fully gather her wits, he was there in
the room with her. He looked as he had always looked, not
transparent or anything as ethereal as that. Mrs. A. was lit-
erally frozen with fear. Her late husband knelt before her
seemingly in great emotion, exclaiming, “Honey, what’s
wrong?”
At this point, Mrs. A. found her tongue again and
quietly, as quietly as she was able to, told her late husband
what had happened to him.
“There has been an accident, and you were killed.”
When she had said those words, he uttered the same
sound he did at the time of the accident — ’’Honey!” — as if
remembering it — and instantly he vanished.
Mrs. A. has never felt him around her again since.
Evidently, her husband has adjusted to his new state.
Sometimes the ghostly denizens drive the living out —
only to find themselves without a home in the end. Such
was the strange case recently of a house in Paso Robles
owned by the Adams family. I heard about their predica-
ment when I appeared on the Art Linkletter Show.
Mrs. Adams has three children, aged eleven, ten, and
nine. Their problem: the house they bought used to be a
"red light house,” as she put it. Before they bought it, two
The Restless Dead
609
young women lived there with an old man as a kind of
chaperone. After the police forced the women out of busi-
ness, the old man remained behind until his death.
Shortly after moving in, the Adams family noticed
that all was not well with their home. The husband worked
nights, and at the time he went to work between the hours
of midnight and 3 A.M., strange noises were heard outside
the house, such as banging on the wall — only nobody
human was doing it. This was in December of 1957. Grad-
ually, the noises changed from a slight rattle to a big, loud
bang on the walls. Occasionally it sounded as if someone
were ripping the window screens off the house.
Mrs. Adams called the police repeatedly, but they
could not find anything or anyone causing the distur-
bances. Her husband, who worked in a bakery, also heard
the noises one night when he stayed home. Always at the
same time, in the early morning hours.
Soon Mrs. Adams also distinguished footsteps and
human voices when nobody was walking or talking. On
one occasion she could clearly hear two men talking, one
saying he would try to get into the house. Then there were
knocks on the walls as if someone were trying to
communicate.
It got so bad that the Adamses started to make
inquiries about the past of their property, and it was then,
two years after they had moved in, that they finally learned
the truth about the house and its former use.
They decided to let the ghosts have the house and
moved out, to another house which has always been free
from any disturbances. The haunted red light house they
rented out to people not particular about ghosts. But they
did not do too well at that. Nobody liked to stay in the
house for long.
That was in 1964. When I checked up on Mrs.
Adams in 1966, things had changed quite a lot.
“They tore it up repeatedly,” Mrs. Adams explained,
and since it was an old house, the owners did not feel like
putting a lot of money into it to fix the damage done by
the nightly “party.”
It got to be sub-standard and the city council stepped
in. Thus it was that the ghost house of Paso Robles was
torn down by official order. The Adams family now owns
an empty lot on which they can’t afford to build a new
house. And the ghosts? They have no place to go to,
either. Serves them right!
* * *
Ralph Madison is a man who lives life and has
enjoyed every moment of it. He is a great-grandfather four
times over and not a young man, but he was still working
in 1965, when I heard his strange story, as a part-time
security guard in the museum at Stanford University.
He makes his home in Palo Alto, and has been mar-
ried to the same woman since 1916. Not boasting much
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
formal education, Madison considers himself a self-made
man. Perhaps the only thing unusual about him is a pen-
chant to send people tape recordings instead of letters. But
perhaps Madison is only being practical. In another ten
years’ time we may all correspond in that way.
I would not be interested in Mr. Madison if it
weren’t for one particular incident in his life, an incident
that made him wonder about his sanity — and, after having
reassured himself about it — about the meaning of such
psychic experiences.
It happened in 1928 in Palo Alto, on Emerson Street.
Ralph Madison was minding his own business, walking in
the vicinity of the five-hundred block, when he noticed a
man he knew slightly, by the name of Knight. Mr. Knight
operated a cleaning establishment nearby. The two men
stopped to talk and Madison shook hands with his
acquaintance.
It struck him as peculiar, however, that the man’s
voice seemed unusually wispy. Moreover, Knight's hands
were clammy and cold!
They exchanged some words of no particular signifi-
cance, and then they parted. Madison started out again and
then quickly glanced around at his friend. The man he had
just shaken hands with had disappeared into thin air. At
this moment it came to him with shocking suddenness that
Mr. Knight had been dead and buried for five years.
In a high state of excitement, Madison ran into a real
estate office operated nearby by a Mr. Vandervoort whom
he knew well. Quickly relating what had happened to him,
Madison was assured that Knight and indeed been dead for
five years and that he, Madison, was seeing things.
But Ralph Madison knows in his heart he shook
hands with a dead man on a street corner in Palo Alto, in
plain daylight.
* * *
A strange case came to my attention recently, strange
among strange experiences in that it involves a kind of pos-
session against which orthodox medicine seems to be
powerless.
Mrs. B. of Burlingame went to at least six doctors for
help, took countless nerve tonics and calming agents — but
to no avail. When she heard of my work in ESP, she con-
tacted me with a cry for help. This was in March of 1966
and I finally talked to her in October of the same year. Her
voice was firm and there was no sign of panic in it. Still,
what had happened to her would cause a lot of stronger
people to throw in the towel in a struggle against insanity.
A widow now, Mrs. B. originally came from the
Midwest where her father had been a physician, as were
his father and grandfather before him. Her mother before
her marriage was a high school teacher and she herself was
the daughter of a senator.
Mrs. B. taught school also and later took up nursing
as a profession. She was married from 1949 to 1960 and
considers her marriage a most happy one. No emotional
610
turmoils followed her widowhood, since Mrs. B. was an
avid reader and musician and had surrounded herself with
congenial friends. One could safely say that her life was
serene and well ordered.
But it took her three letters before she could commit
to paper the shocking experiences that had suddenly
entered her life. I always insist on written statements from
those reporting seemingly paranormal cases, and Mrs. B.
reluctantly complied. It was her feeling of shame that
prompted me to omit her full name from this account.
It started with a presence in the room with her, when
she knew that she was quite alone. Before long, she felt the
intimacies of another person on her body — a person she
could not see!
She thought she had cancer and consulted every con-
ceivable specialist, but got a clean bill of health. Yet, the
attacks continued. Was she imagining the unspeakable? She
began to question her own sanity. The physicians she con-
sulted knew no answer except to reassure her that she had
no physical ailment to account for the strange sensations.
Now I have heard similar stories about "attacks” by
sex-minded ghosts before and sometimes they are the
imagination of a frustrated middle-aged woman. No doubt
about it, a change of life can produce some pretty wild
symptoms in a woman, or for that matter in a man. Thus
it was with extreme caution that I accepted the testimony
of this lady. I wanted to be sure the case was psychic, not
psychiatric.
I questioned her along ESP lines. Had she never had
psychic experiences — other than the very graphically
described invasions of her privacy — in the house she lived
in, or elsewhere?
Apparently, the answer was affirmative. Some months
before contacting me, she was doing housework on a Sun-
day, when she heard a voice speak to her, apparently out of
thin air, a voice she did not recognize but which sounded
rather low and was speaking in a whisper.
“The G.s are coming today.” Now the G.s were
friends of Mrs. B.’s living at some distance. She had not
seen or heard from them for months, thus was not expect-
ing their visit in any way. Consequently, Mrs. B. refused
to believe the strange “voice.” But the voice insisted,
repeating the sentence once more!
Mrs. B. continued with her work, when around 1
P.M. she decided to take a rest. At 2 o’clock, the doorbell
rang. Since she was not expecting any visitors, she was
slow in answering it. It was the G.s, just as the voice had
said!
Since then, the ghostly voice has been heard by Mrs.
B. many times, always announcing someone’s coming. The
voice has never erred. The name, day and exact hour are
given and each time it comes to pass.
The presence of an unseen person continued to trou-
ble Mrs. B., but in addition she heard a voice speak two
words, “my wife,” several times, and on another occasion,
“her husband,” as if someone were trying to tell her some-
thing she should know.
Mrs. B., of course, rejected the idea that it might be
her own late husband who was haunting her, for he never
believed in anything psychic while in the flesh. Shortly
after this line of thought, she clearly heard the voice say,
"She just does not understand.”
When I was ready to see Mrs. B. in Burlingame,
which is near San Francisco, she had already moved to
another house in Santa Monica. It was there that I finally
talked to her.
The situation was much the same, it appeared, ruling
out any possibility that the ghost or invader was somehow
tied up with the house in Burlingame.
The voice, which she still did not recognize, was very
insistent now.
“Her husband. . .she just does not understand” was
followed on another occasion by a statement, “I would do
anything in the world. . .1 wonder what she would do if
she knew.”
Then the words "sweetheart” and "my wife” were
added and repeated on many occasions. All this happened
to Mrs. B. in a house in which she was quite alone at the
time.
Still, Mrs. B. refused to face the possibility that her
husband, skeptic though he might have been in the physi-
cal state, had learned the truth about psychic communica-
tions and was now trying to reach her — in the way a
husband mightl
Sometimes the tragedies that make people of flesh-
and- blood into non-physical ghosts are less horrifying than
the ghosts that continue a kind of forlorn existence in the
world in between — or rather I should say the ghosts are
not the comparatively benign apparitions of people as we
knew them, but something far more terrible, far more
sinister.
* * *
Wayne Barber is a young ambulance driver who used
to run the service out of Baker, California, one of the worst
stretches of road because of the many automobile accidents
that have happened on it. Now it is my personal opinion
that half the people driving cars should not, and, further-
more, that licenses should be renewed only after annual
examinations of those who qualify for them. What hap-
pened to Mr. Barber is only one case in point.
Aged twenty-nine years, six feet tall and married,
Wayne Barber is a rough-and-tough man who, as he put it,
"can eat a ham sandwich in complete comfort with dead
bodies all over the highway.” It’s part of his business and
he isn’t the least bit sentimental about it.
Until February 1966 he had absolutely no belief in
anything resembling the human soul, anything beyond
death. But then something pretty terrible happened.
The Restless Dead
611
On Washington’s Birthday there was a wreck about
five miles east of Baker, California, in which seven people
died. A group of three drunks was heading down the free-
way in the wrong direction and had a head-on collision
with a carload of people going to Las Vegas. In this car a
mother and father were taking their daughter and her
fiance to be married!
The car headed in the wrong direction burned before
the bodies could be removed. The others, mother and
father, were pinned in their car and the two children that
were to be married were thrown clear. All seven were dead.
“Any wreck involving the living is worse than han-
dling the dead,” Barber explained, “and this was not the
worst wreck my attendant and I had ever handled. I am
mentioning this so you don’t think we had a case of
nerves.”
After making certain there were no survivors, they
cleared the bodies off the highway and started to check
them for identification. Removing the bodies is part of an
ambulance crew’s work, and Barber and his aide did just
that — or what was left of the bodies — in order to clear the
road for traffic.
A day later a sandstorm came up, and five women
travellers in the area could not proceed because of poor vis-
ibility on the road. They appealed to Barber to put them
up overnight at the ambulance station, and he readily
agreed. He then went to the rear of the building to put
together five cots for them from his supplies of standby
equipment.
It was around 10:30 P.M. and the yard lights failed to
work. He could see only about five feet, but he carried a
small flashlight. As he busied himself on the standby rig
near the corner of the building, he suddenly felt himself
watched. Who would be standing there watching him in
the driving storm?
He spun around and faced something he had never
faced before.
There at arm’s length was what he later described as
“a thing,” a terribly mutilated figure of a human being, a
male, with legs hanging crookedly, just as they had been
compounded in the accident, the body twisted at the waist
and the head hanging at a weird angle, indicating a broken
neck. But the eyes were watching him, looking straight into
his — living, human eyes!
Barber was frozen to the spot long enough to observe
every detail of the horrible apparition.
"There was a sad longing in the eyes, and a grati-
tude,” Barber said afterwards. “In those eyes there was no
intention to harm me.”
Suddenly, his reactions returned and he tore into the
ghost with his flashlight as if it were a knife. But he was
thrashing thin air, and nothing but sand hit his face!
At this point his German Shepherd, a very rugged
animal, came out of the darkness howling, out of his senses
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
with fear. Barber continued on back to the house with the
stretchers for the cots. It was then that he saw what he
calls "the other thing.” This one was female. He did not
see as many details of this ghost as he had observed of the
male apparition, but he saw her outline clearly. It was
enough for him to take a day off immediately.
But the dog was not the same for weeks, becoming a
complete nervous wreck until he had to be given away to a
sympathetic lady. Soon after he was run over and killed.
Barber married after this experience and he had no
intention of ever talking about it to his new bride. But the
dog he had acquired to take the place of the shepherd soon
behaved in the most extraordinary fashion also, precisely
the same as the shepherd. What was the dog seeing around
the place? Barber then told his wife about the two ghosts.
The second dog had to be given away, too, when
he became unmanageable in the place. Now Barber has a
pug dog and he seems to be able to tolerate the influences
that still pervade the spot a little better than his two pre-
decessors.
“Something here is protecting me,” Wayne Barber
explains, and he and his wife refer to the ghosts somewhat
bravely as “the little people.”
Had the spirits of those two who never lived out their
normal lives attached themselves to their rescuer?
* * *
Mrs. Daphne R. lives in Malibu, California, with
her husband and children. Her second husband is a Navy
man and they have moved frequently. Originally English,
Mrs. R. has had a number of psychic experiences and is
unquestionably mediumistic. But the incident I found most
fascinating had to do with a ghost her little daughter
encountered. It interested me because not all the restless
dead are hopeless, pathetic human beings in trouble,
unable to help themselves. This ghost even helped another
person. It happened in 1952.
“I was working in Heidelberg as a secretary, and I
had a little three-year-old daughter from a broken mar-
riage, who lived with my parents in England. I got awfully
lonely, and increasingly sure that I ought to bring her over
to Germany to live with me. So one day I flew over to
England, and rode the train down to Folkestone, collected
the child and her belongings and took her back to London.
I had to wait a few days for her papers, so I stayed at the
private home of a rather well-known photographer.
“He was most kind, and offered to put my daughter
and me up for the time we had to spend in London. He
was a widower. I hardly saw him, as he was out all the
time on assignments. He had a small boy of around four or
five, and an English nanny. They lived in a rather posh
narrow house.
“One night I wanted to go to the theater, and asked
the nanny if she would baby-sit for me and keep an eye on
my little girl. I should add here that the child was in a ter-
rible emotional state about leaving my parents (I was
612
almost like a stranger to her), and she wept all the time,
and seemed calmer with the nanny than with me.
“Anyway, I went out, and left the little girl in the
double bed we were sharing, and the nanny promised to
pop in and out of the bedroom to watch her, as the little
boy had also gone to bed nearby. I wore a black suit —
which is an item of importance. When I got back around
1 1 :00 P.M., the nanny was in the kitchen, and she said
Kitty had cried quite a bit (not for me, but for my parents,
whom she missed), and that suddenly she had been quiet,
so the nanny had run up to take a peek at her, and she was
fast asleep and smiling in her sleep. The next morning I
awakened, and the child was in a very happy mood, so
much so that I said to her that I was so happy to see her
smiling for the first time in about two days, and that per-
haps she was a bit happier about going to live with
Mummy in Germany. She replied that yes, she was very
happy. Then she said, ‘I was unhappy last night, and I
cried, because I wanted my Nana (she referred to my
mother), but then the LADY came over to my bed and
stroked my head and told me you were out and would be
back soon, and that she would stay with me until you got
back.’ I merely thought she was referring to the nanny in
the house, and said 'Yes, nanny is a nice lady,’ and my
daughter said, ‘Oh no, it wasn’t the nanny, it was a pretty
lady with long red hair, and she was beautiful.’ Then she
went on to prattle about how the 'Lady' had told her how
much Mummy loved her, and how unhappy it made
Mummy to see the child cry, and that really it was much
better for her to be with her mother than with her grand-
parents, and the child ended up saying ‘I realized she is
right, Mummy.’
“Later that day, I asked the nanny if she had had a
guest, and when she said no, I told her about the above
incident, and she was quite aghast, and related to me that
her master’s late wife had long red hair, and was a beauti-
ful woman, but had been very unhappy, and I suppose
nowadays we would think she was mentally unbalanced;
apparently she threw herself from the balcony of the room
in which my daughter and I had been sleeping. She was so
interested in this — the nanny, I mean — that she asked my
daughter what the ‘lovely lady’ had been wearing, and
Kitty, my daughter, said,' ‘A lovely long blue satin nightie,’
and later the nanny said that the late lady of the house had
committed suicide in a blue satin evening house-gown.”
* * *
Some people with ghosts in their houses get to me in
person. Some write. Others manage to get me on the phone
although I am not listed any more. Still others tape record
their plea to me.
One such instance occurred while I was doing televi-
sion in Hollywood in November of 1966.
David Burkman, ofYorba Linda, is a married man
with four children; he is thirty years old. He used to be a
skeptic as far as ESP and psychic phenomena are concerned.
But then it happened.
It was in Fullerton, California, in April 1962, when
the Burkmans were occupying a house consisting of a large
living room, bedroom, den, two bedrooms for their chil-
dren, and a kitchen. At the time Mrs. Burkman was
already the mother of two children and expecting her
next, which, however, she later lost.
At the time of the incident that made Mr. Burkman
wonder about ghosts, he and his wife were asleep in their
bedroom at the southeast corner of the house. It was in the
early hours of the morning when Mrs. Burkman woke up
from the noise of "someone trying to open the door” which
is situated on the other end of the house. She woke her
husband and called his attention to the noise. The door in
question was the gate to the yard. It was fully locked at the
time and secured with a chain.
Mr. Burkman got his revolver, loaded it, and both he
and his wife now clearly heard the door open and shut.
There was no mistaking the characteristic noise with which
they were quite familiar. He stepped out of the bedroom
into the corridor now and heard footsteps coming toward
him. Someone was walking through their kitchen, then had
stopped at a point where the short hallway separated the
kitchen and the boy’s bedroom from the corridor leading
toward the couple’s own bedroom.
Mr. Burkman put his hand on the light switch, ready
to bathe the intruder — for they were sure it was one — in
the light of the ceiling fixtures. Now the footfalls continued
toward the hallway, so Burkman turned the lights on and
leveled his gun, ready to shoot — but to his dismay, there
was no intruder to be seen!
However, the footsteps of an unseen person continued,
despite the lights, down the hallway. Petrified, Mr. Burk-
man just stood there as the footsteps passed by and turned
into the bedroom, where they stopped abruptly when they
reached the spot where Mrs. Burkman was standing.
Nothing else happened to the Burkmans in this
house, nor did they ever discover any cause for the strange
occurrence on that April day in 1962.
However, David Burkman has had other psychic
experiences.
Usually through dreams, he has had premonitions of
deaths that later occurred as seen in his dreams.
What interested me in this case was the apparent dis-
regard of the ghost of the lights being turned on and of the
challenge by flesh-and-blood people.
In the case of the Integration Ghost reported by me
in Ghosts I’ve Met, similar footsteps also went through the
motions of a "movement remembered.” It appears therefore
that someone was so intent on repeating an urgent busi-
ness, a walk to a certain spot in the house, that he did not
even realize the presence of others, or of lights.
David Burkman of course was wondering if he was
losing his sanity — but that, at least, I could prevent, by
showing him that he was not an isolated case.
The Restless Dead
613
* * *
Mrs. Fanny K. lives not far from the International
Airport in Los Angeles, in a small house of considerable
age. Her house is built of wood and is situated three feet
from a paved alley, at the rear of a 135-foot lot. She pur-
chased it in 1947 from the two women who then owned it.
They were the first wife and the daughter of a carpenter,
she discovered, but nobody told her at the time that the
house was haunted or that anything unusual came with the
purchase.
Mrs. K. is a practical woman, somewhat impatient at
times, and not easily frightened by anything. She has had a
good education and has a moderate interest in ESP matters,
especially after the events I am about to relate had entered
her life.
The very first night after moving into the house on
96th Street, Los Angeles, Mrs. K. was awakened from
sleep by the sound of deep groans in her bedroom in which
she was alone. This continued night after night. Soon, the
groaning was accompanied by the touch of unseen fingers
riffling through her hair, and light prodding to her ribs by
someone she could not see. It was evident to her that
someone wanted to get her attention. Finally, three weeks
after moving in, a neighbor took pity on her and filled her
in on the background of her house.
It had originally belonged to a man named Winsten,
a Scandinavian carpenter, who at age 54 had married for
the second time, a woman 28 years old. Under the influ-
ence of a sudden jealous streak, he had shot his wife to
death, and when the police were closing in on him, com-
mitted suicide three days after. Although the two crimes
had not occurred directly in the house, he had spent many
years there and it was then his home.
This knowledge in no way helped calm Mrs. K.’s
nerves. For one thing, the disturbances did not stop just
because she now knew who it was that was causing them.
It got to be so bad, she finally asked a friend to stay with
her one night so that she too could hear the goings-on.
That was in 1948. As soon as the two women had gone to
bed, they clearly heard measured footsteps walking from
the bedroom door across the living room floor and to the
front door. However, they did hear the front door open
and close. The friend was convinced now Mrs. K. was not
“hearing things.”
Shortly after, Mrs. K. was awakened one night by the
sound of a long, deep sigh followed by heartbreaking
weeping.
It was a woman’s voice and Mrs. K. felt her kneeling
on the floor next to her bed! She decided to ignore it and
turned to the wall. But she had not slept very long when
she felt something like a man’s fist wrapped in bedclothes
push very hard into the back of her neck. She did not
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
move and waited. Eventually, the power ran out and the
disturbances ceased. For that night, anyway.
"More than once I have felt an evil presence standing
at the head of the bed,” Mrs. K. explained, “and the most
terrifying thing is that it tries to pin me down in bed, while
I’m fully awake, something like throwing a plastic covering
over me.”
I had heard this description of possession or
attempted possession several times before. On one occa-
sion, a seemingly heavy object fell off the ceiling and hit
the bed, in which Mrs. K. was already lying, with such
force that it made it sag about a foot. Yet nothing visible
had fallen! At first, she thought it was merely a local earth-
quake. But in the morning, when she put her hand behind
the pillow, she plainly felt “something like a tissue paper
ruffling away.” It had been there all night, evidently.
In 1958, the ghost pushed her so violently that she
woke up. As she gathered her senses, she clearly heard a
whispered voice near her say the word, "Bottle!” a moment
later, it repeated the demand for a bottle. Completely
awake by now, she sat up in bed and challenged the
ghostly intruder.
“Why are you talking about a bottle?” but she
received no reply.
Soon after she saw an apparition of “her” ghost. He
passed quickly from one corner of the bedroom to the
other, dressed in black with a black hat with turned-down
brim. However, she could not make out his features. Since
then she noticed his face close to hers on several occasions,
although she was never able to make it out clearly. By
Christmas 1959 it had gotten so bad that she felt him
holding onto her shoulder and had to struggle to rid herself
of the intruder.
A rational and logical woman, Mrs. K. wanted addi-
tional proof of her observations. In 1954 she had a house
guest who shared her quarters for three months, sleeping
in her bedroom, while Mrs. K. took the living room to
sleep in.
Her guest soon complained about lack of sleep.
Someone kept watching her, she explained, someone she
could not see but sensed right there in the room with her.
Another friend, strongly psychic, came to the house
and instantly diagnosed the “ailment” of the place. There
was great sadness in the house, she said, and went on to
describe the tragedy that had created the ghostly
phenomena.
From time to time Mrs. K. would hear a woman's
voice, apparently talking to someone in the room, but she
could not make out the words. The phenomenon occurred
only in the bedroom area, and there were periods of quiet
in between periods of disturbances.
I kept in touch with Mrs. K. after her initial contact
with me in February 1960. At that time I could not rush to
Los Angeles myself, so I suggested that a local man with
some knowledge of exorcising techniques contact her for
immediate relief. Unfortunately this man never followed up
614
on my request and Mrs. K. became more and more wor-
ried about the whole matter. It was true that it was quiet in
the house for most of 1960, she said, but sooner or later
the dead carpenter would show up again, she was sure.
Thus her own fears began to complicate the ghostly
visitations.
She called on two local mediums to try to drive the
carpenter and his wife away. The mediums failed. By now
the ghostly carpenter had tried to get into her bed, she
claimed. I did not laugh off such a claim, outlandish as it
may sound on the surface — especially to someone unac-
quainted with the extent to which psychic disturbances can
go. Mrs. K. had not impressed me as hysterical.
Whenever things got too bad, she moved out and
stayed at a neighbor’s house now, leaving the ghosts to
roam the house at will.
In 1963 I was in Los Angeles and talked to her as
soon as I landed. She was quite ill at that time, partly from
a severe cold and partly from the nervous tension the
ghosts had caused her.
I wish I could report a happy ending to this case, but
I have been unable on subsequent visits to make contact
with Mrs. K. Has she, like a ghost ship, vanished into the
Los Angeles smog, or has the carpenter finally given up on
his demand for the bottle?
Whatever the reasons, it is an object lesson to
prospective house hunters not to buy suicide-owned homes.
You never know what comes with the deal.
Sometimes the restless dead insist they are not dead
at all. They want to participate in the activities of the liv-
ing as of yore.
Mrs. Smith — this is her real name — lives in Los
Angeles. Shortly after she got married for the first time in
1936, her mother joined her and her husband to live with
them, but the household lacked harmony. Within a year,
however, matters came to a head, when the mother became
ill and was moved to the hospital, where her illness was
diagnosed as terminal cancer.
At the same time, Mrs. Smith was expecting her sec-
ond baby, so she, too, had to go to the hospital. Nobody
knew how long her mother might live, but she was to stay
at the hospital indefinitely.
After Mrs. Smith had given birth and was about to
go home, she was moved one night to another ward not far
from where her mother’s bed was.
That night, her last night at the hospital, she could
not sleep somehow. Her eyes fastened themselves on the
wall and the six windows in it. She was fully awake. Sud-
denly she "saw” three figures come in through those win-
dows. What to her seemed a Christ-like figure in a white
robe was flanked by her father, who had died when she
was only two, and her minister who had passed on three
years before.
The trio passed Mrs. Smith’s bed on their way to her
mother’s bed and as they did so, the dead minister told her
they had come for her mother.
Mrs. Smith sat up in bed and reached out to touch
them, but the three figures disappeared. Five minutes later
a nurse came to tell her that her mother had just died.
Mrs. Smith returned home, but her grief for her
mother was of short duration. A week later she was busy
around the house discarding her late mother’s belongings
when she found that an unseen force pulled every object
she was about to throw out from her hands! She could not
manage to do it and had her husband take care of it.
But that was not all. Every night, when she and her
husband were in bed, there would be a knock at the door
and her late mother’s voice would call out for her by name!
Both Mrs. Smith and her husband saw the cupboard doors
open and close by themselves, comparing notes, so to
speak, on all the unearthly phenomena to make sure they
were not imagining things. They were not.
They had been searching for her mother’s door key
for some time, not wishing to have it fall into strange
hands, as, after all, it was the key to their home. They
could not locate it anywhere no matter how carefully they
looked. One night the ghost of Mrs. Smith’s mother
rapped at their bedroom door and told her daughter,
clairaudiently, to look in a certain pocket in a coat that had
not yet been given away. Then and there, Mrs. Smith
jumped out of bed and looked. Sure enough, there was the
key!
Mrs. Smith now realized that she had psychic powers
and could hear the dead talking. Naturally, she tried to talk
back to them, also via telepathy. Her mother, however,
would not listen. She never answered her, never reacted to
anything her daughter would say. Like all true ghosts, Mrs.
Smith's mother was disturbed and could not recognize her
true status.
They rented the mother’s room to a woman. The
board complained she could not sleep in the room. Some-
one was forever knocking at her door. Nobody had said a
word to her about mother’s ghost, of course. The board
moved out and Mrs. Smith and husband moved in, letting
the woman have their own room in exchange.
For a few days, all seemed peaceful. Then one night
the boarder was alone in the house, taking a bath. Sud-
denly she heard the front door open and close and someone
walking up the stairs to the second floor. But when she
checked she found no one there. It was enough for her and
she moved out for good.
At this point, mother’s attention increased. Mrs.
Smith thought things over carefully. They, too, moved out.
Now her mother has the place all to herself.
* * *
Ruth Hayden is a retired school teacher who lived at
Ojai, California, a quiet, retired life, when she made con-
tact with me in 1963.
The Restless Dead
615
Her idleness had left her groping for something posi-
tive to contribute, and the new truths of psychic research
had attracted her strongly. Thus she had come forward to
contribute her own experiences in this field as part of the
ever-increasing evidence of the survival of human personal-
ity after bodily death.
I asked Miss Hayden to explain herself to me first, so
that I might understand better her interest in the psychic.
“As an orphan, in a school for the blind, I had twelve
years of reverent Bible training, among all sorts and condi-
tions of men, and grew up broadly tolerant, with a lovable
respect for the higher Powers. My philosophy was to treat
my friends the way I wanted God to treat me, and the rest
of the world as I wanted the world in general to treat me.
After teaching for 36 years in two large state hospitals
(again among all sorts and conditions), I came to California
to escape winter.”
Her psychic experiences were many over the years.
One particularly evidential case reminded me of an experi-
ence Eileen Garrett had a few years ago, when news of a
friend’s passing reached her by psychic means before any-
one in New York had been notified of the event.
"I had come out of a shoe-repair shop and was
headed down the narrow side street toward the city square,
when up in the air between the buildings, over the heads of
the traffic, about fifteen feet to my left, a familiar voice
said: ‘Sancho Pancho is with me now.’
“The voice was that of a friend who had died five
months before. I had heard and recognized the voice and
the words, but others nearby apparently did not hear any-
thing unusual!
‘“Sancho Pancho’ was a pupil of mine who that week
had undergone an operation for cancer of the throat. His
real name was Tom Joyce, but my friend had nicknamed
him Sancho Pancho because he was so helpful to me about
the schoolroom — and nobody but my dead friend and I
knew of this association.
“Without thinking about the incident I waited for my
bus, rode five miles, and walked a little over half a mile up
to the school. As I passed the switchboard I was told to
phone the Pondville Hospital.’ There I was informed that
my pupil Tom — the Sancho Pancho of the spirit-voice —
had just passed away, and they wanted to know if I could
give them his home address. The address they had was
that of the institution in which he was living and where I
was a teacher.”
* * *
I first heard of Adriana de Sola down on Charles
Street, New York, when we investigated the strange occur-
rences at the home of Barrie Gaunt. Miss de Sola had been
Barrie’s house guest and one of the people who had
encountered the melancholy ghost of "Miss Boyd” investi-
CHAPTER EIGHTHHaunted People
gated in my book Ghosts I’ve Met, with the help of Sybil
Leek.
I had always wanted to meet the spunky lady in per-
son and when I passed through Los Angeles in late Janu-
ary of 1965, 1 decided to call on her.
Originally from Mexico, Adriana de Sola had been a
long-time resident of Los Angeles, her main occupation
being that of a writer, although she took on odd jobs from
time to time to make ends meet — a necessity not uncom-
mon among American writers.
Her first uncanny experience was many years ago,
when she was engaged to be married but had had a fight
with her intended and he had left for Acapulco. Several
weeks went by. Then one night as she was brushing her
hair, she heard him stand next to her and tell her that he
had drowned in Acapulco at nine that very morning!
Imagine her shock when she picked up the morning
paper the next day and found the tragedy reported just as
he had told her.
“I smelled his special perfume but I did not see
him, she commented, “and I heard his voice as if he were
whispering behind my left ear.”
Was that the end of it? Did he just come to say
goodbye?”
“Not quite. . .you know how Latins are sometimes. . .
I married another man a year later, and the ghost of my
fiance so bothered us that I had to divorce him. One of our
servants was mediumistic and he managed to have her do
his bidding while in trance, even dropping objects on my
new husband. Like a plate of soup.”
So she decided it was better to divorce the man than
have him haunted out of her life!
Today, Miss de Sola is a vivacious, dark-haired
woman in her middle or late forties, very self-reliant and
philosophical. Her voice is firm and she exudes authority at
every turn. Ghosts evidently would have a tough time get-
ting the better of her, I concluded, as we faced each other
in the comfortable confines of the Hollywood Roosevelt,
where there are no specters to speak of.
When Adriana de Sola moved to a tiny village in
Lower California, which is a desert-like province of Mex-
ico, she bought a house which was such a bargain that she
smelled a rat — or rather, a ghost. She was not wrong, for
one night she awoke with the strong impression she should
dig into a certain wall, 45 inches thick, and she followed
her hunch only to discover a hidden earthenware pot,
which, however, was empty. After that, all was quiet and
she could enjoy the little house in peace. Evidently the for-
mer owner wanted her to find the pot.
After a brief stay in New York, where she encoun-
tered the sighing ghost of Miss Boyd on Charles Street, she
came to Los Angeles and went to work at a house in Belair
as a housekeeper. She had been sent there by a domestic
employment agency and had no knowledge of the house or
its history.
616
The house now belonged to a motion picture pro-
ducer of some renown and she was engaged to supervise
the staff, a task at which she proved very good. To her it
was a means of saving some money and after a while cut
loose again and do some writing on her own. The house
was beautiful and seemed quiet at first glance, and Adriana
felt she had made a good choice.
Shortly after her arrival she found herself awakened
in the middle of the night. Someone was shaking her by
the shoulder. When she was fully awake, she sat up in bed.
There was nothing to be seen, but her psychic sense told
her there was someone standing next to her bed, a tall, slim
woman with blonde hair down her shoulders. With her
inner eye she “saw” this very clearly. The specter was ter-
ribly grieved and bathed in blood!
Although Adriana was impressed by her plea, she
could not get herself to accept the reality of the phenome-
non and ascribed it to an upset stomach. She prayed for the
restless one and then went back to sleep.
About six or seven days later, it happened again.
This time Adriana was particularly impressed with the
beauty of the ghost. The next morning she decided, finally,
to make some inquiries about the matter.
Her employer’s wife listened quietly to the descrip-
tion of the ghostly visitor, then nodded. Especially when
Adriana mentioned her as appearing to her wearing a light
suit, covered with blood.
The house had been Carole Lombard’s house, where
she had been very happy with Clark Gable! Carole Lom-
bard had died tragically in an airplane accident when her
plane, en route to the east where she was to join her hus-
band, hit a mountain in a storm. She was wearing a light-
colored suit at the time.
Miss de Sola decided she had had enough of the
uncanny and left the house two days later. Thus it may
well be that Carole Lombard’s restless spirit is still clinging
to her home, unless, of course, she has since found her
husband Clark Gable on her side of the Veil.
* * *
Maureen B. is a San Francisco housewife now, but in
1959, when her first brush with the uncanny took place,
she was attending college summer school and living by her-
self in the old house her parents, Mrs. and Mrs. John F.,
had bought recently on Toravel Street.
Records showed the house to date back to 1907,
which is pretty old for the area. The parents had gone
away on vacation and Maureen should have had the place
to herself — but she didn’t.
Sometimes she would stay awake all night because
she had the feeling of not being alone in the house. There
was something or someone staring at her — someone she
could not see!
The tension made her ill, but nothing further hap-
pened until the summer of 1960 when she found herself
studying late one night in the breakfast room downstairs.
Although physically tired, she was mentally quite
alert. The door leading to the back porch, where the pantry
was situated, was locked from the inside, and the key was
in the lock. The door leading from this back porch into the
yard outside was double-locked and the key was hidden
away. None of the windows in the old house would open.
Nevertheless Maureen suddenly heard, in the still of
the night, a swishing sound from the other side of the
door, followed by footsteps and the clinking of a chain.
Her heart pounded with fear as she sat there frozen, staring
at the door. The key in it was turning and a voice outside
the door was moaning.
For a couple of moments Maureen sat still. Then she
gathered up her wits and ran up the stairs and roused her
father. Quickly he came down and unlocked the door, and
searched the back porch and the yard. There was nobody
to be seen.
The next day the family decided that Maureen "must
have heard” streetcar noises. As for the key turning in the
lock, why, that was just her over-tired eyes playing tricks
on her.
Maureen knew differently, for she had lived with the
noises of streetcars for a long time and the moan she had
heard outside the door was no streetcar. And the key
moved back and forth in the lock before her yes. It did not
make a clicking sound, however, as it does when it engages
the lock to unlock the door. Since the rest of the family
had not experienced anything out of the ordinary in the
house and did not accept the possibility of the psychic,
Maureen found it convenient to let the matter drop, even
though she found out a few things about the house her
folks had acquired back in 1957.
It had been an antique shop previously, and prior to
that an old physically challenged person had lived there.
His bed was near the front window giving onto the street,
so that he could watch the goings-on outside in the way
old people often want to — it gives them a feeling of not
being shut-ins, but still part of the active world. By the
time he died, the house was in deplorable condition and a
real estate firm bought it and fixed it up.
For many years the old man had called this house his
home, gradually becoming more and more immobile until
death had taken him away from it. But had it?
* * *
When I appeared on a special television program
with Regis Philbin in Los Angeles in the fall of 1966, on
which we discussed ghosts and psychic experiences and
illustrated them with some of the evidential photographs I
had taken of such apparitions, many people wrote or called
with psychic adventures of their own or houses they
wanted me to investigate.
One of the most interesting cases involved a man not
particularly friendly toward the possibility of personal sur-
The Restless Dead
617
vival or mediumship who had been forced by his experi-
ences to re-evaluate his views.
* * *
Earle Burney is an ex-Marine who lives in San Diego.
He was discharged from the Marine Corps in June 1945
and went to work for the Navy as a guard at a Navy Elec-
tronics Laboratory installed since World War II in an old
mansion at Loma Portal, California. The work was highly
classified, and security at the place was pretty strict as a
consequence.
At first Burney’s job was to guard the mansion dur-
ing the night, coming in at 1 1 : 1 5 P.M. He knew nothing
about the place, and the man he relieved, for some strange
reason, never talked to him about the work — seconds after
Burney got there, his predecessor was out the door, as if he
could not get away fast enough to suit himself.
Burney then inspected the place from top to bottom,
which was part of his routine. He locked the door he had
come through and put a pot of coffee on the fire in the
kitchen. The house had retained much of its ancient glory,
with mahogany paneling and a big, winding stairway lead-
ing up to the second story. He was puzzled, though, by a
bullet hole someone had put in one of the wall ventilators.
One morning not long after he had started his job, he
was sitting at his watchman’s desk drinking coffee, when
he heard footsteps upstairs. It was just 2 o’clock and there
was no one in the building besides himself.
Naturally, Burney jumped up immediately. The foot-
steps were heavy and were coming down the hallway
toward the head of the stairs. Burney started up the stairs,
but when he reached the top, the footsteps had stopped
dead — and there was nobody within sight.
He searched every inch of the house but could not
find any human being who could have caused the footsteps.
After that, he heard the steps again a few more times,
but by now he was not so excited over it. He decided to
ascribe it to "the house settling or cooling off,” although he
could not really explain how such a noise could sound like
human footsteps.
Then another phenomenon puzzled him even more.
He would be sitting by his desk with only a small light
burning, and the rest of the house as dark as could be.
Still, he would hear music. The first time this happened, he
thought that perhaps someone had left a radio on some-
where. But he found no radio anywhere. Then he discov-
ered, as he searched the dark recesses of the old mansion,
that the music was heard everywhere exactly the same way
— no louder, no softer. It was faint, but then it would stop,
and Burney realized he had not imagined it but really
heard "something.”
Burney decided to take his little spaniel dog Amber
with him. The dog was friendly and fun-loving, about as
normal as a dog can be.
That night, he took her with him and made her lie
down by his desk. No sooner had he done so than he
noticed a strange change in the behavior of the animal.
Suddenly very nervous, the dog would not go near the
stairs, and just lay there near the desk, whining.
At 2 a.m. the ghostly footsteps came. The dog let out
a blood-curdling scream and headed for the door. Burney
let her out and she shot out into the dark, hitting an iron
statue across the yard. Although not physically hurt, the
dog was never the same after this incident. The slightest
noise would frighten her and her fun-loving nature had
given way to a pitiful existence full of neurotic fears.
Burney was very much puzzled by all this and decid-
ed to ask some questions at last.
He discovered that others had heard those nighttime
footsteps too. In fact, there was a big turnover of guards at
the mansion and the reason he, an ex-Marine, had been
hired was primarily because of the strange events. They
figured he would not be scared of a ghost. He wasn’t, but
the job was hard on him, nevertheless. Especially after he
found out about the bullet hole in the wall ventilator. A
frightened guard had put it there. But bullets don’t stop
ghosts.
* * *
The restless dead walk on, walk on. Some of them are
lucky because someone cares and brings a medium to the
house or calls me to help. But for every restless one who
gets help, there are a thousand who don't. I have come to
the conclusion that there are literally thousands and thou-
sands of houses where someone died unhappily in one way
or another — not necessarily violently, but not peacefully —
and still walks the floors. I wish I could help them all.
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
618
» 136
The Devil in the Flesh (Kansas)
If you live in Kansas City you’re bound to hear about
the devil now and again if you are a Bible student or
church-goer in a church that goes in for the hell-and-brim-
stone variety of preaching. To some people the devil is real
and they will give you an argument filled with fervor and
Bible quotations to prove that he exists.
Mrs. G. wasn’t one of those who were impressed by
demonic outbursts, however, and could not care less
whether there was a devil or not. She had grown up in a
well-to-do middle-class family and spent her adult years in
the world of business. At age nineteen, she met and mar-
ried Mr. G. and they have had a happy life together ever
since. There are no children, no problems, no difficulties
whatever. She was always active in her husband’s gasoline
business, and only lately had she decided to slow down a
little, and perhaps do other things, leisure time things, or
just plain nothing when the mood would strike her.
At age 49, that was a pretty good way to do things,
she figured, and since she really did not have to work, it
was just as well that she started to enjoy life a little more
fully. Not that she was unhappy or frustrated in any way,
but the gasoline business is not the most exciting activity
in the world, and after thirty years of living by and with
gas, she longed for some fresh air.
One day in the spring of 1964, a friend suggested
something new and different for them to do. She had read
an advertisement in the local paper that had intrigued her.
A Spiritualist church was inviting the general public to its
message service. Why didn’t they have a look?
"Spiritualist church?” Mrs. G. asked with some
doubt. She really did not go for that sort of thing. And yet,
way back in her early years, she had had what are now
called ESP experiences. When she talked to a person, she
would frequently know what that person would answer
before the words were actually spoken. It scared her, but
she refused to think about it. Her parents’ home was a
twelve -year -old house in a good section of Kansas City. It
was just a pleasant house without any history whatever of
either violence or unhappiness. And yet, frequently she
would hear strange raps at night, raps that did not come
from the pipes or other natural sources. Whenever she
heard those noises she would simply turn to the wall and
pretend she did not hear them, but in her heart she knew
they were there.
Then one night she was awakened from a deep sleep
by the feeling of a presence in her room. She sat up in bed
and looked out. There, right in front of her bed, was the
kneeling figure of a man with extremely dark eyes in a pale
face. Around his head he wore a black and white band, and
he was dressed in a toga-like garment with a sash, some-
thing from another time and place, she thought. She
rubbed her eyes and looked again, but the apparition was
gone.
Before long, she had accepted the phenomenon as
simply a dream, but again she knew this was not so and
she was merely accommodating her sense of logic. But who
had the stranger been? Surely, the house was not haunted.
Besides, she did not believe in ghosts.
As a young woman, she once heard a friend in real
estate talk about selling a haunted house not far from
them. She thought this extremely funny and kidded her
friend about it often. Little did she know at the time how
real this subject was yet to become in her later years!
The haunted house across the street was sold, inci-
dentally, but nothing further was heard about it, so Mrs.
G. assumed the new owners did not care or perhaps
weren’t aware of whatever it was that was haunting the
premises.
Her own life had no room for such matters, and
when her friend suggested they attend the Spiritualist
church meeting, she took it more as a lark than a serious
attempt to find out anything about the hereafter.
They went that next night, and found the meeting
absorbing, if not exactly startling. Perhaps they had envi-
sioned a Spiritualist meeting more like a seance with dark
windows and dim lights and a circle of hand-holding
believers, but they were not disappointed in the quality of
the messages. Evidently, some of those present did receive
proof of survival from dear departed ones, even though the
two women did not. At least not to their satisfaction. But
the sincere atmosphere pleased them and they decided to
come back again on another occasion.
At the meeting they managed to overhear a conversa-
tion between two members.
"He came through to me on the Ouija board,” one
lady said, and the other nodded in understanding.
A Ouija board? That was a toy, of course. No seri-
ous-minded individual would take such a tool at face value.
Mrs. G. had more time than ever on her hands and the
idea of "playing around” with the Ouija board tickled her
fancy. Consequently she bought a board the following week
and decided she would try it whenever she had a moment
all to herself.
That moment came a few days later, when she was
all by herself in the house. She placed her fingers lightly on
the indicator. Mrs. G. was positive that only her own mus-
cle power could move the indicator but she was willing to
be amused that afternoon and, so to speak, game for what-
ever might come through the board.
Imagine her surprise when the board began to throb
the moment she had placed her hands upon it. It was a
distinct, intense vibration, similar to the throbbing of an
idling motor. As soon as she lifted her hands off the board,
it stopped. When she replaced them, it began again after
about a minute or two, as if it were building up energy
The Devil in the Flesh (Kansas)
619
again. She decided there was nothing very alarming in all
this and that it was probably due to some natural cause,
very likely energy drawn from her body.
After a moment, her hand began to move across the
board. She assured herself that she was not pushing the
indicator knowingly but there was no doubt she was being
compelled to operate the indicator by some force outside
herself!
Now her curiosity got the upper hand over whatever
doubts she might have had at the beginning of the ‘‘experi-
ment," and she allowed the indicator to rush across the
board at an ever-increasing speed.
As the letters spelled out words she tried to remem-
ber them, and stopped from time to time to write down
what had been spelled out on the board.
“Hello,” it said, ‘‘this is John W.”
She gasped and let the pencil drop. John W. was
someone she knew well. She had not thought of him for
many years and if his name was still imbedded in her
unconscious mind, it had been dormant for so long and so
deeply, she could scarcely accuse her own unconscious of
conjuring him up now.
John W. had worshipped her before she was married.
Unfortunately, she had not been able to return the feeling
with the same intensity. Ultimately, they lost track of each
other and in thirty years never saw each other again. She
learned from mutual acquaintances, however, that he
had also gotten married and settled down in a nice house
not far from where she and Mr. G. lived. But despite
this proximity, she never met him nor did she feel any
reason to.
John W. was also in the gasoline business, so they
did have that in common, but there had been difficulties
between them that made a marriage undesirable from her
point of view. He was a good man, all right, but not her
“type,” somehow, and she never regretted having turned
him down, although she supposed he did not take it lightly
at the time. But so many years had passed that time would
have healed whatever wounds there might have been then.
When John W. died of heart failure in 1964, he
was in his late fifties. Over the years he had developed a
morbid personality and it had overshadowed his former
gay self.
“Hello,” the Ouija board communicator had said,
“this is John W.”
Could it be? She wondered. She put the board away
in haste. Enough for now, she thought.
But then her curiosity made her try it again. As if by
magic, the indicator flew over the board.
“I want to be with you, always," the board spelled
out now. And then an avalanche of words followed, all of
them directed towards her and telling her how much he
had always loved and wanted her.
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
Could this be something made up in her own uncon-
scious mind? Why would she subject herself to this incur-
sion? For an incursion it soon turned out to be. Every day,
practically, she found herself drawn to the Ouija board.
For hours, she would listen to the alleged John W. tell her
how much he wanted to stay with her, now that he had
found her again.
This was punctuated with bitter complaints that she
had hurt him, that she had not understood his great devo-
tion for her.
As the weeks went by, her own personality changed
and she began to take on more and more of his characteris-
tic moods. Whereas she had been a light-hearted, gay per-
son, she turned moody and morbid and her husband could
not fail to notice the change that had come over his wife.
But she did not feel she could tell him what had hap-
pened, partly because she did not really believe it herself
yet, and partly because she felt it might harm their mar-
riage. So she pretended to be depressed and her husband
understood, blaming her middle years for it.
By the winter of 1964, her life was no longer her
own. In addition to the frequent Ouija board sessions, she
now began to hear the man’s voice directly.
“I am with you,” he explained, fervently, and with
her he was. There was never a moment where she could be
sure he was not nearby. Her privacy was gone. She kept
hearing his voice, sad, but nevertheless his voice as it had
been in life, talking to her from somewhere outside, and
yet seemingly inside her head at the same time. She could
not understand any of this and she did not know how to
cope with it at first.
She threw away the accursed Ouija board that had
opened the floodgates to the invasion from the beyond. But
it did not help much. He was there, always present, and he
could communicate with her through her own psychic
sense. She found it difficult to fall asleep. About that time
she noticed she was no longer alone in bed. At first she
thought it was her imagination, spurred on by fear, that
made her think the undesired one was with her. But she
soon felt his physical presence close to her body.
One night she extended her hand and clearly felt
something other than air above her own body! She let out a
scream and turned on the light. But this merely woke her
husband and she had to explain it as a bad dream, so that
he would not be alarmed.
Night after night, she felt John W.’s ethereal body
next to or on top of hers. There was no mistake about it.
He was trying to make love to her from the shadowy world
he was in, something he had been denied while in the
flesh. She fought off his advances as best she could, but it
did not deter him in the least.
At the beginning of their communication with the
board’s help, she had still felt a kind of compassion for the
poor devil who had died so sadly and rather early in his
life. But whatever positive feelings she still harbored for
620
him soon went by the board and her attitude turned into
one of pure hate.
Nothing mattered in her life but to rid herself of this
nightmare and return to the placid life she had been lead-
ing prior to the incident with the Ouija board.
John W. added threats and intimidation to his arsenal
of evil now. Threats as to what he would do to her and her
husband, if she did not accept him willingly. Ultimately,
she could not bear it any longer and decided to inform her
husband of what she was going through.
At first she was fearful as to what he might say. Per-
haps he would have her committed to an institution, or at
best, subject her to the humiliating treatments of a private
psychiatrist.
But her husband listened quietly and with compas-
sion.
“Terrible,” he finally commented, “we’ve got to get
you out of this somehow.”
She sighed with relief. He evidently believed her. She
herself had moments now where she questioned her own
sanity. Could such things be as the sexual invasion of a
woman by a dead man? Was she not merely acting out her
own suppressed desires due perhaps to middle-age change
of life?
She went to seek the advice of a physician.
After a careful checkup, he found her physically
sound but suggested a psychiatric examination and possibly
an EEG — an electroencephalogram to determine brain dam-
age, if any. None of these tests showed anything abnormal.
After a while, she concluded that medicine men could not
help her even if they should believe her story.
Meanwhile, the attacks became worse.
"You will always hear my voice,” he promised her
night and day, “You won’t be able to get rid of me now.”
She tried all sorts of things. Grabbing whatever books
on the subject of possession she could find, she tried to
learn whether others had suffered similar attacks. She tried
her skill at automatic writing hoping that it might give the
accursed ghost a chance to express himself and perhaps she
might reason with him that way. But though she became a
proficient automatist, it did not do any good.
The handwriting she wrote in was not hers. What
she wrote down made no sense to her, but it was he who
was using her in still one more way and so she stopped it.
That night, she felt him closer than ever. It was as if
part of his body were entering hers, and suddenly she felt
her heart being squeezed and she gasped for breath. For a
few moments of agonizing fear, she felt herself dying of a
heart attack. The next day she went to see her doctor
again. Her heart was sound as could be. But she knew then
that she had just relived the very moment of his death. He
had died of just such a heart failure!
Clearly John W. was a disturbed personality in the
in-between world in which he now existed after a fashion.
He could not distinguish right from wrong, nor indeed rec-
ognize his true status.
His hatred and love at once kept him glued to her
body, and her environment, it would appear, unwilling and
unable to break what must have been his strongest desire
at the time of death.
During their courtship, he had appeared as a good
person, unselfish and kind. Now he seemed bitter and full
of selfish desire to own her, unwilling to let her go or do
anything she asked him to.
She enlisted the help of a local amateur hypnotist,
but he failed to put her under hypnosis. Discouraged, she
lost all desire to live if it meant living on with this mon-
strous person inside her.
One day she saw a television program on which hyp-
notic treatment in parapsychological cases was the subject
of discussion. Again encouraged, she asked for help and
went to New York for an attempt to dislodge the unwanted
entity from her body and soul.
This time she did go under, although not very
deeply. But it was enough for the personality of John W.
to emerge and carry on a conversation of sorts with the
hypnotist.
"I want her to go with me, she is all I have now,” he
said, speaking through Mrs. G.’s mouth in trance.
Later she confirmed that she had been on the brink
of suicide recently, and this had not been in a moment of
panic but as if someone had actually made her attempt it.
Luckily, she had managed to pull out of it just in time.
“Do you believe in a God?” the hypnotist asked.
“No,” the entity replied and brushed the question
aside. “I told her, she made life hell for me, now I’ll make
her life hell for her.”
“But why do that?”
“No one wants me — I want to cry — you don’t know
what this is like — over here — nothing but darkness — ”
Tears came down Mrs. G.’s cheeks now.
“It’s me crying, not her," the voice of John W. said,
and then, somewhat quieter, "No one wanted me as a
child. . . . I came from an orphanage. . .my grandparents
never wanted me. . .she could have made me happy but
she didn’t want to. She’s the only woman who would have
made me happy, only her, but she doesn’t want me.”
“Then why force yourself on her? What is the
point?”
“I force myself on her because I can make her
miserable.”
“You can't force love.”
“I have no pride.”
“Renounce her.”
“I don’t want to listen to you. She hates me now any-
way. I’m going to take her with me. . . . I’ll get her, one way
or another, I’ll get her all right.”
The hypnotist, patiently, explained about the freedom
of the other side and how to get there by wishing oneself
with one’s loved ones who have preceded one.
The Devil in the Flesh (Kansas)
621
“This is all new to me,” the confused entity replied,
but seemed for a moment to be thinking it over.
But it was only a brief squint at the light, then dark-
ness took over once again.
“I’ve made her cry. . .miserable. . .she made me mis-
erable. I don’t like the way she’s lived her life. ...”
Suddenly, the personality seemed to squirm as if
from guilt.
Was this his own private hell he was in?
“I’m not really that person. . . . I've been lying to
her. . .just so I can be around her, I tell her one thing and
then another....”
"Then why not leave her and go on to the other
side?”
“I want to but don't know how — I can’t go without
her.”
The hypnotist tried again, explaining that other souls
had been equally confused and been helped “across” the
great divide.
The voice of the possessing entity hesitated. He was
willing to go, but could he see Mrs. G. now and again?
Visiting privileges, the hypnotist thought, with a bitter
sense of humor.
“Will I be able to come back and see her?” the voice
asked again.
But then the demented mind emerged triumphant.
“She hates me for what I’ve done to her. I’m not
going to leave. I can do anything with her. Never could do
it when living.”
Now the hypnotist dropped the polite approach.
“You are to leave this woman,” he intoned, “on pain
of eternal damnation.”
“I won't go.”
"You will be in hell.”
“She will be with me then.”
“I send you away, the psychic door is closed. You
cannot return.”
"I will.”
A moment later, Mrs. G. awoke, somewhat dumb-
founded and tired, but otherwise no worse off than she had
been when she had been put under by the hypnotist.
After she returned to Kansas City, she had some
hopes that the power of John W. had been broken. But the
molesting continued unabated. True, there had been con-
versation and the entity now knew at least that he was
committing a moral offense. But evidently it did not matter
to him, for the attacks continued.
After a while, Mrs. G. realized that her anxiety and
abject fear were contributing factors to John W.’s unholy
powers. She learned that negative emotions can create ener-
gies that become usable by entities such as John W. and
when she realized this fact, her attitude began to undergo a
change.
Where she had been waiting for his attacks to occur
and counting the moments when she was totally free from
his possession, she now deliberately disregarded all he did
and treated his presence with utter indifference. She could
still feel the rage within him when he wanted to possess
her, but the rage was slowly cooling. Gradually, her com-
passion for the bedeviled soul returned and as it did, his
hold upon her weakened. He had made his point, after all,
and now the point no longer mattered. When last heard
from, Mrs. G. was living quietly in Kansas City.
» 137
The Case of the Buried Miners
In THE SECOND HALF of August 1963, every newspaper
in the United States was filled with the day-to-day
accounts of a mining cave- in at Hazleton, Pennsylvania.
Two men, David Fellin and Henry Throne, survived four-
teen days at the bottom of a caved -in mine shaft and were
finally rescued through a specially drilled funnel.
On August 28, Fellin gave the Associated Press an
interview, in which he said:
Now they’re trying to tell me those things were hal-
lucinations, that we imagined it all.
We didn’t. Our minds weren’t playing tricks on us.
I’ve been a practical, hardheaded coal miner all my life.
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
My mind was clear down there in the mine. It’s still
clear.
We saw what we say. These things happened. I can’t
explain them. I’m almost afraid to think what might be
the explanation.
For example, on the fourth or fifth day, we saw this
door, although we had no light from above or from our
helmets. The door was covered in bright blue light. It was
very clear, better than sunlight.
Two men, ordinary -looking men, not miners, opened
the door. We could see beautiful marble steps on the
other side. We saw this for some time and then we
didn’t see it. We saw other things I can’t explain.
One thing I was always sure of. I was convinced
we’d get out even if I had to dig us out myself.
A funny thing occurred on that very first day. We
[Henry Throne and Louis Bova] hadn’t been down in
the mine five minutes that morning when my stomach
started feeling a little out of whack.
I said, “Let’s go out for an hour or so.’’
But the boys persuaded me to stay and get some
work done first.
622
So we stayed, down at the tunnel’s bottom, more
than 300 feet down. Louis was on one side and me and
Hank on the other.
Louis reached up to press the buzzer for the buggy [a
small wagon which carries coal on tracks up to the sur-
face], He pressed the buzzer and stepped back. Then it
happened.
Suddenly everything was coming down — timber,
coal, rocks. The stuff was rushing down between us and
Louis. Then it was quiet for maybe half a minute. Then
the rush started again. It went on like this, starting and
stopping for some time.
We sat there, listening as hard as we could for more
rushes in the dark. We sat there against the wall that
way 1 4 to 1 6 hours in a place about 6 feet long, 5 feet
wide and about 3 feet high.
Now, you asked me about the strange things Hank
saw. I actually saw more of them than he did. But I find
it hard to talk about that.
I'm positive we saw what we saw. We weren’t imagin-
ing them. Even before we heard from the men on the
top, we had some light now and then. How else can you
explain all the work we did down there? We couldn't
have done it entirely in darkness.
The only time I was realty scared was when we saw
two men dressed like power linemen. Don't ask me what
men like that were doing down on the bottom. But I saw
them.
Hank asked me two or three times to ask the men for
some light. This idea scared me down to my toes. I had
the feeling this was something outside of our reach, that
we shouldn’t talk or do anything.
But Hank did not. Hank said to the men. "Hey,
buddy, how about showing us some light?”
They didn’t answer, and after a while we didn’t see
them any more.
Well, similar descriptions have been given from time
to time by people close to death; Arthur Ford was once in
that position in a hospital, and described vividly the door
and the men operating it, before he was able to return to
this side of the veil once more.
Did David Fellin have a glimpse of the other side of
life, the unseen world, the world of the psychic? Perhaps
he did. Perhaps, too, he was being helped by these forces
to return to the surface. In a television interview Fellin also
claimed to have been given a message by the men, but he
could not discuss it.
About the same time this happened, a millworker
named Guy de Maggio had a vision of Fellin and his visi-
tors from beyond, and actually heard the words spoken by
Fellin. So vivid was the impression that he took pains to
tell people about it. This was many miles away from the
scene and could be confirmed only later, after Fellin was
rescued. Did both men tune in on the same supernormal
wave length?
The local psychiatrists have done their best to con-
vince Fellin that he had a hallucination. But Fellin is con-
vinced of his experience. And so am I.
I tried to coax the two miners to come on Pittsburgh
television with me. They refused. They were afraid of
being laughed at. Then a reporter from the Philadelphia
Sunday Bulletin went to interview them on the anniversary
of the event.
Yes, it was true that David Fellin had seen a door
with beautiful marble steps, but there were also the people,
apparently human, walking up and down the stairs. Yet
somehow he and Hank Throne feared to go through the
door.
“Did you see what was on the other side of the
door?” the reporter asked.
“A beautiful garden, just as far as you can see. The
flowers were more beautiful, the grass greener, than here on
earth. I knew that was some special place.”
“Did the man hold the door open?”
“No, Hank shouted for him to hold it, but the door
slammed.”
“What happened then?”
Hank got mad. He said: ‘Give me that hammer. I’ll
open that door.’ The hammer was lying next to me, and I
just handed it to him. He took it and ran at the door, then
swung the hammer at it. That’s when he broke a bone in
his hand. And he bruished himself on the right cheek.”
“What happened to the door?”
“It disappeared, and the light went out."
“What light? What did it look like?”
“It was a bluish light, not like daylight.”
“Both you and Hank saw this door and the light?”
“Yes. Also Pope John. But Hank didn’t know it was
Pope John, not until we got to the hospital and the priest
brought me a book with a picture of Pope John on the
cover.” (Pope John XXIII died June 3, 1963.)
“Let’s start at the beginning.”
“I was sitting here, and Hank was sitting like where
you are [facing him]. He kept looking up over my shoul-
der. I looked up one time and saw Pope John there. He
had his arms crossed and was just looking down at us. He
didn’t say anything.”
“Did you and Hank speak to him?”
“I would say, ‘Is our friend still there?’ or ‘How’s our
friend today?’ Hank would grin and say he was still there.”
“Didn’t you tell him this was Pope John?”
‘I figured Hank was a Protestant, and wouldn’t know
who he was anyway.”
“How did he find out then?”
“When they took us to the hospital, my priest
brought me a book with a picture of the Pope on it. And
Hank points to the book and said, ‘Hey, there’s that guy
we saw, Dave.’ ”
“Did you and Hank discuss these things while you
saw them?”
“No, not too much. When we saw those people on
the steps I told him we stumbled onto something. I had
The Case of the Burled Miners
623
nicknamed the mine where we were trapped ‘The Grave-
yard of Souls.’ And I told him that we stumbled onto the
graveyard of souls.”
The reporter later talked to Throne, who said that he
saw the door, stairway, and Pope John.
Pope John XXIII was, of course, on the spiritual side
of the veil at the time the two buried miners saw his
apparition.
The London Psychic News also picked up the story
and featured it. They headlined it:
ENTOMBED MINER
IS NOT AFRAID
TO DIE ANY MORE
Not after they saw where they’d be going.
» 138
The Ghostly Lover
Perhaps the most fantastic case of recent vintage is a
case involving Betty Ritter and the well-known psychoana-
lyst Dr. Nandor Fodor. Dr. Fodor had been treating a cer-
tain Edith Berger, in Long Island, for what seemed at first
disturbing symptoms of split personality. But Dr. Fodor is
a trained parapsychologist as well, and he did not fail to
recognize the case for what it was, possession!
He suggested that the Bergers call in a good medium,
and recommended Betty Ritter.
Half in tears, Edith Berger’s mother told Betty on the
telephone how a possessive spirit personality had been
annoying her and her daughter for the past four months. It
seemed that Edith, the daughter, had a gentleman friend, a
medical doctor, who had died in the tropics not long
before.
The very day after his death, the young woman
found that her erstwhile suitor had attached himself to her,
and was forcing himself on her — physically! The attacks
were so violent, the mother said, that she had to sleep in
the same bed with her daughter for protection, but to no
avail. The mother also felt the physical contact experienced
by her daughter!
Betty concentrated her psychic powers immediately
on what can only be called a form of exorcism. Although
there was some relief, the ghostly boyfriend was still
around.
To Betty’s horror, she woke up that same night to
find the restless one standing before her bed, stark naked,
in a menacing mood. Betty’s contacts on “the other side,”
however, protected her and took the erring one away.
Telling Edith Berger of her experience the next day,
she accurately described the visitor. Her efforts seemed to
weaken the attacks somewhat, and several days later she
saw him again, this time, however, fully clothed! He wore
riding boots and carried a whip. The Bergers confirmed
that the man had been a lover of horses. On April 20,
1961, Betty Ritter telephoned the Bergers to find out how
things were going. The moment Edith answered the tele-
phone, the ghost started to pull her hair in a most painful
fashion, as if to prove he was still very much in evidence!
But the violent mind of the young doctor would not
accept the separation from his physical body and its plea-
sures. The haunting continued; thus Betty Ritter asked me
to accompany her to the Berger home for another go at the
case.
The Bergers turned out to be very level-headed
middle-class people, and completely ignorant of anything
psychic. Edith seemed to be a highly nervous, but quite
“normal” human being. Almost immediately, the entity got
hold of the medium and yelled through her — ”1 shall not
be pulled away from you. I won’t go.”
I learned that the father had at first been highly skep-
tical of all this, but his daughter’s behavior changed so
much, and became so different from her previous character,
that he had to admit to himself that something uncanny
was happening in his house. Edith, who had wanted to be
a singer, and was far from tidy, suddenly became the very
model of tidyness, started to clean up things, and behaved
like a nurse — the profession her late boyfriend had wanted
her to follow. At times, she assumed his ailments and
“passing symptoms.” At times, she would suffer from
genuine malaria — just as he had done. Since Edith was
Tnediumistic, it was easy for the dead doctor to have his
will. The message he wanted her to deliver most was to tell
his mother that he was “still alive.” But how could she do
that, and not reveal her agony?
One afternoon, while she was praying for him, she
felt a clutching sensation on her arm. Later on, in bed, she
clearly heard his voice, saying — ”It is me, Don!” From that
day on, he stayed with her constantly. On one particular
amorous occasion, her mother clearly discerned a man’s out-
line in the empty bed. She quickly grabbed a fly swatter and
chased the earthbound spirit out of her daughter’s bed!
Once, when she was about to put on her coat to go
out, the coat, apparently of its own volition, came toward
her — as if someone were holding it for her to slip on!
Whenever she was with other men, he kissed her,
and she would hear his angry voice.
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
624
But this time the seance cracked his selfish shell. "I
haven’t been able to finish what I started,” he sobbed,
referring to his important medical experiments. He then
asked forgiveness, and that he be allowed to come back to
be with Edith now and then.
After we left — Dr. Fodor had come along, too — we
all expressed hope that the Bergers would live in peace. But
a few weeks later, Edith telephoned me in great excitement.
The doctor had returned once more.
I then explained to her that she had to sacrifice — rid
herself of her own desire to have this man around, uncon-
scious though it may be — and in closing the door on this
chapter of her life, make it impossible for the earthbound
one to take control of her psychic energies. I have heard
nothing further.
» 139
The Vineland Ghost
Nancy, AN ATTRACTIVE blonde and her handsome hus-
band Tom moved into the old farm house near Vineland,
New Jersey in the summer of 1975. Tom had been a cap-
tain in the Air Force when he and Nancy met and fell in
love in her native Little Rock, Arkansas. After three years,
Tom decided he wanted to leave his career as a pilot and
settle down on a farm. They returned to Tom’s hometown
of Vineland, where Tom got a job as the supervisor of a
large food processing company.
The house had been built in 1906 by a family named
Hauser who had owned it for many generations until
Tom’s father acquired it from the last Hauser nineteen
years before. Sitting back a few hundred yards from the
road, the house has three stories and a delicate turn-of-the-
century charm. There is a porch running the width of the
front, and ample rooms for a growing family. Originally
there were 32 acres to the surrounding farm but Tom and
Nancy decided they needed only four acres to do their lim-
ited farming. Even though the house was very rundown
and would need a lot of repair work, Tom and Nancy liked
the quiet seclusion and decided to buy it from Tom’s
father and restore it to its former glory.
“The first time I walked into this house I felt some-
thing horrible had happened in it,” Nancy explained to me.
By the time the family had moved in Nancy had for-
gotten her initial apprehension about the house. But about
four weeks later the first mysterious incident occurred.
As Nancy explained it, "I was alone in the house
with the children whom I had just put to bed. Suddenly I
heard the sound of children laughing outside. I ran outside
to look but didn’t see anyone. I ran quickly back upstairs
but my kinds were safely in their beds, sound asleep,
exactly where I’d left them.”
That summer Nancy heard the sound of children
laughing several times, always when her own were fast
asleep. Then one day Nancy discovered her daughter
Leslie Ann, then aged three-and-a-half, engaged in lively
conversation with an unseen friend. When asked what the
The house of the Vineland ghost
friend looked like, the child seemed amazed her mother
couldn’t see her playmate herself.
Convinced they had ghostly manifestations in the
house, they decided to hold a seance with the help of a
friend. After the seance the phenomenon of the unseen
children ceased but something else happened — the grave-
stone incident.
“We found the gravestone when we cleared the
land,” Tom said. "We had to move it periodically to get it
out of the way. We finally left it in the field about a hun-
dred yards away from the house. Suddenly the day after
our seance it just decided to relocate itself right outside our
back door. It seemed impossible — it would have taken four
strong men to move that stone.”
For some time Nancy had the uncanny feeling that
Ella Hauser, the woman who had built the house was
“checking” on the new occupants. Tom had looked on the
The Vineland Ghost
625
The house is peaceful despite the fact that the
deceased Emma still lives there.
Ghostly manifestations on the staircase
ghostly goings-on in a rather detached, clinical way, but
when his tools started disappearing it was too much for
even him.
Tom and Nancy were not the only ones who encoun-
tered the unknown. In August 1977, a babysitter, Nancy
F., was putting the children to bed, when she heard some-
one going through the drawers downstairs. “She thought it
was a prowler looking for something,” Nancy explained,
“But when she finally went downstairs nothing had been
touched.”
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
Emma’s tombstone — she isn’t there.
A psychic photo of Emma?
The night after the babysitter incident Nancy went
downstairs to get a drink of water and found a five-foot ten
inch tall man standing in her living room — 3 o’clock in the
morning.
"He was wearing one of those khaki farmer’s shirts
and a pair of brown work pants. Everything was too big for
626
the guy. I could tell he was an old man. I took one look
and ran upstairs."
When I received their telephone call I immediately
asked for additional details. It became clear to me that this
was a classical case of haunting where structural changes,
new owners, and new routines have upset someone who
lived in the house and somehow remained in the atmos-
phere. As is my custom, I assembled the residents and a
psychic I had brought with me into an informal circle in
the kitchen. Together we asked Ella and whoever else
might be “around” to please go away in peace and with our
compassion — to enter those realms where they would be on
their own. The atmosphere in the kitchen, which had felt
rather heavy until now, seemed to lift.
When I talked to Nancy several weeks after my visit,
all was well at the house.
The house is privately owned and I doubt that the
Joneses are receiving visitors. But you can drive by it, and
most people in Vineland, New Jersey know which one it is.
» 140
Amityville, America’s Best Known
Haunted House
The NIGHT OF Friday, November 13, 1974, six members
of the DeFeo family of Amityville, Long Island, were bru-
tally murdered in their beds — one of the most horrifying
and bizarre mass murders of recent memory.
The lone survivor of the crime, Ronald DeFeo Jr.,
who had initially notified police, was soon after arrested
and formally charged with the slayings. But there are
aspects of the case that have never been satisfactorily
resolved.
When Ronald DeFeo Jr. got up in the middle of the
night, took this gun, and murdered his entire family, that
wasn’t him who did it, he says, but something. . .some-
one. , .who got inside his body and took over. I just could-
n’t stop, says DeFeo.
Was DeFeo a suitable vehicle for spirit possession?
The facts of my investigation strongly suggest it. DeFeo
himself doesn’t believe in anything supernatural. He
doesn’t understand what got into him. Did he massacre
his family in cold blood, or under the influence of a power
from beyond this dimension?
From the outset there were strange aspects to the
case: nobody seems to have heard the shots which killed six
people. . .how was it that none of the victims resisted or ran
out of the murderer’s way? Did they in fact not hear the
shots either?
At DeFeo ’s trial, two eminent psychiatrists differed
sharply about the state of the murderer’s sanity: Dr.
Schwartz considers DeFeo psychotic at the time of the
murder, while Dr. Zolan holds him fully responsible for
what he did. Rumors to the effect that DeFeo had first
durgged his family’s food (which would have explained
their seeming apathy) proved groundless. The mystery
remained even though DeFeo’s sentence was clear: twenty-
five years to life on each of the six counts of murder in the
second degree, served consecutively — as if that mattered.
Over and over DeFeo repeated the same story: yes, he had
Amityville— that house at 114 Ocean Avenue
Side view of the house
Amityville, America’s Best Known
Haunted House
627
Ethel Meyers, the famous trance medium,
getting her bearings
Psychic manifestations in one of the rooms
killed his family, and felt no remorse over it. . .but no, he
didn’t know why. Something. . .someone had gotten inside
his person and forced him to shoot. . .going from bedroom
to bedroom at 3 A.M. and exterminating the same parents,
brothers and sisters he had lovingly embraced at a birthday
party in the house a scant two months before the crime. . .
whatever had gotten into DeFeo surely knew no mercy.
On January 15, 1977 I brought reputable trance
medium Ethel Johnson Meyers to the house on Ocean
Avenue, along with a psychic photographer to investigate
CHAPTER EIGHT: Haunted People
what was shaping up as a case of suspected possession.
Although Mrs. Meyers hadn’t the slightest notion where
she was or why I had brought her there, she immediately
stated: "Whoever lives here is going to be the victim of all
the anger. . .the blind fierceness. . .this is Indian burial
ground, sacred to them.” As she was gradually slipping
into trance, I asked why the Indian spirits were so angry.
"A white person got to digging around and dug up a
skeleton. ...” She described a long-jawed Indian whose
influence she felt in the house.
"People get to fighting with each other and they
don’t know why . . .they’re driven to it because they are
taken over by him.” According to Mrs. Meyers, the long-
ago misdeed of a white settler is still being avenged, every
white man on the spot is an enemy, and when a catalyst
moves there, he becomes a perfect vehicle for possession. . .
like Ronald DeFeo.
“I see a dark young man wandering around at night
. . .like in a trance. . .goes berserk. . .a whole family is
involved. . ..,” the medium said and a shiver went up my
spine. She had tuned right in to the terrible past of the
house.
When the pictures taken by the psychic photographer
were developed on the spot, some of them showed strange
haloes exactly where the bullets had struck. . .my camera
jammed even though it had been working perfectly just
before and was fine again the minute we left the house on
Ocean Avenue ... a house totally empty of life as we know
it and yet filled with the shades of those who have passed
on yet linger for they know not where to go. . . .
All sorts of charlatans had been to the house attracted
by cheap publicity. . .until the new owners had enough.
They knew all about the phenomena first-hand and eventu-
ally a best-selling book was based upon their experiences
628
The house today
. . .embellished, enlarged and elaborated upon. . .but that is
another kind of story. The real story was clear: 112 Ocean
Avenue had been a psychically active location for perhaps
two centuries. . .the phenomena ranging from footsteps and
doors opening by themselves to the apparitions of figures
that dissolve into thin air are well-attested poltergeist mani-
festations, phenomena observed in literally thousands of
similar cases all over the world. . .grist for the mills of the
parapsychologist who knows there is no such thing as the
supernatural, only facets of human personality transcending
the old boundaries of conventional psychology. . . . DeFeo
had painted a little room in the basement red, because the
color pleased him. The room he used as a kind of toolshed.
An eighteenth century owner of the spot allegedly practiced
witchcraft: add it all up, and enter the devil. . .. DeFeo Sr.
was a devoutly religious man who believed the devil was in
the house, but his son left the house the minute the priest
his father had called moved in.
When all the Satanic fallout had settled, I decided to
investigate with the result that the real Amityville story
began to emerge. What happened at Amityville could have
happened anywhere in the world where passions are spent
and human lives terminated by violence. The residue of the
great crime lingers on even as the vehicle of possession
gropes for an explanation of his true status. Young DeFeo
is not a believer in things that go bump in the night, nor
does he fear either God or the devil. But as he awaits still
another interminable day in his cell at Dannemora prison,
Ronald DeFeo cannot help wondering about the stranger
within, the force that made him commit what he considers
impossible crimes. He could have killed his father in an
argument, perhaps, he concedes, but not his mother, not
the children.
DeFeo may never get an answer he can live with, but
he is young and may yet see the day when some future
owner of that house has his innings with the unknown. For
that day will surely come. I've tried to exorcise the angry
entity in the house, and though I have frequently suc-
ceeded in such cases, so much accumulated hatred is too
powerful a reservoir to simply fade away. But in the end,
we all get justice, one way or another.
Amityville, America’s Best Known
Haunted House
629
CHAPTER NINE
Stay-Behinds
I
STAY-BEHINDS IS A TERM I have invented. It refers to earthbound spirits or ghosts who owe
their continued residency in what may have been their long-term home to the fact that they
don’t want to leave familiar surroundings. This is not simply a willful decision (“I ain’t
goin’ ”), though that can on occasion be the case; the majority are people who have never been told
where to go and are expecting the kind of fanciful heaven their faith has for so long pictured for them.
Naturally, when they pass out of the physical body they are disappointed, or at least surprised, not to
see a reception committee of angels and cherubs showing them the way to Heaven, God, and possibly
Jesus as well.
Instead, they find their loved ones who have preceded them to the “other side”; they have come
to make the transition easier. If the death is due to severe illness or prolonged hospitalization (includ-
ing heavy doses of drugs) the person will often be confused and need to be placed into healing facili-
ties “over there” for a while.
But the majority of people are not prepared for what comes next: some will prefer the devil they
know to the devil they don’t know as yet — meaning, of course, not a literal devil (a figment of the
imagination) but a figure of speech. The unknown frightens them. They cling to what they know.
The Pennsylvania lady who passed on at 90 years of age — she had spent most of them in her
house — was not at all prepared for her funeral and points beyond. So when the grieving relatives
returned from the cemetery, guess who was already there, in the lady’s old chair, waiting to welcome
them back- the lady in question, feeling no pain, naturally, having lost or gotten rid of her physical
shell.
It is a bit tricky at times to differentiate between a true stay-behind (a person) and an impression
from the past. Only when the apparition moves or speaks can you really judge.
Stay-behinds are different from resident ghosts in another important aspect. True ghosts will
resent new tenants, or even visitors, and will consider them intruders in “their” house. But the stay-
behind could not care less: it is his or her place all right, but the stay-behind’s attitude is the same as
it was before death. Just you leave me be and
I won’t bother you! Stay-Behinds
631
-
» 141
When The Dead Stay On
Nothing IS SO EXASPERATING as a dead person in a liv-
ing household. I mean a ghost has a way of disturbing
things far beyond the powers held by the wraith while still
among the quick. Very few people realize that a ghost is
not someone out to pester you for the sake of being an
annoyance, or to attract attention for the sake of being dif-
ficult. Far from it. We know by now that ghosts are
unhappy beings caught between two states and unable to
adjust to either one.
Most people “pass over” without difficulty and are
rarely heard from again, except when a spiritualist insists
on raising them, or when an emergency occurs among the
family that makes intervention by the departed a desired,
or even necessary, matter.
They do their bit, and then go again, looking back at
their handiwork with justified pride. The dead are always
among us, make no mistake about that. They obey their
own set of laws that forbids them to approach us or let us
know their presence except when conditions require it. But
they can do other things to let us feel them near, and these
little things can mean a great deal when they are recog-
nized as sure signs of a loved one’s nearness.
Tragedies create ghosts through shock conditions,
and nothing can send them out of the place where they
found a sad end except the realization of their own emo-
tional entanglement. This can be accomplished by allowing
them to communicate through trance. But there are also
cases in which the tragedy is not sudden, but gradual, and
the unnatural attachment to physical life creates the ghost
syndrome. The person who refuses to accept peacefully the
transition called death, and holds on to material surround-
ings, becomes a ghost when these feelings of resistance and
attachment become psychotic.
Such persons will then regard the houses they lived
and died in as still theirs, and will look on latter owners or
tenants as merely unwanted intruders who must be forced
out of the place by any means available. The natural way
to accomplish this is to show themselves to the living as
often as possible, to assert their continued ownership. If
that won’t do it, move objects, throw things, make noises —
let them know whose house this is!
The reports of such happenings are many. Every
week brings new cases from reliable and verified witnesses,
and the pattern begins to emerge pretty clearly.
A lady from Ridgewood, New York, wrote to me
about a certain house on Division Avenue in Brooklyn,
where she had lived as a child. A young grandmother,
Mrs. Petre had a good education and an equally good
memory. She remembered the name of her landlord while
she was still a youngster, and even the names of all her
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
teachers at Public School 19. The house her family had
rented consisted of a basement, parlor floor, and a top floor
where the bedrooms were located.
On a certain warm October day, she found herself in
the basement, while her mother was upstairs. She knew
there was no one else in the house. When she glanced at
the glass door shutting off the stairs, with the glass pane
acting almost like a mirror, she saw to her amazement a
man peeking around the doorway. Moments before she had
heard heavy footsteps coming down the stairs, and won-
dered if someone had gotten into the house while she and
her mother had been out shopping. She screamed and ran
out of the house, but did not tell her family about the
stranger.
Sometime after, she sat facing the same stairs in the
company of her bother and sister-in-law, when she heard
the footsteps again and the stranger appeared. Only this
time she got a good look at him and was able to describe
his thin, very pale face, his black hair, and the black suit
and fedora hat he wore.
Nobody believed the girl, of course, and even the
landlady accused her of imagining all this. But after a year,
her father became alarmed at his daughter’s nervousness
and decided to move. Finally, the landlady asked for details
of the apparition, and listened as the girl described the
ghost she had seen.
“My God,” the landlady, a Mrs. Grimshaw, finally
said. “I knew that man — he hanged himself on the top
floor!”
* * *
Sometimes the dead will only stay on until things
have been straightened out to their taste. Anna Arrington
was a lady with the gift of mediumship who lived in New
York State. In 1944, her mother-in-law, a woman of some
wealth, passed on in Wilmington, North Carolina, and was
buried there. There was some question about her will.
Three days after her death, Mrs. Arrington was awakened
from heavy sleep at 3 A.M. by a hand touching hers.
Her first thought was that one of her two children
wanted something. On awakening, however, she saw her
mother-in-law in a flowing white gown standing at the foot
of her bed. While her husband continued to snore, the
ghost put a finger to Mrs. Arrington’s lips and asked her
not to awaken her son, but to remember that the missing
will was in the dining room of her house on top of the dish
closet under a sugar bowl. Mrs. Arrington was roundly
laughed at by her husband the next morning, but several
days later his sister returned from Wilmington (the Arring-
tons lived in New York City at the time) and confirmed
that the will had indeed been found where the ghost had
indicated. .
* * *
Back in the 1960s, I was approached by a gentleman
named Paul Herring, who was born in Germany, and who
1
632
lived in a small apartment on Manhattan’s East Side as
well as in a country house in Westchester County, New
York. He was in the restaurant business and not given to
dreaming or speculation. He struck me as a simple, solid
citizen. His aged mother, also German-born, lived with
him, and a large German shepherd dog completed the
household.
Mr. Herring was not married, and his mother was a
widow. What caused them to reach me was the peculiar
way in which steps were heard around the Westchester
house when nobody was walking. On three separate occa-
sions, Mrs. Herring saw an apparition in her living room.
“It was sort of blackish,” she said, “but I recognized
it instantly. It was my late husband.”
The “black outline” of a man also appeared near light
fixtures, and there were noises in the house that had no
natural origins.
“The doors are forever opening and closing by them-
selves,” the son added. “We’re going crazy trying to keep
up with that spook.”
Their bedspreads were being pulled off at night.
They were touched on the face by an unseen hand, espe-
cially after dark.
The September before, Mrs. Herring was approach-
ing the swinging doors of the living room, when the door
moved out by itself and met her! A table in the kitchen
moved by its own volition in plain daylight.
Her other son, Max, who lived in Norfolk, Virginia,
always left the house in a hurry because "he can’t breathe"
in it. Her dog, Noxy, was forever disturbed when they
were out in the Westchester house.
“How long has this been going on, Mrs. Herring?” I
asked.
“About four years at least,” the spunky lady replied,
“but my husband died ten years ago.”
It then developed that he had divorced her and mar-
ried another woman, and there were no surviving children
from that union. Still, the “other woman” had kept all of
Mr. Herring Sr.’s money — no valid will was ever found.
Was the ghost protesting this injustice to his companion of
so many years? Was he regretting his hasty step divorcing
her and marrying another?
The Herrings weren’t the only ones to hear the foot-
steps. A prospective tenant who came to rent the country
house fled after hearing some walk through a closed door.
* * *
Mrs. E. F. Newbold seems to have been followed by
ghosts since childhood — as if she were carrying a lamp
aloft to let the denizens of the nether world know she had
the sixth sense.
“I’m haunted,” she said. "I’ve been followed by a
‘what’s it’ since I was quite young. It simply pulls the back
of my skirt. No more than that. . . , but when you’re alone
in the middle of a room, this can be awfully disconcert-
ing.”
I thought of Grandma Thurston’s ghost, and how she
had pulled my elbow a couple of years before while I was
investigating an empty room in a pre-colonial house in
Connecticut, and I couldn’t agree more. Mrs. Newbold’s
family had psychic experiences also. Her little girl had felt
a hand on her shoulder. It ran in the family.
“My husband’s aunt died in Florida, while I was in
New Jersey. We had been very close, and I said good-bye
to her body here at the funeral at 10 A.M. At 9 P.M. I went
into my kitchen and though I could not see her, I knew she
was sitting at the table, staring at my back, and pleading
with me.”
“What about this skirt pulling?”
"It has followed me through a house, an apartment, a
succession of rented rooms, two new houses, and two old
houses. I’ve had a feeling of not being alone, and of sad-
ness. I've also felt a hand on my shoulder, and heard pac-
ing footsteps, always overhead.
“The next house we lived in was about 35 years old,
had had only one owner, still alive, and no one had died
there. It looked like a haunted house, but it was only from
neglect. We modernized it, and then it started! Pulling at
my skirt went on fairly often. One night when I was alone,
that is, my husband was out of town and our three chil-
dren were sound asleep — I checked them just before and
just after — I was watching TV in the living room, when I
heard the outside cellar door open. I looked out the win-
dow to see if someone was breaking in, since I had locked
the door shortly before. While I was watching, I heard it
close firmly. The door didn’t move, however. This door
had a distinctive sound so I couldn’t have mistaken it.
“I went back to my seat and picked up my scissors,
wishing for a gun. I was sure I heard a prowler. Now I
heard slow footsteps come up from the cellar, through the
laundry room, kitchen, into the living room, right past me,
and up the stairs to the second floor. They stopped at the
top of the stairs, and I never heard it again. Nor do I want
to. Those steps went past me, no more than five feet away,
and the room was empty. Unfortunately, I have no corrob-
oration, but I was wide awake and perfectly sober!”
So much for the lady from Harrington Park, New
Jersey.
* * *
Miss Margaret C. and her family lived in what surely
was a haunted house, so that I won't give her full name.
But here is her report.
In December of 1955, just two days before Christ-
mas, I traveled to Pennsylvania to spend the holidays
with my sister and her husband. They lived on the sec-
ond floor (the apartment I am now renting) of a spa-
cious mid-Victorian-style home built around a hundred
years ago.
When The Dead Stay On
633
Due to the death of my sister’s mother-in-law, who
had resided on the first floor of the house, the occasion
was not an entirely joyous one, but we came for the sake
of my brother-in-law.
Having come all the was from Schenectady, New
York, we retired between ten-thirty and eleven o’clock.
The room I slept in was closest to the passage leading to
the downstairs, and the two were separated only by a
door.
Once in bed, I found it rather difficult to sleep. As I
lay there, I heard a piano playing. It sounded like a very
old piano and it played church music. I thought it quite
strange that my brother-in-law’s father would be listen-
ing to his radio at that hour, but felt more annoyed than
curious.
The next morning, as we were having coffee, I men-
tioned this to my sister. She assured me that her father-
in-law would not be listening to the radio at that hour
and I assured her that I had heard piano music. It was
then she mentioned the old piano her husband’s mother
had owned for many years and which sat in the down-
stairs front room.
We decided to go and have a look at it. The dust
that had settled on the keyboard was quite thick, and as
definite as they could possibly be were the imprints of
someone's fingers. Not normal fingers, but apparently
quite thin and bony fingers. My sister’s mother-in-law
had been terribly thin and she loved to play her piano,
especially church music. There was positively no one
else in the house who even knew how to play the piano,
except my mother, who lived with my sister and her
husband.
* * *
Another New Jersey lady named Louise B., whose
full name and address I have in my files, told me of an
experience she will never forget.
I cannot explain why I am sending this on to you,
merely that I feel compelled to do so, and after many
years of following my compulsions, as I call them, must
do so.
My mother had a bachelor cousin who died and was
buried around Valentine’s Day, 1932. He had lived with
two maiden aunts in Ridgewood, New Jersey, for most
of his lifetime. He was a well-known architect in this
area. He designed local monuments, one of which is
standing in the Park in Ridgewood today. He was short
of statute, with piercing eyes and a bushy gray full
beard, and he smoked too many cigars. I was not quite
14 years old when he passed away.
My parents decided to spare me the burial detail, and
they left me at home on the way to the cemetery with
instructions to stay at home until they returned. They
planned on attending the burial, going back to the house
with my great-aunts and then coming home before din-
ner, which in our house was 6 P.M.
I have no recollection of what I did with my time in
the afternoon, but remember that just before dusk I had
gone indoors and at the time I was in our dining room,
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
probably setting the table for dinner, as this was one of
my chores.
We had three rooms downstairs: the living room
faced north and ran the full length of the house, while
the kitchen and dining room faced southeast and south-
west respectively, and a T-shaped partition divided the
rooms. There was a large archway separating the dining
and living rooms.
I don’t recall when I became aware of a "presence.” I
didn't see anything with my eyes, rather l felt what I
“saw,” or somehow sensed it and my sense "saw.’’ This
is not a good explanation, but about the closest I can
come to what I felt.
This presence was not in any one spot in the room,
but something that was gradually surrounding me, like
the air that I was breathing, and it was frightening and
menacing and very evil and stronger, and somehow
he word denser seemed to apply and I knew that it was
"Uncle” Oscar. I could feel him coming at me from
every direction (like music that gets louder and louder),
and my senses “saw” him as he had been dressed in the
casket, with a red ribbon draped across his chest, only
he was alive and I was aware of some terrible determi-
nation on his part and suddenly I knew that somehow he
was trying to "get inside me” and I began to back
away. I don't recall speaking, nor his speaking to me. I
just knew what his intention was and who he was. I last
remember screaming helplessly and uselessly at him to
go away. I do not know how long this lasted. I only
know that suddenly he was gone, and my parents came
into the room. I was hysterical, they tell me, and it took
some doing to quiet me.
Many years later Mrs. B. discovered that "Uncle”
Oscar had died a raving maniac to the last.
* * *
Grace Rivers was a secretary by profession, a lady of
good background, and not given to hallucinations or emo-
tional outbursts. I had spoken with her several times and
always found her most reluctant to discuss what to her
seemed incredible.
It seemed that on weekends, Miss Rivers and another
secretary, by the name of Juliet, were the house guests of
their employer, John Bergner, in Westbrook, Connecticut.
Miss Rivers was also a good friend of this furniture manu-
facturer, a man in his middle fifties. She had joined the
Bergner firm in 1948, six years after John Bergner had
become the owner of a country house built in 1865.
Bergner liked to spend his weekends among his
favorite employees, and sometimes asked some of the office
boys as well as his two secretaries to come up to Connecti-
cut with him. All was most idyllic until the early 1950s,
when John Bergner met an advertising man by the name of
Philip Mervin. This business relationship soon broadened
into a social friendship, and before long Mr. Mervin was a
steady and often self-invited house guest in Westbrook.
At first, this did not disturb anyone very much, but
when Mervin noticed the deep and growing friendship
between Bergner and his right-hand assistant, something
634
akin to jealousy prompted him to interfere with this rela-
tionship at every turn. What made this triangle even more
difficult for Mervin to bear was the apparent innocence
with which Bergner treated Mervin ’s approaches. Natu-
rally, a feeling of dislike grew into hatred between Miss
Rivers and the intruder, but before it came to any open
argument, the advertising man suddenly died of a heart
attack at age 51 .
But that did not seem to be the end of it by a long
shot.
Soon after his demise, the Connecticut weekends were
again interrupted, this time by strange noises no natural
cause could account for. Most of the uncanny experiences
were witnessed by both women as well as by some of the
office men, who seemed frightened by it all. With the
detachment of a good executive secretary, Miss Rivers lists
the phenomena:
Objects moving in space.
Stones hurled at us inside and outside the house.
Clanging of tools in the garage at night (when
nobody was there).
Washing machine starting up at 1 A.M., by itself.
Heavy footsteps, banging of doors, in the middle of
the night.
Television sets turning themselves on and off at will.
A spoon constantly leaping out of a cutlery tray.
The feeling of a cold wind being swept over one.
And there was more, much more.
When a priest was brought to the house to exorcise
the ghost, things only got worse. Evidently the deceased
had little regard for holy men.
Juliet, the other secretary, brought her husband
along. One night in 1962, when Juliet’s husband slept in
what was once the advertising man’s favorite guest room,
he heard clearly a series of knocks, as if someone were hit-
ting the top of the bureau. Needless to say, her husband
had been alone in the room, and he did not do the
knocking.
It became so bad that Grace Rivers no longer looked
forward to those weekend invitations at her employer’s
country home. She feared them. It was then that she
remembered, with terrifying suddenness, a remark the late
Mr. Mervin had made to her fellow-workers.
"If anything ever happens to me and I die, I’m going
to walk after those two girls the rest of their lives!” he had
said.
Miss Rivers realized that he was keeping his word.
Her only hope was that the ghost of Mr. Mervin
would someday be distracted by an earlier specter that was
sharing the house with him. On several occasions, an old
woman in black had been seen emerging from a side door
of the house. A local man, sitting in front of the house
during the weekdays when it was unoccupied — Bergner
came up only on weekends — was wondering aloud to Miss
Rivers about the “old lady who claimed she occupied the
back part of the house.” He had encountered her on many
occasions, always seeing her disappear into the house by
that same, seldom-used, side door. One of the office work-
ers invited by John Bergner also saw her around 1 :30 A.M.
on a Sunday morning, when he stood outside the house,
unable to get to sleep. When she saw him she said hello,
and mentioned something about money, then disappeared
into a field.
Grace Rivers looked into the background of the
house and discovered that it had previously belonged to a
very aged man who lived there with his mother. When she
died, he found money buried in the house, but he claimed
his mother had hidden more money that he had never been
able to locate. Evidently the ghost of his mother felt the
same way about it, and was still searching. For that's how
it is with ghosts sometimes — they become forgetful about
material things.
* * *
The Peter Hofmann family consisted of husband,
wife Pennie, and baby — then about three or four years old.
The parents were articulate, well-educated people making
their home in Harvard. Not Harvard University, but Har-
vard near Ayer, Massachusetts, about an hour’s ride from
the university.
An automobile accident in 1956 had left Mrs. Hof-
mann partially paralyzed, but her keen gift of observation
was not impaired. She had always had a peculiar liking for
graveyards, and her first psychic experience, in 1951, con-
sisted of a vision of a horse-drawn hearse that had passed
near a cemetery. One could argue that lots of such hearses
used to pull into cemeteries, but the fact remains that Mrs.
Hofmann’s was not a real one.
Their house stands next to a house built by Mrs.
Hofmann’s father, a well-known physician, and it seemed
that both houses were haunted. The larger house, owned
by Mrs. Hofmann’s father, was built in 1721 “on the
bounty received from an Indian scalp.”
From the first moment she saw it, Pennie Hofmann
had odd sensations about it. In 1960 or 1961, she and her
husband were spending the night there, when at about two
in the morning they both woke up for no apparent reason.
“I spoke to what I thought was Pete,” she said, “as I
could see someone by the front window, but it turned out
that Pete was behind me. Needless to say, we left right
away.”
Peter Hofmann nodded and added: "I myself have
been in the house at night a few times alone, and I’ve
always had the feeling I was being watched.”
Then in late October 1963, Pennie Hofmann phoned
me in New York. Could I please come to Boston and tell
her if she was seeing things?
What sort of things, I asked.
When The Dead Stay On
635
“Well,” she replied, somewhat upset, “we’d been
staying over in my father’s house again a week ago. I saw a
soldier in the bedroom. He was dark and had a noose
around the neck; the rope was cut and his face seemed
almost luminous. I swear I saw him.”
I hurried to Boston and they met me at radio station
WBZ.
What about the ghostly soldier? Any clues?
Both Hofmanns nodded.
"We’ve checked in Nourse’s History of the Town of
Harvard," Mrs. Hoffman said gravely, “and there was a
colonial drummer named Hill who was hanged in this
area. . .for some misdeeds.”
I remembered her telling me of a ghost in their own
house on Poor Farm Road, and Mrs. Hofmann filled me in
on this far gentler wraith.
"During the summer months,” she explained, “there
is what appears to be a Quaker lady that walks across our
front lawn, usually during the afternoon. This person often
appears many times a day.”
Her husband added that she had given him many
details of the ghost’s dress, which he checked for authentic-
ity. He found that they were indeed worn by the Quaker
women of the eighteenth century.
Why a member of so gentle a persuasion as the
Quakers would turn into a ghost we may never know, but
perhaps someday the Quaker lady will walk again for me.
* * *
There is said to be the ghost of a pirate near the
water’s edge in old Boston, where so many secret passages
existed in the days when Massachusetts was British. The
Black Lady of Warren Island, out in the bay, has been seen
by a number of people. She was executed during the Civil
War for helping her husband, a Yankee prisoner, break out
of prison.
Boston’s emotional climate is fine for special activi-
ties. There may not be any medieval castles, but Beacon
Hill can look pretty forbidding, too — especially on a chilly
November night when the fog drifts in from the sea.
In September 1963 I appeared on WBZ-TV on Mike
Douglas’ television show, discussing my ever-present inter-
est in haunted houses. As a consequence, there was an
avalanche of letters, many of which contained leads to new
cases.
One came from a Mrs. Anne Valukis, of South Nat-
ick, near Boston, Massachusetts. She wrote me of an old
house she lived in where the stairs creaked unaccountably
at odd times, as if someone were walking up and down
them; of the strange behavior her little boy showed when-
ever he was in a certain room of the house; and of an over-
all atmosphere of the uncanny prevailing throughout the
house, as if an unseen force were always present.
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
I wrote for additional data about herself and the
background of the house. Meanwhile, the public television
station in Boston, Channel 2, took an interest in my work,
and the station and I decided to join forces for an expedi-
tion to the haunted house in South Natick. Fred Barzyk,
the director, undertook the preliminary task of additional
research. My visit was scheduled for the last week of Octo-
ber. Mrs. Valukis wasn’t long in answering me.
“The stairs haven’t creaked for over a week, but my
four-year-old woke Saturday night four times, and was
really scared, so much so he would not go back upstairs to
his room. . . . Years ago this house was kind of a speakeasy,
connected to a dance hall that was on the Charles River.
Probably anything could have happened here. Who
knows?”
Not because of the spooky stairs, but for other rea-
sons, the Valukis family decided to move to Anne’s par-
ents’ house. This made our visit problematical, until Fred
Barzyk discovered that the house belonging to Mrs.
Valukis’ parents was even more haunted than Anne
Valukis’ place.
Mrs. Rose Josselyn, Anne’s mother, was a Canadian
Indian, and, like many of her people, had had psychic
experiences all her life.
About 39 years before I met her, Mrs. Josselyn was
living in Annapolis Royal, Canada, in what was purported
to be a haunted house. Frequently she awoke in the middle
of the night and found it difficult to breathe. Her arms
seemed to be pinned down by an unseen force and she was
unable to move even so much as finger!
"It felt as if someone were choking me,” she said to
me later. "I tried to scream, but could not move my lips.”
This had gone on for about a year. Finally Rose told
her mother, who was mediumistic herself, and Rose was
forbidden ever to sleep again in “that room.” Twenty years
alter, Mrs. Josselyn still remembered the stark terror of
those nights in Canada, but nothing like it had happened
to her since — nothing, that is, until she moved into this
house.
The house itself was a gray-white, medium-sized
early American house, built in the stately manner of early
Georgian architecture and very well preserved. It was set
back from the road a bit, framed by tall, shady trees, and
one had the feeling of being far from the bustle of the big
city. Built about 1 50 years before, the house had an upper
story and total of eight rooms. Bordering on the lawn of
the house was a cemetery, separated from the Josselyn
house by an iron gate and fence.
When the Josselyns moved in with their family, Mrs.
Josselyn had no thoughts of anything psychic or uncanny.
She soon learned differently.
Upstairs, there were two bedrooms separated only by
a thin wall. The larger one belonged to Mrs. Josselyn; the
smaller one, to the rear of the house, to her husband Roy.
It was in her bedroom that Mrs. Josselyn had another
attack of the terrible feeling she had experienced in her
636
Canadian youth, Pinned down on her bed, it was as if
someone were upon her, holding her.
“Whose bedroom was this before you took it?” I
inquired.
“Well, my daughter-in-law slept here for a while,”
Mrs. Josselyn confided, "that is, before she died.”
I asked further questions about this girl. At the age
of 21 , she had fallen ill and suffered her last agonies in this
very room, before being taken off to a hospital, never to
return. Her only child, to whom she was naturally very
attached, was reared by Mrs. Josselyn and Mrs. Valukis.
I walked across the floor to a small room belonging to
David Josselyn, 17, the brother of Mrs. Valukis. Here I
was shown a hand -made wooden chair that was said to
creak at odd moments, as if someone were sitting in it.
David himself had been awakened many times by this
unearthly behavior of his chair, and Anne had also
observed the noise. I tried the chair. It was sturdy enough,
and only strong efforts on my part produced any kind of
noise. It could not have creaked by itself.
“Who gave you this chair?” I asked.
"The same man who made our clock downstairs,”
David said. I recalled seeing a beautiful wooden grandfa-
ther clock in the corner of the downstairs room. The odd
thing about that clock was it sometimes ticked and the
hands moved, even though it no longer had any works or
pendulum!
The clock, chair, and a desk in David’s room were
the work of a skilled craftsman named Thomas Council,
who was a well-liked house guest of the Josselyns and gave
them these things to show his gratitude for their hospital-
ity. He was a lonely bachelor and the Josselyns were his
only close friends. David in particular was the apple of his
eye. Thomas Council’s body rested comfortably, it is
hoped, across the way in the cemetery, and the Josselyns
made sure there were always fresh flowers on his grave.
I decided to return to Mrs. Josselyn’s room.
“Outside of your nightmarish experiences here and in
Canada,” I said, “have you had any other psychic
incidents?”
Mrs. Josselyn, a serious, quiet woman of about 59,
thought for a moment.
“Yes, frequently. Whenever my children are in some
sort of trouble, I just know it. No matter how trifling. You
might say we have telepathic contact.”
“Did you also hear those stairs creak at your daugh-
ter’s house across the road?”
“Yes, many times.”
“Was that after or before your daughter-in-law
passed away?”
“After.”
“I clearly heard those steps upstairs, and there wasn’t
anyone but me and the baby in the house,” added Anne
Valukis for corroboration.
They all had been visited, it seemed to me, except
the father, Roy Josselyn. It was time I turned my attention
in his direction.
Mr. Josselyn sat on the bed in his room, quietly
smoking a pipe. I had been warned by Fred Barzyk that
the man of the house was no particular believer in the
supernatural. To my relief, I discovered Mr. Josselyn at
least had an open mind. I also discovered that a great-aunt
of his in Vermont had been a spiritualistic medium.
I asked if he had seen or heard anything unusual.
“Well,” he said, “about a year ago I started to hear
some moans and groans around here. ...” he pointed
toward the wall adjoining the bedroom occupied by his
wife. “At first I thought it was my wife, but there was no
one in her room at the time. I looked.”
"This moaning. . .was it a human voice?”
“Oh yes, very human. Couldn’t sleep a wink while it
lasted.”
"When did you last hear it?”
“Yesterday,” he said laconically.
“How did you and your daughter-in-law get along?”
I suddenly felt compelled to ask.
“Very well,” he said. “As a matter of fact, she took
more to me than to anyone else. You know how women are
— a bit jealous. She was a little on the possessive side as far
her baby was concerned. I mean, she was very much wor-
ried abut the child.”
"But she wasn’t jealous of you?”
“No, not of me. We were very close.”
I thought of the 21 -year-old girl taken by death with-
out being ready for it, and the thoughts of fear for her
child that must have gone through her mind those dreadful
last hours when her moaning filled the air of the room next
to Roy Josselyn’s.
I also thought about Mrs. Roy Josselyn’s background
— the fact that she was Princess of the Micmac Indian
tribe. I remembered how frequent psychic experiences were
among Indians, who are so much closer to nature than we
city -dwellers.
Perhaps the restless spirit of the 21 -year-old girl
wanted some attention. Perhaps her final moments had
only impressed themselves on the atmosphere of the
upstairs room and were relived by the psychically sensitive
members of the family. Perhaps, too, Thomas Council, the
family friend, roamed the house now and then to make
sure everything was all right with his favorite family.
When we drove back to Boston late that night, I felt
sure I had met a haunted family, for better or worse.
When The Dead Stay On
637
* 142
Alabama Stay-Behinds
Warren F. Godfrey is an educated man who works for
the nasa Center in Houston. He and his wife Gwen had
no particular interest in the occult and were always careful
not to let their imagination run away with them. They
lived in a house in Huntsville, Alabama, which was, at the
time they moved into it, only three years old. At first they
had only a feeling that the house didn’t want them. There
was nothing definite about this, but as time went on they
would look over their shoulders to see if they were being
followed, and felt silly doing so. Then, gradually, peculiar
noises started. Ordinarily such noises would not disturb
them, and they tried very hard to blame the settling of the
house. There were cracks in the ceiling, the popping and
cracking of corners, then the walls would join in, and after
a while there would be silence again. Faucets would start to
drip for no apparent reason. Doors would swing open
and/ or shut by themselves, and a dish would shift in the
cupboard. All these things could perhaps have been caused
by a house’s settling, but the noises seemed to become
organized. Warren noticed that the house had a definite
atmosphere. There seemed to be a feeling that the house
objected to the young couple’s happiness. It seemed to
want to disturb their togetherness in whatever way it could,
and it managed to depress them.
Then there were knockings. At first these were regu-
larly spaced single sharp raps proceeding from one part of
the house to another. Warren ran out and checked the out-
side of the house, under it, and everywhere and could dis-
cover no reason for the knocks. As all this continued, they
became even more depressed and neither liked to stay alone
in the house. About Thanskgiving 1968 they went to visit
Warren’s mother in Illinois for a few days. After they
returned to the empty house it seemed quieter, even
happier. Shortly before Christmas, Warren had to go to
Houston on business. While he was gone Gwen took a
photograph of their daughter Leah. When the picture was
developed there was an additional head on the film, with
the face in profile and wearing some sort of hat. Warren, a
scientist, made sure that there was no natural reason for
this extra face on the film. Using a Kodak Instamatic cam-
era with a mechanism that excludes any double exposure,
he duplicated the picture and also made sure that a reflec-
tion could not have caused the second image. Satisfied that
he had obtained sufficient proof to preclude a natural origin
for the second face on the film, he accepted the psychic
origin of the picture.
About that time they began hearing voices. One
night Warren woke up to hear two men arguing in a
nearby room. At first he dismissed it as bad dream and
went back to sleep, but several nights later the same thing
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
happened. After listening to them for a while he shrugged
his shoulders and went back to sleep. He could not under-
stand a word they were saying but was sure that there were
two men arguing. After several weeks of this his wife also
heard the voices. To Warren this was gratifying, since he
was no longer alone in hearing them. The time when both
of them heard the voices was generally around 1 A.M. In
addition to the two men arguing, Gwen has also heard a
woman crying and Warren has heard people laughing. The
noises are not particularly directed toward them, nor do
they feel that there is anything evil about them. Gradually
they have learned to ignore them. As a trained scientist,
Warren tried a rational approach to explain the phenomena
but could not find any cause. Turning on the lights did not
help either. The phenomena occurred only in the master
bedroom. There are no television stations on the air at that
time of the morning, and there is no house close enough
for human voices to carry that far. In trying to reach for a
natural explanation, Warren considered the fact that caves
extended underneath the area, but what they were hearing
was not the noise of rushing waters. Those were human
voices and they were right there in the room with them.
They decided to learn to live with their unseen boarders
and perhaps the ghosts might eventually let them in on
their "problem.” Not that Warren and Gwen could do
much about them, but it is always nice to know what your
friends are talking about, especially when you share your
bedroom with them.
* * *
Mary Carol Henry is in her early thirties, lives in
Montgomery and is married to a medical technician in the
USAF. She is the mother of seven children and has had psy-
chic experiences from early childhood. When Mary was
twelve years old one of her older brothers moved to Pitts-
burgh. She lent a helping hand with the furniture and other
belongings and decided to stay overnight so she could help
them finish up the work early in the morning. The house
was an old four-story one in the Hazelwood section of
Pittsburgh. Mary and the children slept up on the third
floor, but she felt very uneasy about staying. Somehow the
house bothered her. Since she had promised to stay
overnight, however, she went to bed around 10 P.M. and
lay in bed for a while thinking about why the house had
troubled her. Her brother’s baby slept in the same room
with her and after a while her brother came up to check on
the child. She then heard him go back downstairs. Mary
wasn’t sure how much time had elapsed when she thought
she heard him come up again. There was the rustling of
newspapers or something that sounded like it, and she
assumed it was her brother, since he was in the habit of
taking a newspaper with him when he went to the bath-
room. She turned over, and instead of her brother, to her
amazement she saw a young girl come out of a closet.
Immediately she recognized her as her little sister Patsy
638
who had been killed in a gas explosion in August 1945 at
the age of five. The ghost wore the same gown she had
been buried in and she looked exactly as she had when she
was alive but somehow larger in build. Her apparition was
enveloped by a green light. As Mary stared in disbelief the
ghost came over to the bed and sat on the side of it. Mary
saw the bed actually sink in where Patsy sat on it. Her sis-
ter than put her hands on Mary’s and kissed her on the
cheek. Mary felt the kiss as if it were the kiss of a living
person. Then the apparition vanished. Still dazed with fear,
Mary sprang out of bed and spent the rest of the night on
the stairs. When she told her experience to her mother
later, her mother assured her that her late sister had only
come back to comfort her in what must have been unfamil-
iar surroundings, for if Mary was to see a ghost that night
it might just as well be someone in the family, not a
stranger.
» 143
Arkansas Stay-Behinds
HOLLYGROVE IS ONLY a small town in eastern Arkansas,
but to Sharon Inebnit it is the center of her world. She
lives there with her farmer husband in quiet, rural Arkan-
sas far from metropolitan centers. Little Rock is a long way
off and not a place one is likely to visit often. Her mother
lives in Helena close to the Mississippi state line. Traveling
east on Highway 86 and then on 49 Sharon has gone back
and forth a few times in her young life. She knows the area
well. It is not an area of particular merit but it has one
advantage; it’s very quiet. About halfway between Holly-
grove and Helena stands an old house that attracted Sharon
every time she passed it. There was no reason for it, and
yet whenever she passed the old house something within
her wondered what the house’s secret was.
Sharon is now in her early twenties. She lived with an
extraordinary gift of ESP since infancy. That is a subject
one doesn’t discuss freely in her part of the world. People
either ridicule you or, worse, think you’re in league with
the devil. So Sharon managed to keep her powers to herself
even though at times she couldn’t help surprising people.
She would often hear voices of people who weren’t even
within sight. If she wanted someone to call her, all she had
to do was visualize the person and, presto, the person
would ring her. Whenever the telephone rings she knows
exactly who is calling. Frequently she has heard her neigh-
bors talking 500 yards from her house, yet she is so sensi-
tive she cannot stand the television when it is turned on
too loud.
Her husband, a farmer of Swiss extraction, is some-
what skeptical of her powers. He is less skeptical now than
he was when he first met her. Back in the summer of 1963
when she and her present husband first kept company, she
was already somewhat of a puzzle to him. One day, the fif-
teen-year-old girl insisted they drive into Helena, which
was about five miles from where they were then. Her
boyfriend wanted to know why. She insisted that there was
a baseball game going on and that a private swimming
party was in progress at the municipal pool. She had no
reason to make this statement, however, nor any proof that
it was correct, but they were both very much interested in
baseball games, so her boyfriend humored her and decided
to drive on to Helena. When they arrived at Helena they
found that a baseball game was indeed going on and that a
private swimming party was in progress at the municipal
pool just as Sharon had said. Helena has a population of
over 10,000 people. Sharon lives 25 miles away. How could
she have known this?
In March of 1964 her maternal grandmother passed
away. She had been close to her but for some reason was
unable to see her in her last moments. Thus the death hit
her hard and she felt great remorse at not having seen her
grandmother prior to her passing. On the day of the
funeral she was compelled to look up, and there before her
appeared her late grandmother. Smiling at her, she nodded
and then vanished. But in the brief moment when she had
become visible to Sharon the girl understood what her
grandmother wanted her to know. The message was brief.
Her grandmother understood why she had not been able to
see her in her last hours and wanted to forgive her.
In April 1964 when she was just sixteen years old she
married her present husband. They went to Memphis,
Tennessee, for four days. All during their honeymoon
Sharon insisted on returning home. She felt something was
wrong at home, even though she couldn’t pinpoint it.
Though it wasn’t a hot period of the year she felt
extremely warm and very uncomfortable. Eventually her
husband gave in to her urgings and returned home with
her. Assuming that her psychic feelings concerned an acci-
dent they might have on the road, she insisted that they
drive very carefully and slowly. There was no accident.
However, when they entered the driveway of her home she
found out what it was she felt all that distance away. A
large fertilizer truck had hit a gasoline truck in front of her
mother’s house. A tremendous fire had ensued, almost set-
ting her mother’s house on fire. The blaze could be seen
clearly in towns over five miles away. Both trucks burned
up completely. It was the heat from the fire she had felt all
the way to Memphis, Tennessee.
Arkansas Stay-Behinds
639
The house outside of Hollygrove, however, kept on
calling her and somehow she didn’t forget. Whenever she
had a chance to drive by it she took it, looking at the house
and wondering what its secret was. On one such occasion it
seemed to her that she heard someone play a piano inside the
vacant house. But that couldn’t very well be; she knew that
there was no one living inside. Perhaps there were mice
jumping up and down the keyboard, if indeed there was a
piano inside the house. She shook her head, dismissing the
matter. Perhaps she had only imagined it. But somehow
the sound of songs being played on an old piano kept on
reverberating in her mind. She decided to do some research
on the house.
Tom Kameron runs an antique shop in Hollygrove,
and since the old house was likely to be filled with antiques
he would be the man to question about it. That at least
was Sharon's opinion. She entered the shop pretending to
browse around for antiques. A lady clerk came over and
pointed at an old lamp. “I want to show you something
that you’ll be interested in,” she said. "This came from the
old Mulls house here.” Sharon was thunderstruck. The
Mulls house was the house she was interested in. She
began to question the clerk about the antiques in the Mulls
house. Apparently a lot of them had been stolen or had
disappeared during the last few years. Since then a care-
taker had been appointed who guarded the house. At this
point the owner of the shop, Tom Kameron, joined the
conversation. From him Sharon learned that the house had
belonged to Tom Mulls, who had passed away, but Mrs.
Mulls, although very aged, was still alive and living in a
sanitarium in Little Rock. Kameron himself had been a
friend of the late owners for many years.
The house had been built by a Captain Mulls who
had passed away around 1935. It was originally built in St.
Augustine, Florida, and was later moved to Hollygrove.
The captain wasn’t married, yet there was a woman
with him in the house when it stood in Hollygrove. This
was a Native American woman he had befriended and who
lived with him until her death. The man who later inher-
ited the house, Tom Mulls, was an adopted son. Appar-
ently Captain Mulls was very much in love with his Native
American lady. After her death he had her body embalmed
and placed in a glass casket, which he kept in a room in
the house. It stayed there until he died, and when Tom
took over the house he buried the casket in the cemetery
not far away. Her grave still exists in that cemetery. There
were many Indian relics and papers dealing with Indian
folklore in the house during her lifetime, but they have all
disappeared since. The woman played the piano very well
indeed, and it was for her that the captain had bought a
very fine piano. Many time he would sit listening to her as
she played song after song for his entertainment.
The house has been vacant for many years but people
can’t help visiting it even though it is locked. They go up
to the front steps and peer in the windows. Sharon was
relieved to hear that she was not the only one strangely
attracted to the old house. Others have also been “called”
by the house as if someone inside were beckoning to them.
Over the years strangers who have passed by the house
have come to Mr. Kameron with strange tales of music
emanating from the empty house. What people have heard
wasn’t the rustling of mice scurrying over a ruined piano
keyboard but definite tunes, song after song played by
skilled hands. Eventually the house will pass into the hands
of the state since Mrs. Mulls has no heirs. But Sharon
doubts that the ghost will move out just because the house
changes hands again. She feels her presence, very much
alive and wholly content to live on in the old house. True,
she now plays to a different kind of audience than she did
when Captain Mulls was still alive, but then is it just pos-
sible that the captain has decided to stay behind also if
only to listen to the songs she continues to play for his
entertainment.
♦ 144
Georgia Stay-Behinds
The STATE OF Georgia, especially the area around
Atlanta, is full of people interested in psychic research.
Whether this has something to do with the fact that many
cases exist in the area, or whether this is simply because
Georgia has some fine universities and metropolitan centers
where the interest in ESP has been high for many years, is
hard to tell. But the fact is that I get far more cases of
interest from the area of Atlanta and of Georgia in general
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
than, for instance, Mississippi or Louisiana. The caliber of
the people who have most of the experiences or are pos-
sessed of ESP talents is also quite high. A. W. C., a science
teacher from rural Georgia, says he does not believe in
ghosts such as such; however, he is quick to admit that the
experiences he has had will admit of no explanation other
than a psychic one. When he was a teenager he was very
close to his grandmother even though she lived 1 50 miles
away. One night, while he was in bed, he awoke and saw
his grandmother standing in the corner of his room. At
first he thought he was imagining things. He closed his
eyes and looked once again but she was still there. Now he
covered his head and after a while looked back; grand-
mother was still standing there. At that point he heard
640
footsteps in the kitchen and got up to see if anybody had
entered the kitchen, but to his surprise he found no one
there. When he returned to his bedroom he decided, in his
logical mind, that what he had seen had been a dress or
some other piece of material hanging on the wall and not
his grandmother. In the morning he would make sure that
that was so. Came the morning and he checked and there
was nothing in the corner of that room. However, a few
days later the family received a telegram advising them that
grandmother had had a stroke and was at the point of
death. Evidently the young man had seen a projected
image of his dear relative at a time when partial dissolution
had taken place. Shortly thereafter the grandmother died.
But Mr. C. not only has been the recipient of psychic
impressions, he has also been able to send them, although
not at will. During World War II he was with the Army in
France. His family frequently discussed his fate abroad.
One evening his wife, sister, and an aunt who had reared
him and who was particularly close to the young man were
sitting in front of a wooden stove in their home. Suddenly
the aunt started to scream. Terror-stricken, the woman
explained that she just seen Mr. C.’s face appear to her in
the flames of the stove. At that very moment Mr. C. was
wounded in France.
* * *
Robert Mullinax of Atlanta, Georgia, is in his early
twenties. When he was seventeen years old, in 1967, he
had an experience he will never forget. His mother had
often had premonitions of things to come and perhaps
some of this talent had come down to him also. On that
particular day in April, Mrs. Mullinax had been very rest-
less all day long as if something were about to happen. She
had the feeling she should telephone her sister-in-law, but
somehow she never not around to it. They were not partic-
ularly close; in fact, they had visited each other only about
three times in twenty-five years. That evening she knew
why she had had the strange feeling of urgency to call he
sister-in-law. The woman had committed suicide by shoot-
ing herself.
It was two days after her death when young Robert
found himself standing in his home in front of a large mir-
ror. This was in their living room and he was about to
comb his hair when he saw his aunt in the mirror behind
him. He turned around and, sure enough, there she was
standing about six feet away. As he got a closer look at her
she vanished. In this fleeting moment young Robert had
the impression that his aunt wanted to tell him something
— perhaps express regret at what she had done and to send
a message to her youngest son whom she loved very much,
but she was gone before Robert could really make out the
message. What is interesting about this case is the fact that
the ghost was solid enough to be seen in a mirror, not
merely a hallucination or a subjective vision.
Mrs. W. is a housewife living in Athens, Georgia.
She is also a certified nursery school teacher, the mother of
six children, and she has had ESP experiences for many
years past. She is living proof that ESP messages can be
very precise at times in giving the recipient an indication of
what the message is all about and to prepare the recipient
for any shock that might come his or her way. In 1946
Mrs. W. was living in another city in Georgia. At that
time she had one son age two-and-a-half years and another
six months old. She was also pregnant with another child.
During that period she had many vivid dreams of a psychic
nature. But after the third child was born she was particu-
larly disturbed one night by a dream which became so
powerful that it awoke her. She found herself crying
uncontrollably, so much so that her husband was genuinely
concerned. When she became calmer she told her husband
she had dreamed she saw her brothers and sisters and her
mother looking at her through the glass of their front door,
saying, “Call an ambulance.” The dream had no meaning
for her, so after a while she went back to sleep and didn’t
think about it again. Three months later the dream became
a reality. Her brother appeared at her front door and stand-
ing outside the glass said, “Call an ambulance.” He then
explained that their father, who lived on the next street and
who had no telephone, had suffered a heart attack while
preparing for bed. The father died three days later. It was
only after her grief ceased that Mrs. W. realized that in her
dream she had seen all members of her family except one
— her father was not in it. Had she understood this prop-
erly perhaps she would have been more prepared for the
shock that was to come her way shortly.
The relationship with her father had been a close
one, so she was not surprised that after his passing there
were times when she felt him standing near her. She did
not see him, yet she knew of his presence. She hesitated to
discuss this with her husband out of fear of being ridiculed
or worse. During that time she awakened her husband five
or six separate times and asked him to get up and shut the
door since Daddy had come in. Her husband didn’t like it,
but when she insisted, he did get up in order to please his
wife. They never discussed it until many years later when
her husband admitted that each time she had asked him to
close the door it was indeed open and there had been no
reason for it to be open.
Mrs. W.’s husband is the editor of a county newspa-
per and a very logical man. He learned to accept his wife’s
special talent as the years rolled by, but there were times
when he wished that she weren’t as psychic as she was.
One night she dreamed that a plane crash had taken place
somewhere in back of their house and she saw some Army
men drive up in a jeep and take away the bodies of those
killed. In the morning she told her husband of this dream.
He didn’t say anything. Two weeks later, however, he told
his wife to quit having “those crazy dreams.” It appeared
* * *
Georgia Stay-Behinds
641
that Mr. W. had been traveling away from home in the
direction one might properly call “back of the house” when
he saw that an Army plane had crashed and Army person-
nel in a jeep had driven up to the site and removed some
bodies, just as his wife had told him. Mrs. W. realized that
she had a very special talent and perhaps had been chosen
by some superior intelligence as a communicator.
A month after her daughter Karen was born in 1952
she happened to be lying down for an afternoon nap. She
was facing the wall when she felt compelled to turn over in
the opposite direction. There she saw the figure of a man
in a white robe standing by her bed. Her first thought was
that she still had in her system some of the drug that had
been given her during the birth and that she was indeed
hallucinating. She thought it best to turn back to the wall.
Immediately, however, she felt a strong compulsion to turn
back, and this time she saw the man pointing his finger at
her with a stern look on his face. She got the impression
she was to get up immediately and follow him. She did just
that and walked straight into the next room. As if acting in
a daze she saw herself dial her husband at his office. As
soon as her husband came to the phone she told him not to
ask questions but if he ever intended to do something that
she had asked him for, this was the time to do it. She told
him to go at once to a place called Curry’s Creek to see if
their son Joe was there. Her husband objected. He knew,
he said, that the five-year-old was not there. Nevertheless
Mrs. W. insisted. Her plea was so urgent she impressed
her husband sufficiently that he did indeed go down to the
creek. Ten minutes later he telephoned her asking her how
she knew that the boy was indeed at the creek. It appeared
that he found the little boy at the edge of the water looking
down into it. The creek furnished the town’s water supply
and is next to a busy highway a mile outside of town. The
child had never been there before. Had Mr. W. not arrived
in time the child might very well have drowned. Mrs. W.
then realized that the man in the white robe had come to
save their child.
* * *
The warning of impending disaster is a recurrent
theme in ghost lore. It appears that on occasion the
departed are given the task of warning the living of
impending difficulties or disaster but are not permitted to
be specific. Evidently that would interfere with the exercise
of free will under test conditions. A similar case involves a
lady from Decatur by the name of Mrs. L. E., who when a
child, was staying with her Aunt Mary in her house.
Twenty years before that visit Mary’s Great-Aunt Rev had
passed on. With her cousins Mrs. E. then proceeded to one
of the bedrooms in the house to fetch some of the tricycles
they had stored in it to go outside and play. When they
got to the door of the room they saw Great-Aunt Rev
standing in the middle of the room right where the tri-
cycles were. She was looking at the children rather sternly.
She wore her long white nightgown and her nightcap, the
clothing she was wearing when she died. The children
stood there transfixed by shock. They spoke her name
more in fear than in reverence. Then they ran out. When
they described the apparition to the owner of the house,
Mrs. E.’s Aunt Mary was very solemn. "She came back,”
she said and began to move all the furniture from the
house, taking it out into the yard away from the house.
This seemed like strange behavior, but the children were
young and did not understand many things. Then Aunt
Mary took the children and walked with them up the road
to a neighbor’s house. There she left them. Several hours
later when they returned they found the house had burned
down to ashes. No one had seen the ghost of Aunt Rev
since.
m 145
A Tucker Ghost
Tucker, Georgia, IS ABOUT an hour’s ride due north of
Atlanta, a pleasant, almost suburban community populated
by pleasant, average people. The Stevens house, a land-
mark as early as 1854, was built of huge hand-hewn chest-
nut pine logs originally. The older part was added to by a
Baptist minister around 1910. Finally another addition was
made to the house in the late 1940s. When the Stevenses
bought the house they were told that it was originally built
by Indian settlers in the area around 1800, or even before.
This is Cherokee Territory and according to the local tra-
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
dition the Indians brought their sick to this house. They
would stay with them overnight on their way to Decatur.
Decatur was the town where the famed Dr. Chapman
Powell lived. The Powell cabin has been restored and is
now located in Stone Mountain Park, but originally it was
in Decatur and was moved to the park to better preserve it
as a landmark. The Stevens house stands about a mile off
the High Tower Trail, which is the old Cherokee Indian
trail, and four miles from Stone Mountain Park. Since Mrs.
Stevens is herself about one thirty-second Cherokee, she
has a vivid sympathy for all Indian lore and has always
been interested in the Indian background of the house.
Whey they first bought the house in May 1960 the
Stevenses lived in it for only a year. Then, for business
reasons, they moved down to Florida and sold their house
to their in-laws. However, two years later they returned
642
from Florida and bought the house back. During that first
year in the house they do not recall anything strange except
for a recurrent dream Mrs. Stevens had right from the start
when they took up residence at the house. In that dream
she saw herself looking up through an opening in the ceil-
ing into the darkness of a loft. She could clearly make out
the rafters, wooden beams, and the chimneys. Somehow
this dream seemed all very familiar. As soon as she had
moved to the house she realized that her dream visions
concerned the attic of their house. It looked exactly like the
visions she had seen so many years prior to coming to the
house. Evidently it was predestined that the Stevenses
should take up residence in Tucker. On recollection Mrs.
Stevens remembers that her in-laws had no special experi-
ences in the house out of the ordinary during the two years
in which they resided there. But then neither of her in-laws
professed any particular interest in the occult or was pos-
sessed of psychic sensitivities.
As soon as the Stevenses had returned to their origi-
nal home they noticed a strange feeling, perhaps more of a
current all around the house. It affected the children as
well. They would not want to take a nap or go to bed
because they said someone kept touching them. Soon Mrs.
Stevens experienced that too. Their smallest children
reported seeing a man on the porch when there was no
man about. Both Mr. and Mrs. Stevens have seen a man
going across the porch. This has happened a number of
times. Sometimes it is only a kind of quick flash and some-
times they can clearly make out a human form. Whenever
they have seen something and their children have not, they
try their best to keep it from them so as not to alarm them.
Nevertheless the children on their own report similar
occurrences. Gradually it has become clear to the Stevenses
that the oldest part of the house, the log part, is the center
of the psychic phenomena. In the living room-dining room
area they have seen a form when there was certainly no one
else but themselves in the house. On another occasion Mrs.
Stevens has seen a hand materialize by her bed. In August
1968 Mr. Stevens awoke from sound sleep because he had
the feeling that there was someone in the house who should
not be there. He sat up and looked into the room where
their sons were sleeping across from the parents’ bedroom.
There he saw a gray form standing by their bunkbeds
looking at the oldest boy. Fully awake now, Mr. Stevens
looked closely at the form and realized it was female. The
woman appeared to be wearing a cowl -type hood. When he
made a move the form dissolved into thin air. Stevens dis-
cussed the appearance with his wife. She had seen a similar
form in the boys’ room reclining on the lower bunk beside
the youngest boy. Moreover, the apparition was not alone.
Mrs. Stevens could make out additional figures in the
room. Footsteps up and down the stairs when there was no
one around to make them had become a common occur-
rence in the house. The Stevenses thought that the repair
work going on in the house might have offended one or the
other of its former inhabitants. They were doing their level
best to save the old part of the house, repairing what could
be repaired and replacing what could not.
It was soon clear to them that they had more than
one unearthly visitor in their house. The woman so con-
cerned with the well-being of the children might have been
someone left behind from the Indian days or perhaps the
shade of a former owner of the house. None of them ever
saw her clearly enough to make sure, but there someone
else. In 1966 Mr. Stevens had a strange dream. The dream
was followed by similar dreams, continuing, as it were, the
narrative of the first one. In these dreams his brother Bill
communicated with him. Bill had been killed in a plane
crash in North Carolina during World War II. However, in
the dreams Bill explained that he was not dead and that he
had returned home. In another dream he wanted his
brother to accompany him on a trip. In all of these dreams
Bill appeared to have aged. He was balding and wearing a
tattered officer’s khaki uniform. His overcoat in particular
was tattered and faded. While the Stevenses discussed
these dreams with each other, they made a special point of
never talking about them with their children. So the chil-
dren had no idea that dreams about Uncle Bill had indeed
taken place.
About three weeks after the last of this series of
dreams involving Bill, all the boys came into the kitchen
very much alarmed and white as sheets. They insisted that
they had seen a ghost. When questioned about the appari-
tion they said they had seen a man walk across the front
room, which is part of the 1910 addition of the house.
Immediately the parents checked to see whether a tres-
passer had perhaps entered the house. There was no one to
be seen. Skeptical, and at the same time alarmed, the par-
ents demanded that the boys describe what they had seen.
Without a moment’s hesitation they described the ghost as
being a thin man, sort of crouched down and bald, with
clothes rather torn and sort of a faded khaki. They did in
effect describe exactly what Uncle Bill looked like in the
series of dreams their father had had for so long. Only
what they had seen was not in the dream state. Uncle Bill
evidently had returned from the grave not as a resident
ghost, for ghosts do not travel, but to look after the affairs
of his brother's family.
A Tucker Ghost
643
» 146
The Howard Mansion Ghost
The OLD Howard HOME on South Main Street in Hen-
derson, Texas, is a southern mansion of the kind that is so
numerous throughout the South. In 1851 the mansion was
erected by a certain James L. Howard on land he paid
$100 for. It is the oldest brick home in town. Today it
belongs to the Heritage Association and is being main-
tained as a museum, with visitors coming not only from
other parts of Texas but even from abroad. The house has
three stories and six rooms. Four columns adorn the front
of it. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the house is
the fact that every room has a fireplace, some of them very
large, old-fashioned fireplaces of the kind you rarely see
any more. The stairs have banisters made of the highest
grade walnut.
When the Howards built this home they stated
proudly, to anyone who would hear it, “God Almighty
Himself could not tear it down because it was well built.”
Even the worst storm seemingly could not touch the house.
There is the account of a particularly horrifying electrical
storm when a streak of lightning hit one of the corner
columns, causing only slight damage. One of the Howard
brothers ran out into the yard, looked up into the sky and
shook his fist and said, “See. I told you that you couldn’t
tear down my house." With so large and outstanding a
mansion in a small town, it is only natural that legends
would crop up around it, some of which are true and some
are not. One of them making the rounds concerns a mur-
der in the house. The present owners, the Rusk County
Heritage Association, have checked into it and found that
an accident and not a murder had occurred. The accident
concerns a member of the Howards name Pat Howard who
lost his life in an accident in the home. In fact the descen-
dants of the Howards went to great length to explain again
and again that Pat Howard died of an accident and that the
shooting that took his life was not murder in any sense of
the word. Of course, where there is smoke there is some-
times fire. Was the family merely trying to kill the story,
or were they correcting the facts? I have never been to the
Henderson mansion but have talked with people who have
been there, so my account must of necessity be second-
hand.
In 1905 Mrs. M. A. Howard and Dore Howard,
being alone, decided to sell the house to a certain Mrs. M.
A. Dickinson. Mrs. Howard was then in ill health. The
sale did not go down well with her children and the rest of
the family, who would have preferred to have the house
stay family property. It seems incredible today that such an
imposing house could be sold for $1,500, but, of course,
that was a lot more money in 1905 than it is today. Still,
even for 1905, $1,500 was very little money for a house of
this kind. It seems strange therefore that the sale was made
in this manner. The sale of the house from the Howard
family to an outsider took the town by surprise. No one
had surmised that it could be for sale, especially not for
such a low price. The house had a reputation as an histori-
cal landmark. Sam Houston himself slept there many
times, since he was a cousin of the Howards. In 1950 the
house passed from the Dickinson family to Hobart Bryce,
who in 1961 deeded the property to the Historical Associa-
tion. One of the townspeople who had spent much effort in
restoring the old house and who had been active on behalf
of the fund-raising committee was a certain Carl Jaggers.
Partly due to his efforts and those of others, the house is
now in excellent condition again and open to visitors as a
museum. My attention was drawn to it when I appeared on
a television program in nearby Tyler, Texas. The lady who
interviewed me, Jane Lassiter, provided me with much of
the material about the Henderson house.
While the controversy among the townspeople con-
cerning the restoration of the house was going on and there
was some doubt whether the house could be saved or had
to be torn down, no one had the time or inclination to look
into any possible ghostly manifestations at the house. But
as soon as the matter had quieted down and the house was
safe from the wrecker’s tools and perhaps because of the
renewed quiet in the atmosphere, something did occur that
had not been observed before. Maia Jaggers was one of
those who served as honorary guides around the house,
particularly during the weekends, when there were more
visitors than during the week. She would act as hostess to
those who came to look at the house. One Sunday after-
noon in the winter of 1968, she had just finished showing
the house to a group of visitors and was quite alone in it
for the moment. She found herself downstairs looking
toward the stairway leading to the upper stories. At that
precise moment she saw a woman materialize before her
eyes. Seemingly solid, or almost so, it was clearly a woman
of a past age. As she looked closely at the apparition, she
realized that it was the ghost of Mrs. Howard herself. As
soon as Maia Jaggers and the ghost had come face to face
the apparition floated up the stairway and disappeared. She
has not been seen since that time. Could it be that a grate-
ful Mrs. Howard wanted the one person directly connected
with the salvage of her home made aware of her continued
existence in it? Was her presence in what was once her
home caused by a belated regret at having sold out to oth-
ers against the wishes of her family? If you are ever in
Henderson, Texas, be sure and drop in on Mrs. Howard’s
house. Sale or no sale, she seems to be quite at home in it
still.
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
644
* 147
The Stay-Behinds: Not Ready to Go
The AVERAGE PERSON THINKS that there is just one kind
of ghost, and that spirits are all one and the same. Nothing
could be further from the truth; ghosts are not spirits, and
psychic impressions are not the same as ghosts. Basically,
there are three phenomena involved when a person dies
under traumatic, tragic circumstances and is unable to
adjust to the passing from one state of existence to the
next. The most common form of passing is of course the
transition from physical human being to spirit being, with-
out difficulty and without the need to stay in the denser
physical atmosphere of the Earth. The majority of tragic
passings do not present any problems, because the individ-
ual accepts the change and becomes a free spirit, capable of
communicating freely with those on the Earth plane, and
advancing according to his abilities, likes and dislikes, and
the help he or she may receive from others already on the
other side of life. A small fraction of those who die tragi-
cally are unable to recognize the change in their status and
become so-called ghosts: that is, parts of human personality
hung up in the physical world, but no longer part of it or
able to function in it. These are the only true ghosts in the
literal sense of the term.
However a large number of sightings of so-called
ghosts are not of this nature, but represent imprints left
behind in the atmosphere by the individual’s actual pass-
ing. Anyone possessed of psychic ability will sense the
event from the past and, in his or her mind’s eye, recon-
struct it. The difficulty is that one frequently does not
know the difference between a psychic imprint having no
life of its own and a true ghost. Both seem very real, sub-
jectively speaking. The only way one can differentiate
between the two phenomena is when several sightings are
compared for minute details. True ghosts move about
somewhat, although not outside the immediate area of their
passing. Imprints are always identical, regardless of the
observers involved, and the details do not alter at any time.
Psychic imprints, then, are very much like photographs or
films of an actual event, while true ghosts are events them-
selves, which are capable of some measure of reaction to
the environment. Whenever there are slight differences in
detail concerning an apparition, we are dealing with a true
ghost-personality; but whenever the description of an
apparition or scene from the past appears to be identical
from source to source, we are most likely dealing only with
a lifeless imprint reflecting the event but in no way sug-
gesting an actual presence at the time of the observation.
However, there is a subdivision of true ghosts that I
have called “the stay-behinds.” The need for such a subdi-
vision came to me several years ago when I looked through
numerous cases of reported hauntings that did not fall into
the category of tragic, traumatic passings, nor cases of
death involving neither violence nor great suffering — the
earmarks of true ghosts. To the contrary, many of these
sightings involved the peaceful passings of people who had
lived in their respective homes for many years and had
grown to love them. I realized, by comparing these cases
one with the other, that they had certain things in com-
mon, the most outstanding of which was this: they were
greatly attached to their homes, had lived in them for con-
siderable periods prior to their death, and were strong-
willed individuals who had managed to develop a life
routine of their own. It appears, therefore, that the stay-
behinds are spirits who are unable to let go of their former
homes, are more or less aware of their passing into the next
dimension, but are unwilling to go on. To them, their
earthly home is preferable, and the fact that they no longer
possess a physical body is no deterrent to their continuing
to live in it.
Some of these stay-behinds adjust to their limitations
with marvelous ingenuity. They are still capable of causing
physical phenomena, especially if they can draw on people
living in the house. At times, however, they become
annoyed at changes undertaken by the residents in their
house, and when these changes evoke anger in them they
are capable of some mischievous activities, like poltergeist
phenomena, although of a somewhat different nature.
Sometimes they are quite satisfied to continue living their
former lives, staying out of the way of flesh-and-blood
inhabitants of the house, and remaining undiscovered until
someone with psychic ability notices them by accident.
Sometimes, however, they want the flesh-and-blood people
to know they are still very much in residence and, in
asserting their continuing rights, may come into conflict
with the living beings in the house. Some of these manifes-
tations seem frightening or even threatening to people liv-
ing in houses of this kind, but they should not be, since
the stay-behinds are, after all, human beings like all others,
who have developed a continuing and very strong attach-
ment to their former homes. Of course, not everyone can
come to terms with them.
* * *
For instance, take the case of Margaret C. A few
years ago when she lived in New York state, she decided to
spend Christmas with her sister and brother-in-law in
Pennsylvania. The husband’s mother had recently passed
away, so it was going to be a sad Christmas holiday for
them. Mrs. C. was given a room on the second floor of the
old house, close to a passage which led to the downstairs
part of the house. Being tired from her long journey, she
went to bed around eleven, but found it difficult to fall
asleep. Suddenly she clearly heard the sound of a piano
being played in the house. It sound like a very old piano,
and the music on it reminded her of music played in
church. At first Mrs. C. thought someone had left a radio
on, so she checked but found that this was not the case.
The Stay-Behinds: Not Ready to Go
645
Somehow she managed to fall asleep, despite the tinkling
sound of the piano downstairs. At breakfast, Mrs. C. men-
tioned her experience to her sister. Her sister gave her an
odd look, then took her by the hand and led her down the
stairs where she pointed to an old piano. It had been the
property of the dead mother who had recently passed away,
but it had not been played in many years, since no one else
in the house knew how to play it. With mounting excite-
ment, the two women pried the rusty lid open. This took
some effort, but eventually they succeeded in opening the
keyboard.
Picture their surprise when they found that thick dust
had settled on the keys, but etched in the dust were unmis-
takable human fingerprints. They were thin, bony fingers,
like the fingers of a very old woman. Prior to her passing,
the deceased had been very thin indeed, and church music
had been her favorite. Was the lady of the house still
around, playing her beloved piano?
* * *
The house on South Sixth Street in Hudson, New
York, is one of the many fine old town houses dotting this
old town on the Hudson River. It was built between 1829
and 1849, and succession of owners lived in it to the pre-
sent day. In 1904 it passed into the hands of the Parker
family, who had a daughter, first-named Mabel, a very
happy person with a zest for life. In her sixties, she had
contracted a tragic illness and suffered very much, until she
finally passed away in a nearby hospital. She had been
truly house-proud, and hated to leave for the cold and
ominous surroundings of the hospital. After she died, the
house passed into the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Jay Dietz,
who still owned it when I visited them. Mrs. Dietz had
been employed by Mabel Parker’s father at one time.
The psychic did not particularly interest Mrs. Dietz,
although she had had one notable experience the night her
step -grandfather died, a man she had loved very much. She
had been at home taking care of him throughout the day-
time and finally returned to her own house to spend the
night. Everybody had gone to bed, and as she lay in hers
with her face to the wall, she became aware of an unusual
glow in the room. She turned over the opened her eyes,
and noticed that on the little nightstand at the head of the
bed was a large ball of light, glowing, with a soft golden
color. As she was still staring at the phenomenon, the tele-
phone rang, and she was told that her step-grandfather had
passed away.
Eleven years before, the Dietzes moved into the
houses on South Sixth Street. At first the house seemed
peaceful enough. Previous tenants included a German war
bride and her mother. The old lady had refused to sleep
upstairs in the room that later became Mrs. Dietz’s
mother’s. There was something uncanny about that room,
she explained. So she slept down on the ground floor on a
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
couch instead. The Dietzes paid no attention to these sto-
ries, until they began to notice some strange things about
their house. There were footsteps heard going up and down
the stairs and into the hall, where they stopped. The three
of them, Mr. and Mrs. Dietz and her mother, all heard
them many times.
One year, just before Christmas, Mrs. Dietz was
attending to some sewing in the hall downstairs while her
husband was in the bathroom. Suddenly she thought he
came down the hall which was odd, since she hadn’t heard
the toilet being flushed. But as she turned around, no one
was there. A few nights later she went upstairs and had the
distinct impression that she was not alone in the room.
Without knowing what she was doing, she called out to the
unseen presence, “Mabel?” There was no reply then, but
one night not much later, she was awakened by someone
yanking at her blanket from the foot of the bed. She broke
out into goose pimples, because the pull was very distinct
and there was no mistaking it.
She sat up in her upstairs bedroom, very frightened
by now, but there was no one to be seen. As she did this,
the pulling ceased abruptly. She went back to sleep with
some relief, but several nights later the visitor turned. Mrs.
Dietz likes to sleep on her left side with her ear covered up
by the blanket. Suddenly she felt the covers being pulled
off her ear, but being already half-asleep, she simply
yanked them back. There was no further movement after
that.
The upstairs bedroom occupied by Mrs. Dietz’s
mother seemed to be the center of activities, however.
More than once after the older lady had turned out the
lights to go to sleep, she became aware of someone stand-
ing beside her bed, and looking down at her.
Sometimes nothing was heard for several weeks or
months, only to resume in full force without warning. In
February of the year I visited the Dietzes, Mrs. Dietz hap-
pened to wake up at 5 o’clock one morning. It so happened
that her mother was awake too, for Mrs. Dietz heard her
stir. A moment later, her mother went back to bed. At that
moment, Mrs. Dietz heard, starting at the foot of the
stairs, the sound of heavy footsteps coming up very slowly,
going down the hall and stopping, but they were different
from the footsteps she had heard many times before.
It sounded as if a very sick person were dragging her-
self up the stairs, trying not to fall, but determined to get
there nevertheless. It sounded as if someone very tired was
coming home. Was her friend finding a measure of rest,
after all, by returning to the house where she had been so
happy? Mrs. Dietz does not believe in ghosts, however, but
only in memories left behind.
* * *
Thanks to a local group of psychic researchers, a
bizarre case was brought to my attention not long ago. In
the small town of Lafayette, Louisiana, there stands an old
bungalow that had been the property of an elderly couple
646
for many years. They were both retired people, and of late
the wife had become an invalid confined to a wheelchair.
One day a short time ago, she suffered a heart attack and
died in that chair. Partially because of her demise, or per-
haps because of his own fragile state, the husband also died
a month later. Rather, he was found dead and declared to
have died of a heart attack.
Under the circumstances the house remained vacant
awhile, since there were no direct heirs. After about nine
months, it was rented to four female students from the
nearby university. Strangely, however, they stayed only two
months — and again the house was rented out. This time it
was taken by two women, one a professional microbiologist
and the other a medical technician. Both were extremely
rational individuals and not the least bit interested in any-
thing supernatural. They moved into the bungalow, using
it as it was, furnished with the furniture of the dead
couple.
Picture their dismay, however, when they found out
that all wasn’t as it should be with their house. Shortly
after moving in, they were awakened late at night by what
appeared to be mumbled conversations and footsteps about
the house. At first neither woman wanted to say anything
about it to the other, out of fear that they might have
dreamt the whole thing or of being ridiculed. Finally, when
they talked to each other about their experiences, they real-
ized that they had shared them, detail for detail. They dis-
covered, for instance, that the phenomena always took
place between 1 A.M. and sunrise. A man and a woman
were talking, and the subject of their conversation was the
new tenants!
“She has her eyes open — I can see her eyes are open
now,” the invisible voice said, clearly and distinctly. The
voices seemed to emanate from the attic area. The two
ladies realized the ghosts were talking about them; but what
were they to do about it? They didn’t see the ghostly cou-
ple, but felt themselves being watched at all times by invis-
ible presences. What were they to do with their ghosts, the
two ladies wondered.
I advised them to talk to them, plain and simple, for
a ghost who can tell whether a living person’s eyes are
open or not is capable of knowing the difference between
living in one’s own house, and trespassing on someone
else’s, even if it was their former abode.
* * *
Mrs. Carolyn K. lives in Chicago, Illinois, with her
husband and four children, who are between the ages of
eight and thirteen. She has for years been interested in ESP
experiences, unlike her husband who held no belief of this
kind. The family moved into its present home some years
ago. Mrs. K. does not recall any unusual experiences for
the first six years, but toward the end of April, six years
after they moved in, something odd happened. She and her
husband had just gone to bed and her husband, being very
tired, fell asleep almost immediately. Mrs. K., however, felt
ill at ease and was unable to fall asleep, since she felt a
presence in the bedroom.
Within a few minutes she saw, in great detail, a
female figure standing beside the bed. The woman seemed
about thirty years old, had fair skin and hair, a trim figure,
and was rather attractive. Her dress indicated good taste
and a degree of wealth, and belonged to the 1870s or
1 880s. The young woman just stood there and looked at
Mrs. K. and vice versa. She seemed animated enough, but
made no sound. Despite this, Mrs. K. had the distinct
impression that the ghost wanted her to know something
specific. The encounter lasted for ten or fifteen minutes,
then the figure slowly disintegrated.
The experience left Mrs. K. frightened and worried.
Immediately she reported it to her husband, but he
brushed the incident aside with a good deal of skepticism.
In the following two weeks, Mrs. K. felt an unseen pres-
ence all about the house, without, however, seeing her
mysterious visitor again. It seemed that the woman was
watching her as she did her daily chores. Mrs. K. had no
idea who the ghost might be, but she knew that their house
was no more than fifty years old and that there had been
swamp land on the spot before that. Could the ghost have
some connection with the land itself, or perhaps with some
of the antiques Mrs. K. treasured?
About two weeks after the initial experience, Mr. K.
was studying in the kitchen, which is located at the far
eastern end of the house, while Mrs. K. was watching tele-
vision in the living room at the other end of the house.
Twice she felt the need to go into the kitchen and warn her
husband that she felt the ghost moving about the living
room, but he insisted it was merely her imagination. So she
returned to the living room and curled up in an easy chair
to continue watching television. Fifteen minutes later, she
heard a loud noise reverberating throughout the house. It
made her freeze with fright in the chair, when her husband
ran into the living room to ask what the noise had been.
Upon investigation, he noticed a broken string on an
antique zither hanging on the dining room wall. It was
unlikely that the string could have broken by itself, and if
it had, how could it have reverberated so strongly? To test
such a possibility, they broke several other strings of the
same zither in an effort to duplicate the sound, but without
success. A few weeks went by, and the ghost’s presence
persisted. By now Mrs. K. had the distinct impression that
the ghost was annoyed at being ignored. Suddenly, a hurri-
cane lamp which hung from a nail on the wall fell to the
floor and shattered. It could not have moved of its own
volition. Again some time passed, and the ghost was almost
forgotten. Mrs. K.’s older daughter, then six years old,
asked her mother early one morning who the company was
the previous evening. Informed that there had been no
guests at the house, she insisted that a lady had entered her
bedroom, sat on her bed and looked at her, and then
The Stay-Behinds: Not Ready to Go
647
departed. In order to calm the child, Mrs. K. told her she
had probably dreamt the whole thing. But the little girl
insisted that she had not, and furthermore, she described
the visitor in every detail including the “funny” clothes she
had worn. Appalled, Mrs. K. realized that her daughter
had seen the same ghostly woman. Apparently, the ghost
felt greater urgency to communicate now, for a few days
later, after going to bed, the apparition returned to Mrs.
K.’s bedroom. This time she wore a different dress than on
the first meeting, but it was still from the 1880s. She was
wiping her hands on an apron, stayed only for a little
while, then slowly disintegrated again. During the follow-
ing year, her presence was felt only occasionally, but grad-
ually Mrs. K. managed to snatch a few fleeting impressions
about her. From this she put together the story of her
ghost. She was quite unhappy about a child, and one
evening the following winter, when Mrs. K. felt the ghost
wandering about their basement, she actually heard her
crying pitifully for two hours. Obviously, the distraught
ghost wanted attention, and was determined to get it at all
costs.
One day the following summer, when Mrs. K. was
alone with the children after her husband had left for work,
one of the children complained that the door to the bath-
room was locked. Since the door can be locked only from
the inside, and since all four children were accounted for,
Mrs. K. assumed that her ghost lady was at it again. When
the bathroom door remained locked for half an hour and
the children’s needs became more urgent, Mrs. K. went to
the door and demanded in a loud tone of voice that the
ghost open the door. There was anger in her voice and it
brought quick results. Clearly the click of a lock being
turned was heard inside the bathroom and, after a moment,
Mrs. K. opened the bathroom door easily. There was no
one inside the bathroom, of course. Who, then, had turned
the lock — the only way the door could be opened?
For a while things went smoothly. A few weeks later,
Mrs. K. again felt the ghost near her. One of her daughters
was sitting at the kitchen table with her, while she was cut-
ting out a dress pattern on the counter. Mrs. K. stepped
back to search for something in the refrigerator a few feet
away, when all of a sudden she and her daughter saw her
box of dressmaking pins rise slightly off the counter and
fall to the floor. Neither one of them had been near it, and
it took them almost an hour to retrieve all the pins scat-
tered on the floor.
A little later, they clearly heard the basement door
connecting the dining room and kitchen fly open and slam
shut by itself, as if someone in great anger was trying to
call attention to her presence. Immediately they closed the
door, and made sure there was no draft from any windows.
An instant later, it flew open again by itself. Now
they attached the chain to the latch — but that didn’t seem
to stop the ghost from fooling around with the door. With
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
enormous force, it flew open again as far as the chain
allowed, as if someone were straining at it. Quickly Mrs.
K. called a neighbor to come over and watch the strange
behavior of the door but the minute the neighbor arrived,
the door behaved normally, just as before. The ghost was
not about to perform for strangers.
One evening in the summer some years later, Mr. K.
was driving some dinner guests home and Mrs. K. was
alone in the house with the children. All of a sudden, she
felt her ghost following her as she went through her chores
of emptying ashtrays and taking empty glasses into the
kitchen. Mrs. K. tried bravely to ignore her, although she
was frightened by her, and she knew that her ghost knew
it, which made it all the more difficult to carry on.
Not much later, the K. family had guests again. One
of the arriving guests pointed out to Mrs. K. that their
basement light was on. Mrs. K. explained that it was
unlikely, since the bulb had burned out the day before. She
even recalled being slightly annoyed with her husband for
having neglected to replace the bulb. But the guest insisted,
and so the K.s opened the basement door only to find the
light off. A moment later another guest arrived. He wanted
to know who was working in the basement at such a late
hour, since he had seen the basement light on. Moreover,
he saw a figure standing at the basement window looking
out. Once more, the entire party went downstairs with a
flashlight, only to find the light off and no one about.
That was the last the K.s saw or heard of their ghost.
Why had she so suddenly left them? Perhaps it had to do
with a Chicago newspaperwoman’s call. Having heard of
the disturbances, she had telephoned the K.s to offer her
services and that of celebrated psychic Irene Hughes to
investigate the house. Although the K.s did not want any
attention because of the children, Mrs. K. told the reporter
what had transpired at the house. To her surprise, the
reporter informed her that parallel experiences had been
reported at another house not more than seven miles away.
In the other case, the mother and one of her children had
observed a ghostly figure, and an investigation had taken
place with the help of Irene Hughes and various equip-
ment, the result of which was that a presence named Lizzy
was ascertained.
From this Mrs. K. concluded that they were sharing
a ghost with a neighbor seven miles away, and she, too,
began to call the ghostly visitor Lizzy. Now if Lizzy had
two homes and was shuttling back and forth between them,
it might account for the long stretches of no activity at the
K. home. On the other hand, if the ghost at the K.s was
not named Lizzy, she would naturally not want to be con-
fused with some other unknown ghost seven miles away.
Be this as it may, Mrs. K. wishes her well, wherever she is.
* * *
Mrs, J. P. lives in central Illinois, in an old three-
story house with a basement. Prior to her acquiring it, it
had stood empty for six months. As soon as she had
648
moved in, she heard some neighborhood gossip that the
house was presumed haunted. Although Mrs. P. is not a
skeptic, she is level-headed enough to not to take rumors at
face value.
She looked the house over carefully. It seemed about
eighty years old, and was badly in need of repair. Since
they had bought it at a bargain price, they did not mind,
but as time went on, they wondered how cheap the house
had really been. It became obvious to her and her husband
that the price had been low for other reasons. Nevertheless,
the house was theirs, and together they set out to repaint
and remodel it as best they could. For the first two weeks,
they were too busy to notice anything out of the ordinary.
About three weeks after moving in, however, Mr. and Mrs.
P. began hearing things such as doors shutting by them-
selves, cupboards opening, and particularly, a little girl per-
sistently calling for "Mama, Mama’’ with a great deal of
alarm. As yet, Mr. and Mrs. P. tried to ignore the
phenomena.
One evening, however, they were having a family
spat over something of little consequence. All of a sudden
a frying pan standing on the stove lifted off by itself, hung
suspended in mid-air for a moment, and then was flung
back on the stove with full force. Their twelve-year-old son
who witnessed it flew into hysterics; Mr. P. turned white,
and Mrs. P. was just plain angry. How dare someone
invade their privacy? The following week, the ten-year-old
daughter was watching television downstairs in what had
been turned into Mrs. P’s office, while Mr. P. and their
son were upstairs also watching television. Suddenly, a
glass of milk standing on the desk in the office rose up by
itself and dashed itself to the floor with full force. The
child ran screaming from the room, and it took a long time
for her father to calm her down.
As a result of these happenings, the children
implored their mother to move from the house, but Mrs.
P. would have none of it. She liked the house fine, and was
not about to let some unknown ghost displace her. The
more she thought about it, the angrier she got. She decided
to go from floor to floor, cursing the unknown ghost and
telling him or her to get out of the house, even if they used
to own it.
But that is how it is with stay-behinds: they don’t
care if you paid for the house. After all, they can’t use the
money where they are, and would rather stay on in a place
they are familiar with.
* * *
Strange places can have stay-behind ghosts. Take
Maryknoll College of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a Roman
Catholic seminary that closed its doors in June 1972, due
to a dwindling interest in what it had to offer. In the fall a
few years before, a seminarian named Gary M. was work-
ing in the darkroom of the college. This was part of his
regular assignments, and photography had been a regular
activity for some years, participated in by both faculty and
students.
On this particular occasion, Mr. M. felt as though he
were being watched while in the darkroom. Chalking it up
to an active imagination, he dismissed the matter from his
mind. But in the spring a few years later, Mr. M. was
going through some old chemicals belonging to a former
priest, when he received the strongest impression of a psy-
chic presence. He was loading some film at the time, and
as he did so, he had the uncanny feeling that he was not
alone in the room. The chemicals he had just handled were
once the property of a priest who had died three years
before. The following day, while developing film in an
open tank, he suddenly felt as though a cold hand had
gone down in his back. He realized also that the chemicals
felt colder them before. After he had turned the lights back
on, he took the temperature of the developer. At the start it
had been 70° F., while at the end it was down to 64° F.
Since the room temperature was 68° F., there was a truly
unaccountable decrease in temperature.
The phenomena made him wonder, and he discussed
his experience with other seminarians. It was then learned
that a colleague of his had also had experiences in the same
place. Someone, a man, had appeared to him, and he had
felt the warm touch of a hand at his cheek. Since he was
not alone at the time, but in a group of five students, he
immediately reported the incident to them. The description
of the apparition was detailed and definite. Mr. M. quickly
went into past files, and came up with several pictures, so
that his fellow student, who had a similar experience, could
pick out that of the fellow student, who had a similar expe-
rience, could pick out that of the ghostly apparition he had
seen. Without the slightest hesitation, he identified the
dead priest as the man he had seen. This was not too sur-
prising; the students were using what was once the priest’s
own equipment and chemicals, and perhaps he still felt
obliged to teach them their proper use.
* * *
Mr. and Mrs. E. live in an average home in Florida
that was built about thirteen years ago. They moved into
this house in August. Neither of them had any particular
interest in the occult, and Mr. E. could be classified as a
complete skeptic, if anything. For the first few months of
their residence, they were much too busy to notice any-
thing out of the ordinary, even if there were such
occurrences.
It was just before Christmas when they got their first
inkling that something was not as it should be with their
house. Mrs. E. was sitting up late one night, busy with
last-minute preparations for the holiday. All of a sudden
the front door, which was secured and locked, flew open
with a violent force, and immediately shut itself again, with
the handle turning by itself and the latch falling into place.
The Stay-Behinds: Not Ready to Go
649
Since Mrs. E. didn’t expect any visitors, she was naturally
surprised. Quickly walking over to the door to find out
what had happened, she discovered that the door was
locked. It is the kind of lock that can only be unlocked by
turning a knob. Shaking her head in disbelief, she returned
to her chair, but before she could sit down again and
resume her chores, the door to the utility room began to
rattle as though a wind were blowing. Yet there were no
open windows that could have caused it. Suddenly, as she
was staring at it, the knob turned and the door opened.
Somehow nonplussed, Mrs. E. thought, rather sarcastically,
“While you’re at it, why don’t you shake the Christmas
tree too?” Before she had completed the thought, the tree
began to shake. For a moment, Mrs. E. stood still and
thought all of this over in her mind. Then she decided that
she was just overtired and had contracted a case of the hol-
iday jitters. It was probably all due to imagination. She
went to bed and didn’t say anything about the incident.
Two weeks later, her fourteen -year -old daughter and
Mrs. E. were up late talking, when all of a sudden every
cupboard in the kitchen opened by itself, one by one. Mrs.
E.’s daughter stared at the phenomenon in disbelief. But
Mrs. E. simply said, “Now close them.” Sure enough, one
by one, they shut with a hard slam by themselves, almost
like a little child whose prank had not succeeded. At this
point Mrs. E. thought it best to tell her daughter of her
first encounter with the unseen, and implored her not to be
scared of it, or tell the younger children or anyone else out-
side the house. She didn’t want to be known as a weird
individual in the neighborhood into which they had just
moved. However, she decided to inform her husband about
what had happened. He didn’t say much, but it was clear
that he was not convinced. However, as with so many cases
of this kind where the man in the house takes a lot longer
to be convinced than a woman, Mr. E.’s time came about
two weeks later.
He was watching television when one of the stereo
speakers began to tilt back all of a sudden, rocking back
and forth without falling over, on its own, as if held by
unseen hands. Being of a practical bent, Mr. E. got up to
find an explanation, but there was no wind that would have
been strong enough to tilt a 20-pound speaker. At this
point, Mr. E. agreed that there was something peculiar
about the house. This was the more likely as their dog, an
otherwise calm and peaceful animal, went absolutely wild
at the moment the speakers tilted, and ran about the house
for half an hour afterwards, barking, sniffing, and generally
raising Cain.
However, the ghost was out of the bag, so to speak.
The two younger children, then nine and ten years old,
noticed him — it was assumed to be a man all along. A
house guest remarked how strange it was that the door was
opening seemingly by itself. Mrs. E. explained this with a
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
remark that the latch was not working properly. “But how
did the knob turn, then?” the house guest wanted to know.
Under the circumstances, Mrs. E. owned up to their
guest. The ghost doesn’t scare Mrs. E., but he makes it
somewhat unpleasant for her at times, such as when she is
taking a shower and the doors fly open. After all, one does-
n’t want to be watched by a man while showering, even if
he is a ghost. The stay-behind isn’t noticeable all the time,
to be sure, but frequently enough to count as an extra
inhabitant of the house. Whenever she feels him near,
there is a chill in the hall and an echo. This happens at
various times of day or night, early or late. To the children
he is a source of some concern, and they will not stay
home alone.
But to Mrs. E. he is merely an unfortunate human
being, caught up in the entanglement of his own emotions
from the past, desperately trying to break through the time
barrier to communicate with her, but unable to do so
because conditions aren’t just right. Sometimes she wishes
she were more psychic than she is, but in the meantime
she has settled down to share the her home with someone
she cannot see, but who, it appears, considers himself part
of the family.
* * *
One of the most amazing stories of recent origin con-
cerns a family of farmers in central Connecticut. Some peo-
ple have a ghost in the house, a stay-behind who likes the
place so much he or she doesn’t want to leave. But this
family had entire groups of ghosts staying on, simply
because they liked the sprawling farmhouse, and simply
because it happened to be their home too. The fact that
they had passed across the threshold of death did not deter
them in the least. To the contrary, it seemed a natural
thing to stay behind and watch what the young ones were
doing with the house, to possibly help them here and there,
and, at the very least, to have some fun with them by caus-
ing so-called “inexplicable" phenomena to happen.
After all, life can be pretty dull in central Connecti-
cut, especially in the winter. It isn’t any more fun being a
ghost in central Connecticut, so one cannot really hold it
against these stay-behinds if they amuse themselves as best
they can in the afterlife. Today the house shows its age; it
isn’t in good condition, and needs lots of repairs. The fam-
ily isn’t as large as it was before some of the younger gen-
eration moved out to start lives of their own, but it’s still
a busy house and a friendly one, ghosts or no ghosts. It
stands on a quiet country road off the main route, and on a
clear day you can see the Massachusetts border in the dis-
tance; that is, if you are looking for it. It is hardly notice-
able, for in this part of the country, all New England looks
the same.
Because of the incredible nature of the many inci-
dents, the family wants no publicity, no curious tourists,
no reporters. To defer to their wishes, I changed the family
name to help them retain that anonymity, and the peace
650
and quiet of their country house. The house in question
was already old when a map of the town, drawn in 1761,
showed it. The present owners, the Harveys, have lived in
it all their lives, with interruption. Mrs. Harvey’s great-
great-grandparents bought it from the original builder,
and when her great -great -grandfather died in 1858, it hap-
pened at the old homestead. Likewise, her great-great-
grandmother passed on in 1 87 1 , at the age of eighty, and
again it happened at home. One of their children died in
1921 , at age ninety-one, also at home.
This is important, you see, because it accounts for
the events that transpired later in the lives of their descen-
dants. A daughter named Julia married an outsider and
moved to another state, but considers herself part of the
family just the same, so much so that her second home was
still the old homestead in central Connecticut. Another
daughter, Martha, was Mrs. Harvey’s great-grandmother.
Great-grandmother Martha died at age ninety-one, also in
the house. Then there was an aunt, a sister of her great-
great -grandfather’s by the name of Nancy, who came to
live with them when she was a widow; she lived to be
ninety and died in the house. They still have some of her
furniture there. Mrs. Harvey’s grandparents had only one
child, Viola, who became her mother, but they took in
boarders, mostly men working in the nearby sawmills. One
of these boarders died in the house too, but his name is
unknown. Possibly several others died there too.
Of course the house doesn’t look today the way it
originally did; additions were built onto the main part,
stairs were moved, a well in the cellar was filled in because
members of the family going down for cider used to fall
into it, and many of the rooms that later became bedrooms
originally had other purposes. For instance, daughter Mar-
jorie’s bedroom was once called the harness room because
horses’ harnesses were once made in it, and the room of
one of the sons used to be called the cheese room for obvi-
ous reasons. What became a sewing room was originally
used as a pantry, with shelves running across the south
wall.
The fact that stairs were changed throughout the
house is important, because in the mind of those who lived
in the past, the original stairs would naturally take prece-
dence over later additions or changes. Thus phantoms may
appear out of the wall, seemingly without reason, except
that they would be walking up staircases that no longer
exist.
Mrs. Harvey was born in the house, but at age four
her parents moved away from it, and did not return until
much later. But even then, Mrs. Harvey recalls an incident
which she was never to forget. When she was only four
years old, she remembers very clearly an old lady she had
never seen before appear at her crib. She cried, but when
she told her parents about it, they assured her it was just a
dream. But Mrs. Harvey knew she had not dreamt the
incident; she remembered every detail of the old lady’s
dress.
When she was twelve years old, at a time when the
family had returned to live in the house, she was in one of
the upstairs bedrooms and again the old lady appeared to
her. But when she talked about it to their parents, the mat-
ter was immediately dropped. As Frances Harvey grew up
in the house, she couldn’t help but notice some strange
goings-on. A lamp moved by itself, without anyone being
near it. Many times she could feel a presence walking close
behind her in the upstairs part of the house, but when she
turned around, she was alone. Nor was she the only one to
notice the strange goings-on. Her brothers heard footsteps
around their beds, and complained about someone bending
over them, yet no one was to be seen. The doors to the
bedrooms would open by themselves at night, so much so
that the boys tied the door latches together so that they
could not open by themselves. Just the same, when morn-
ing came, the doors were wide open with the knot still in
place.
It was at that time that her father got into the habit
of taking an after-dinner walk around the house before
retiring. Many times he told the family of seeing a strange
light going through the upstairs rooms, a glowing luminos-
ity for which there was no rational explanation. Whenever
Frances Harvey had to be alone upstairs she felt uncom-
fortable, but when she mentioned this to her parents she
was told that all old houses made one feel like that and to
nevermind. One evening, Frances was playing a game with
her grandfather when both of them clearly heard footsteps
coming up the back stairs. But her grandfather didn’t
budge. When Frances asked him who this could possibly
be, he merely shrugged and said there was plenty of room
for everyone.
As the years passed, the Harveys would come back to
the house from time to time to visit. On these occasions,
Frances would wake up in the night because someone was
bending over her. At other times there was a heavy depres-
sion on the bed as if someone were sitting there! Too terri-
fied to tell anyone about it, she kept her experiences to
herself for the time being.
Then, in the early 1940s, Frances married, and with
her husband and two children, eventually returned to the
house to live there permanently with her grandparents. No
sooner had they moved in when the awful feeling came
back in the night. Finally she told her husband, who of
course scoffed at the idea of ghosts.
The most active area in the house seemed to be
upstairs, roughly from her son Don’s closet, through her
daughter Lolita’s room, and especially the front hall and
stairs. It felt as if someone were standing on the landing of
the front stairs, just watching.
This goes back a long time. Mrs. Harvey's mother
frequently complained, when working in the attic, that all
of a sudden she would feel someone standing next to her,
someone she could not see.
The Stay-Behinds: Not Ready to Go
651
One day Mrs. Harvey and her youngest daughter
went grocery shopping. After putting the groceries away,
Mrs. Harvey reclined on the living room couch while the
girl sat in the dining room reading. Suddenly they heard a
noise like thunder, even though the sky outside was clear.
It came again, only this time it sounded closer, as if it were
upstairs! When it happened the third time, it was accom-
panied by a sound as if someone were making up the bed
in Mrs. Harvey's son’s room upstairs.
Now, they had left the bed in disorder because they
had been in a hurry to go shopping. No one else could
have gone upstairs, and yet when they entered the son’s
room, the bed was made up as smoothly as possible. As
yet, part of the family still scoffed at the idea of having
ghosts in the house, and considered the mother’s ideas as
dreams or hallucinations. They were soon to change their
minds, however, when it happened to them as well.
The oldest daughter felt very brave and called up the
stairs, “Little ghosties, where are you?" Her mother told
her she had better not challenge them, but the others found
it amusing. That night she came downstairs a short time
after she had gone to bed, complaining that she felt funny
in her room, but thought it was just her imagination. The
following night, she awoke to the feeling that someone was
bending over her. One side of her pillow was pulled away
from her head as though a hand had pushed it down. She
called out and heard footsteps receding from her room, fol-
lowed by heavy rumblings in the attic above. Quickly she
ran into her sister’s room, where both of them lay awake
the rest of the night listening to the rumbling and footsteps
walking around overhead. The next day she noticed a
dusty black footprint on the light-colored scatter rug next
to her bed. It was in the exact location where she had felt
someone standing and bending over her. Nobody's foot-
print in the house matched the black footprint, for it was
long and very narrow. At this point the girls purchased
special night lights and left them on in the hope of sleeping
peacefully.
One day Mrs. Harvey felt brave, and started up the
stairs in response to footsteps coming from her mother’s
bedroom. She stopped, and as the footsteps approached the
top of the stairs, a loud ticking noise came with them, like
a huge pocket watch. Quickly she ran down the stairs and
outside to get her son to be a witness to it. Sure enough, he
too could hear the ticking noise. This was followed by
doors opening and closing by themselves. Finally, they
dared go upstairs, and when they entered the front bed-
room, they noticed a very strong, sweet smell of perfume.
When two of the daughters came home from work that
evening, the family compared notes and it was discovered
that they, too, had smelled the strange perfume and heard
the ticking noise upstairs. They concluded that one of their
ghosts, at least, was a man.
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
About that time, the youngest daughter reported see-
ing an old woman in her room, standing at a bureau with
something shiny in her hand. The ghost handed it to her
but she was too frightened to receive it. Since her descrip-
tion of the woman had been very detailed, Mrs. Harvey
took out the family album and asked her daughter to look
through it in the hope that she might identify the ghostly
visitor. When they came to one particular picture, the girl
let out a small cry: that was the woman she had seen! It
turned out to be Julia, a great-great-aunt of Mrs. Harvey’s,
the same woman whom Mrs. Harvey herself had seen
when she was twelve years old. Evidently, the lady was
staying around.
Mrs. Harvey’s attention was deflected from the phe-
nomena in the house by her mother’s illness. Like a dutiful
daughter, she attended her to the very last, but in March
of that year her mother passed away. Whether there is any
connection with her mother’s death or not, the phenomena
started to increase greatly, both in volume and intensity, in
July of that same year. To be exact, the date was July 20.
Mrs. Harvey was hurrying one morning to get ready to
take her daughter Lolita to the center of town so she could
get a ride to work. Her mind was preoccupied with domes-
tic chores, when a car came down the road, with brakes
squealing. Out of habit, she hurried to the living room
window to make sure that none of their cats had been hit
by the car. This had been a habit of her mother’s and hers,
whenever there was the sound of sudden brakes outside.
As she did so, for just a fleeting glance, she saw her
late mother looking out of her favorite window. It didn’t
register at first, then Mrs. Harvey realized her mother
couldn’t possibly have been there. However, since time was
of the essence, Mrs. Harvey and her daughter Lolita left
for town without saying anything to any of the others in
the house. When they returned, her daughter Marjorie was
standing outside waiting for them. She complained of hear-
ing someone moving around in the living room just after
they had left, and it sounded just like Grandma when she
straightened out the couch and chair covers.
It frightened her, so she decided to wait in the dining
room for her mother’s return. But while there, she heard
footsteps coming from the living room and going into the
den, then the sound of clothes being folded. This was
something Mrs. Harvey’s mother was also in the habit of
doing there. It was enough for Marjorie to run outside the
house and wait there. Together with her sister and mother,
she returned to the living room, only to find the chair
cover straightened. The sight of the straightened cover
made the blood freeze in Mrs. Harvey’s veins; she recalled
vividly how she had asked her late mother not to bother
straightening the chair covers during her illness, because it
hurt her back. In reply, her mother had said, "Too bad I
can’t come back and do it after I die.”
Daughter Jane was married to a Navy man, who used
to spend his leaves at the old house. Even during his
courtship days, he and Mrs. Harvey’s mother got along
652
real fine, and they used to do crossword puzzles together.
He was sleeping at the house sometime after the old lady’s
death, when he awoke to see her standing by his bed with
her puzzle book and pencil in hand. It was clear to Mrs.
Harvey by now that her late mother had joined the circle
of dead relatives to keep a watch on her and the family.
Even while she was ill, Mrs. Harvey’s mother wanted to
help in the house. One day after her death, Mrs. Harvey
was baking a custard pie and lay down on the couch for a
few minutes while it was baking.
She must have fallen asleep, for she awoke to the
voice of her mother saying, "Your pie won’t burn, will it?”
Mrs. Harvey hurriedly got up and checked; the pie was
just right and would have burned if it had been left in any
longer. That very evening, something else happened. Mrs.
Harvey wanted to watch a certain program that came on
television at 7:30 P.M., but she was tired and fell asleep on
the couch in the late afternoon. Suddenly she heard her
mother’s voice say to her, "It’s time for your program,
dear.” Mrs. Harvey looked at the clock, and it was exactly
7:30 P.M. Of course, her mother did exactly the same type
of thing when she was living, so it wasn’t too surprising
that she should continue with her concerned habits after
she passed on into the next dimension.
But if Mrs. Harvey’s mother had joined the ghostly
crew in the house, she was by no means furnishing the
bulk of the phenomena — not by a long shot. Lolita’s room
upstairs seemed to be the center of many activities, with
her brother Don’s room next to hers also very much
involved. Someone was walking from her bureau to her
closet, and her brother heard the footsteps too. Lolita
looked up and saw a man in a uniform with gold buttons,
standing in the back of her closet. At other times she
smelled perfume and heard the sound of someone dressing
near her bureau. All the time she heard people going up
the front stairs mumbling, then going into her closet where
the sound stopped abruptly. Yet, they could not see anyone
on such occasions.
Daughter Jane wasn’t left out of any of this either.
Many nights she would feel someone standing next to her
bed, between the bed and the wall. She saw three different
people, and felt hands trying to lift her out of bed. To be
sure, she could not see their faces; their shapes were like
dark shadows. Marjorie, sleeping in the room next to
Jane’s, also experienced an attempt by some unseen forces
to get her out of bed. She grabbed the headboard to stop
herself from falling when she noticed the apparition of the
same old woman whom Mrs. Harvey had seen the time she
heard several people leave her room for the front hall.
One night she awoke to catch a glimpse of someone
in a long black coat hurrying through the hall. Mumbling
was heard in that direction, so she put her ear against the
door to see if she could hear any words, but she couldn’t
make out any. Marjorie, too, saw the old woman standing
at the foot of her bed — the same old woman whom Mrs.
Harvey had seen when she was twelve years old. Of course,
that isn’t too surprising; the room Marjorie slept in used to
be Julia’s a long time ago. Lolita also had her share of
experiences: sound coming up from the cellar bothering
her, footsteps, voices, even the sound of chains. It seemed
to her that they came right out of the wall by her head,
where there used to be stairs. Finally, it got so bad that
Lolita asked her mother to sleep with her. When Mrs.
Harvey complied, the two women clearly saw a glow come
in from the living room and go to where the shelves used
to be. Then there was the sound of dishes, and even the
smell of food.
Obviously, the ghostly presences were still keeping
house in their own fashion, reliving some happy or at least
busy moments from their own past. By now Mr. Harvey
was firmly convinced that he shared the house with a num-
ber of dead relatives, if not friends. Several times he woke
to the sound of bottles being placed on the bureau. One
night he awoke because the bottom of the bed was shaking
hard; as soon as he was fully awake, it stopped. This was
followed by a night in which Mrs. Harvey could see a glow
pass through the room at the bottom of the bed. When
“they” got to the hall door, which was shut, she could hear
it open, but it actually did not move. Yet the sound was
that of a door opening. Next she heard several individuals
walk up the stairs, mumbling as they went.
The following night a light stopped by their fireplace,
and as she looked closely it resembled a figure bending
down. It got so that they compared notes almost every
morning to see what had happened next in their very busy
home. One moonlit night Mrs. Harvey woke to see the
covers of her bed folded in half, down the entire length of
the bed. Her husband was fully covered, but she was
totally uncovered. At the same time, she saw some dark
shadows by the side of the bed. She felt someone’s hand
holding her own, pulling her gently. Terrified, she couldn’t
move, and just lay there wondering what would happen
next. Then the blankets were replaced as before, she felt
something cold touch her forehead, and the ghosts left. But
the stay-behinds were benign, and meant no harm. Some
nights, Mrs. Harvey would wake up because of the cold
air, and notice that the blankets were standing up straight
from the bed as if held by someone. Even after she pushed
them back hard, they would not stay in place.
On the other hand, there were times when she acci-
dentally uncovered herself at night and felt someone
putting the covers back on her, as if to protect her from
the night chills. This was more important, as the house has
no central heating. Of course it wasn’t always clear what
the ghosts wanted from her. On the other hand, they were
clearly concerned with her well-being and that of the fam-
ily; on the other, they seemed to crave attention for them-
selves also.
Twice they tried to lift Mrs. Harvey out of her bed.
She felt herself raised several inches above it by unseen
The Stay-Behinds: Not Ready to Go
653
hands, and tried to call out to her husband but somehow
couldn’t utter a single word. This was followed by a
strange, dreamlike state, in which she remembered being
taken to the attic and shown something. Unfortunately she
could not remember it afterwards, except that she had been
to the attic and how the floorboards looked there; she also
recalled that the attic was covered with black dust. When
morning came, she took a look at her feet: they were dusty,
and the bottom of her bed was grayish as if from dust. Just
as she was contemplating these undeniable facts, her hus-
band asked her what had been the matter with her during
the night. Evidently he had awakened to find her gone
from the bed.
One night daughter Marjorie was out on a date. Mrs.
Harvey awoke to the sound of a car pulling into the drive-
way, bringing Marjorie home. From her bed she could
clearly see four steps of the back stairs. As she lay there,
she saw the shape of a woman coming down without any
sound, sort of floating down the stairs. She was dressed in
a white chiffon dress. At the same moment, her daughter
Marjorie entered the living room. She too saw the girl in
the chiffon dress come down the stairs into the living room
and disappear through a door to the other bedroom. Even
though the door was open wide and there was plenty of
room to go through the opening, evidently the ghostly lady
preferred to walk through the door.
The miscellaneous stay-behinds tried hard to take
part in the daily lives of the flesh-and-blood people in the
house. Many times the plants in the living room would be
rearranged and attended to by unseen hands. The Harveys
could clearly see the plants move, yet no one was near
them; no one, that is, visible to the human eye. There was
a lot of mumbling about now, and eventually they could
make out some words. One day daughter Marjorie heard
her late grandmother say to her that "they” would be back
in three weeks. Sure enough, not a single incident of a
ghostly nature occurred for three weeks. To the day, after
the three weeks were up, the phenomena began again.
Where had the ghosts gone in the meantime? On another
occasion, Marjorie heard someone say, "That is Jane on
that side of the bed, but who is that on the other side? The
bed looks so smooth.” The remark made sense to Mrs.
Harvey. Her late mother sometimes slept with Jane, when
she was still in good health. On the other hand, daughter
Marjorie likes to sleep perfectly flat, so her bed does look
rather smooth.
Average people believe ghosts only walk at night.
Nothing could be further from the truth, as Mrs. Harvey
will testify. Frequently, when she was alone in the house
during the daytime, she would hear doors upstairs bang
shut and open again. One particular day, she heard the
sound of someone putting things on Jane’s bureau, so she
tried to go up and see what it was. Carefully tiptoeing up
the stairs to peek into her door to see if she could actually
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
trap a ghost, she found herself halfway along the hall when
she heard footsteps coming along the foot of son Don's
bed, in her direction. Quickly, she hurried back down the
stairs and stopped halfway down. The footsteps sounded
like a woman’s, and suddenly there was the rustle of a
taffeta gown. With a whooshing sound, the ghost passed
Mrs. Harvey and went into Jane’s room. Mrs. Harvey
waited, rooted to the spot on the stairs.
A moment later the woman’s footsteps came back,
only this time someone walked with her, someone heavier.
They went back through Don’s room, and ended up in
Lolita’s closet — the place where Lolita had seen the man in
the uniform with the shining gold buttons. Mrs. Harvey
did not follow immediately, but that night she decided to
go up to Lolita’s room and have another look at the closet.
As she approached the door to the room it opened, which
wasn’t unusual since it was in the habit of opening at the
slightest vibration. But before Mrs. Harvey could close it,
it shut itself tight and the latch moved into place of its own
accord. Mrs. Harvey didn’t wait around for anything fur-
ther that night.
For a while there was peace. But in October the phe-
nomena resumed. One night Mrs. Harvey woke up when
she saw a shadow blocking the light coming from the din-
ing room. She looked towards the door and saw a lady
dressed all in black come into her bedroom and stand close
to her side of the bed. This time she clearly heard her
speak.
“Are you ready? It is almost time to go.”
With that, the apparition turned and started up the
stairs. The stairs looked unusually light, as if moonlight
were illuminating them. When the woman in black got to
the top step, all was quiet and the stairs were dark again,
as before. Mrs. Harvey could see her clothes plainly
enough, but not her face. She noticed that the apparition
had carried a pouch-style pocketbook, which she had put
over her arm so that her hands would be free to lift up her
skirts as she went up the stairs. The next morning, Mrs.
Harvey told her husband of the visitation. He assured her
she must have dreamt it all. But before she could answer,
her daughter Marjorie came in and said that she had, heard
someone talking in the night, something about coming, and
it being almost time. She saw a figure at the foot of her
bed, which she described as similar to what Mrs. Harvey
had seen.
The night before that Thanksgiving, Marjorie heard
footsteps come down the stairs. She was in bed and tried to
get up to see who it was, but somehow couldn't move at
all, except to open her eyes to see five people standing at
the foot of her bed! Two of them were women, the others
seemed just outlines or shadows. One of the two women
wore an old-fashioned shaped hat, and she looked very
stern. As Marjorie was watching the group, she managed to
roll over a little in her bed and felt someone next to her.
She felt relieved at the thought that it was her mother, but
then whoever it was got up and left with the others in the
654
group. All the time they kept talking among themselves,
but Marjorie could not understand what was being said.
Still talking, the ghostly visitors went back up the stairs.
Nothing much happened until Christmas time. Again
the footsteps running up and down the stairs resumed, yet
no one was seen. Christmas night, Jane and her mother
heard walking in the room above the living room, where
Mrs. Harvey’s mother used to sleep. At that time, Mr.
Harvey was quite ill and was sleeping in what used to be
the sewing room so as not to awaken when his wife got up
early.
On two different occasions Mrs. Harvey had “visi-
tors.” The first time someone lifted her a few inches off the
bed. Evidently someone else was next to her in bed, for
when she extended her hand that person got up and left.
Next she heard footsteps going up the stairs and someone
laughing, then all was quiet again. About a week later, she
woke one night to feel someone pulling hard on her elbow
and ankle. She hung onto the top of her bed with her other
hand. But the unseen entities pushed, forcing her to brace
herself against the wall.
Suddenly it all stopped, yet there were no sounds of
anyone leaving. Mrs. Harvey jumped out of bed and tried
to turn the light on. It wouldn’t go on. She went back to
bed when she heard a voice telling her not to worry, that
her husband would be all right. She felt relieved at the
thought, when the voice added, “But you won’t be.” Then
the unseen voice calmly informed her that she would die in
an accident caused by a piece of bark from some sort of
tree. That was all the voice chose to tell her, but it was
enough to start her worrying. Under the circumstances,
and in order not to upset her family, she kept quiet about
it, eventually thinking that she had dreamed the whole
incident. After all, if it were just a dream, there was no
point in telling anyone, and if it were true, there was noth-
ing she could do anyway, so there was no point in worry-
ing her family. She had almost forgotten the incident when
she did have an accident about a week later. She hurt her
head rather badly in the woodshed, requiring medical
attention. While she was still wondering whether that was
the incident referred to by the ghostly voice, she had a sec-
ond accident: a heavy fork fell on her and knocked her
unconscious.
But the voice had said that she would die in an acci-
dent, so Mrs. Harvey wasn’t at all sure that the two inci-
dents, painful though they had been, were what the voice
had referred to. Evidently, ghosts get a vicarious thrill out
of making people worry, because Mrs. Harvey is alive and
well, years after the unseen voice had told her she would
die in an accident.
But if it were not enough to cope with ghost people,
Mrs. Harvey also had the company of a ghost dog. Their
favorite pet, Lucy, passed into eternal dogdom the previous
March. Having been treated as a member of the family,
she had been permitted to sleep in the master bedroom,
but as she became older she started wetting the rug, so
eventually she had to be kept out.
After the dog’s death, Marjorie offered her mother
another dog, but Mrs. Harvey didn’t want a replacement
for Lucy; no other dog could take her place. Shortly after
the offer and its refusal, Lolita heard a familiar scratch at
the bathroom door. It sounded exactly as Lucy had always
sounded when Lolita came home late at night. At first,
Mrs. Harvey thought her daughter had just imagined it,
but then the familiar wet spot reappeared on the bedroom
rug. They tried to look for a possible leak in the ceiling,
but could find no rational cause for the rug to be wet. The
wet spot remained for about a month. During that time,
several of the girls heard a noise that reminded them of
Lucy walking about. Finally the rug dried out and Lucy’s
ghost stopped walking.
For several years the house has been quiet now. Have
the ghosts gone on to their just rewards, been reincarnated,
or have they simply tired of living with flesh-and-blood
relatives? Stay-behinds generally stay indefinitely; unless, of
course, they feel they are really not wanted. Or perhaps
they just got bored with it all.
* * *
Several years ago, a tragic event took place at a major
university campus in Kansas. A member of one of the
smaller fraternities, TKE, was killed in a head-on automo-
bile accident on September 21 . His sudden death at so
young an age — he was an undergraduate — brought home a
sense of tragedy to other members of the fraternity, and it
was decided that they would attend his funeral in New
York en masse.
Not quite a year after the tragic accident, several
members of the fraternity were at their headquarters. Even-
tually, one of the brothers and his date were left behind
alone, studying in the basement of the house. Upon com-
pletion of their schoolwork, they left. When they had
reached the outside, the woman remembered she had left
her purse in the basement and returned to get it. When she
entered the basement, she noticed a man sitting at the
poker table, playing with chips. She said something to him,
explaining herself, then grabbed her purse and returned
upstairs. There she asked her date who the man in the
basement was, since she hadn’t noticed him before. He
laughed and said that no one had been down there but the
two of them. At that point, one of the other brothers went
into the basement and was surprised to see a man get up
from his chair and walk away. That man was none other
than the young man who had been killed in the automobile
crash a year before.
One of the other members of the fraternity had also
been in the same accident, but had only been injured, and
survived. Several days after the incident in the fraternity
house basement, this young man saw the dead man walk-
The Stay-Behinds: Not Ready to Go
655
ing up the steps to the second floor of the house. By now
the fraternity realized that their dead brother was still very
much with them, drawn back to what was to him his true
home — and so they accepted him as one of the crowd, even
if he was invisible at times.
* * *
On January 7, Mr. and Mrs. S. moved into an older
house on South Fourth Street, a rented, fully-furnished
two-bedroom house in a medium-sized city in Oklahoma.
Mrs. S.’s husband was a career service man in the Army,
stationed at a nearby Army camp. They have a small boy,
and looked forward to a pleasant stay in which the boy
could play with neighborhood kids, while Mrs. S. tried to
make friends in what to her was a new environment.
She is a determined lady, not easily frightened off by
anything she cannot explain, and the occult was the last
thing on her mind. They had lived in the house for about
two weeks, when she noticed light footsteps walking in the
hall at night. When she checked on them, there was no one
there. Her ten-year-old son was sleeping across the hall,
and she wondered if perhaps he was walking in his sleep.
But each time she heard the footsteps and would check on
her son, she found him sound asleep. The footsteps contin-
ued on and off, for a period of four months.
Then, one Sunday afternoon at about 2 o’clock, when
her husband was at his post and her son in the backyard
playing, she found herself in the kitchen. Suddenly she
heard a child crying very softly and mutedly, as if the child
were afraid to cry aloud. At once she ran into the backyard
to see if her son was hurt. There was nothing wrong with
him, and she found him playing happily with a neighbor-
hood boy. It then dawned on her that she could not hear
the child crying outside the house, but immediately upon
re-entering the house, the faint sobs were clearly audible
again.
She traced the sound to her bedroom, and when she
entered the room, it ceased to be noticeable. This puzzled
her to no end, since she had no idea what could cause the
sounds. Added to this were strange thumping sounds,
which frequently awakened her in the middle of the night.
It sounded as if someone had fallen out of bed.
On these occasions, she would get out of bed quickly
and rush into her son’s room, only to find him fast asleep.
A thorough check of the entire house revealed no source
for the strange noises. But Mrs. S. noticed that their
Siamese cat, who slept at the foot of her bed when these
things happened, also reacted to them: his hair would bris-
tle, his ears would fly back, and he would growl and stare
into space at something or someone she could not see.
About that time, her mother decided to visit them.
Since her mother was physically challenged, Mrs. S.
decided not to tell her about the strange phenomena in
order to avoid upsetting her. She stayed at the house for
three days, when one morning she wanted to know why
Mrs. S. was up at two o’clock in the morning making cof-
fee. Since the house had only two bedrooms, they had put
a half-bed into the kitchen for her mother, especially as the
kitchen was very large and she could see the television
from where she was sleeping. Her mother insisted she had
heard footsteps coming down the hall into the kitchen. She
called out to what she assumed was her daughter, and
when there was no answer, she assumed that her daughter
and her son-in-law had had some sort of disagreement and
she had gotten up to make some coffee.
From her bed she could not reach the light switch,
but she could see the time by the illuminated clock and
realized it was 2 o’clock in the morning. Someone came
down the hall, entered the kitchen, put water into the cof-
fee pot, plugged it in, and then walked out of the kitchen
and down the hall. She could hear the sound of coffee
perking and could actually smell it. However, when she
didn’t hear anyone coming back, she assumed that her
daughter and son-in-law had made up and gone back to
sleep.
She did likewise, and decided to question her daugh-
ter about it in the morning. Mrs. S. immediately checked
the kitchen, but there was no trace of the coffee to be
found, which did not help her state of mind. A little later
she heard some commotion outside the house, and on step-
ping outside noticed that the dogcatcher was trying to take
a neighbor’s dog with him. She decided to try and talk him
out of it, and the conversation led to her husband being in
the service, a statement which seemed to provoke a nega-
tive reaction on the part of the dogcatcher. He informed
Mrs. S. that the last GI to live in the house was a mur-
derer. When she wanted to know more about it, he
clammed up immediately. But Mrs. S. became highly agi-
tated. She called the local newspaper and asked for any and
all information concerning her house. It was then that she
learned the bitter truth.
In October two years before, a soldier stationed at the
same base as her husband had beaten his two-year-old
daughter to death. The murder took place in what had now
become Mrs. S.’s bedroom. Mrs. S., shocked by the news,
sent up a silent prayer, hoping that the restless soul of the
child might find peace and not to have to haunt a house
where she had suffered nothing but unhappiness in her
short life. ...
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
656
148
Rose Hall, Home of the
“White Witch” of Jamaica
Sometimes referred to as the most haunted house in
the Western Hemisphere, Rose Hall is the great house on
Rose Hall Plantation, one of the largest estates of Colonial
Jamaica. It has recently been purchased by an American
hotelman and meticulously restored to its former glory for
use as a hotel for affluent tourists.
The plantation is not far from the Montage Bay air-
port, and a good road leads up to it. To this day, however,
some natives will not go near the house, referring to it as
filled with "goopies”, a local term for ghosts. They are
indeed right. The earthbound spirit of Annie Porter, once
mistress of Rose Hall, has never been laid to rest.
I have been to Rose Hall on two occasions, but with-
out a proper trance medium. It is particularly in the corri-
dors beneath the house that stark terror dwells, and I
caution anyone visiting Rose Hall to beware of those areas,
especially at night.
Annie Porter was a sadistic woman, who first made
lovers of some of her more handsome slaves, and then tor-
tured them to death. Eventually, fate caught up with her,
and she too was put to death by one of those she had first
tormented. Much violence and hatred cling to the old
masonry, and are not likely to have disappeared just
because the building had some of its holes filled in and
painted over.
The house has three stories and a magnificent stair-
case out front, by which one gains access to the main floor.
It is surrounded by trees and some of the most beautiful
landscape in Jamaica. Prior to its restoration, it looked the
way a haunted house is always described in fiction or film,
with empty windows and broken walls. Now, however, it
presents a clean and majestic appearance.
Annie Porter is also referred to as the “White Witch
of Rose Hall.” There are actually two Annie Porters
recorded in history and buried in a nearby cemetery. In the
popular legend, the two figures have become amalgamated,
but it is the Annie Porter of the late British colonial period
who committed the atrocities which force her to remain
tied to what was once her mansion. I do not doubt that she
is still there.
I base this assumption on solid evidence. About ten
years ago the late great medium Eileen Garrett paid Rose
Hall a visit in the company of distinguished researchers.
Her mission was to seek out and, if possible, appease the
restless spirit of Annie Porter. Within a matter of moments
after her arrival at the Hall, Mrs. Garrett went into a deep
trace. The personality of the terror-stricken ghost took over
her body, vocal cords, facial expression, and all, and tried
to express the pent-up emotions that had so long been dor-
mant.
The Haunted Rose Hall in Jamaica, now a luxury
hotel — this is how it used to look
A little later, work has begun
The researchers were hard-pressed to follow the
entranced Mrs. Garrett from the terrace, where their quest
had begun, through half-dilapidated corridors, under-
ground passages, and dangerously undermined rooms. But
Rose Hall, Home of the
“White Witch” of Jamaica
657
Entrance to the underground corridors where the
slaves were tortured
Annie Porter wanted them to see the places where she had
been the Mistress of Rose Hall, reliving through the
medium some of her moments of glory.
Eventually, these revived memories led to the point
where Annie met her doom at the hand of a young slave
with whom she had earlier had an affair.
Crying uncontrollably, writhing on all fours, the
medium was by now completely under the control of the
This remains the most haunted area at the Hall.
restless ghost. No matter how soothingly the researchers
spoke to her, asking Annie to let go of the dreadful past,
the violent behavior continued. Annie would not leave. In
one of the few rare cases on record where a ghost is so tor-
mented and tied to the place of its tragedy that it cannot
break away, Annie refused to leave. Instead, the research
team left, with a very shaken medium in tow.
* 149
There Is Nothing Like
a Scottish Ghost
WHEN IT COMES to flavor and personality, there’s nothing
quite like a Scottish ghost, or for that matter, like the peo-
ple who see 'em. Our visit to the country of Burns was
short this time, but long enough to know how much we
wanted to return.
We landed on a misty morning at Prestwick Airport
and immediately set out for the town of Ayr, where we
bedded down in the Station Hotel, one of the lesser
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
658
delights of western Scotland. Immediately upon our arrival,
Jack Weir of the BBC came to interview us, and I knew 1
was in a land where ghost hunting was a respected pursuit.
Jamison Clarke, the television commentator, came along
with him and we talked at length about a television show I
would do from Edinburgh; Mr. Clarke would be in Glas-
gow at the same time. Nothing like a little magic via split-
screen and other twentieth -century miracles!
But we had not come to Ayr just to be miserable at
the Station Hotel or talk to these delightful Scots. Our aim
that afternoon was Culzean Castle, pronounced Coleen,
unless you are a Sassanach or, worse, a Yankee. We rented
a chauffeur-driven car, for they drive on the left side here,
and set out for Culzean along the coastal hills of western
Scotland.
Shortly afterwards we entered the formal gardens and
rode along a gently descending road towards the cliff on
which Culzean Castle rises sheer from the sea on the Ayr-
shire coast.
Built by Robert Adam in the latter part of the eigh-
teenth century, the castle has been associated with the
Kennedy family, the Earls of Cassillis and the Marquises of
Ailsa, whose portraits are seen all over the house. Today it
is administered by the National Trust of Scotland as a
museum. Its main tower rises majestically four stories from
the cliff, and one of the top floors contains an apartment
given to General Eisenhower as a gesture of gratitude from
Britain. He stays there with his family from time to time.
We were cordially welcomed by the administrator of
Culzean, Commander John Hickley.
“I’m afraid we don’t keep a tame ghost in this cas-
tle,” he said apologetically, as Mrs. Hickley served us tea.
I assured him that we enjoyed the visit just the same.
Neither the Commander nor Mrs. Hickley had seen a
ghost in this comparatively modern castle, nor had any of
the help complained about any unusual visitors. But a
British visitor to Culzean by the same of Margaret Penney
was somewhat luckier — if seeing a ghost is luck.
According to an Associated Press report of August 9,
1962, Mrs. Penney was going through the castle just like
any other tourist when she encountered the ghost,
"She came down a corridor when I was visiting
Culzean Castle recently,” said Mrs. Penney, "and said
to me — ‘It rains today.’”
Mrs. Penney said the ghost was dark-haired and very
beautiful.
“She appeared to be in evening dress though it was
only about five o’clock in the afternoon when I encoun-
tered her.
"Anyway, I squeezed myself against the corridor to
let her pass and told her, ‘Not much room for passing
when you’re as plump as me.”'
Mrs. Penney said the girl looked at her very sadly
and answered, “I do not require any room nowadays.”
Mrs. Penney said her entire right side then went
cold.
“Suddenly I realized that she had walked through my
side.”
Was she one of the Kennedy ladies who had come to
a sad end in the lonely house on the Fyrth of Clyde? Until
I bring a medium to Culzean at some future date, we can
only guess.
* * *
Another nearby haunted castle drew my interest
because its current occupants are British nobility from Bal-
timore, Maryland. Sir Adrian and Lady Naomi Dunbar
inherited the ramshackle estate and castle of Mochrum
Park by virtue of being the nearest cousin to the last
British baronet, who died in 1953.
The Americans found the house a shambles and the
income of the estate far from grand. Nevertheless, they still
live in it, having restored some of it, and they are making a
go of their newly found position in life.
When the new owners arrived late in 1953 to take
over their new home, the villagers at Kirkcowan, Wigtown-
shire, were wondering how the Americans would take to
the ghost. This is the “white lady” of Mochrum Park,
allegedly the shade of Lady Jacobina Dunbar, who married
the sixth baronet back in 1789, and whose portrait was
found in the debris of the old house a few years before
1953.
The National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh now
owns this valuable painting by Raeburn. Servants of the
tenth baronet, Sir James Dunbar, who died in early 1953,
always complained that the ghost portrait would always be
found askew, no matter how often by straightened it out,
as if someone were trying to call attention to something!
Elgin Fraser, chauffeur of the Dunbars for many
years, twice saw the "white lady” standing at the foot of
his bed.
Perhaps the saving of the valuable painting, which
was in danger of being destroyed by the customary dry rot,
has assuaged the fury of the ghost. No further disturbances
have been reported, and when the I asked the American-
born Lady Dunbar about the ghost, she said, with a broad
Baltimore accent, “Nonsense. It’s all just imagination.”
A fine thing for a ghost to be called — imaginary!
Especially by an American.
When we reached Edinburgh, the Weekly Scotsman’s
Donald MacDonald was already waiting for us to tell our
story to the Scottish people. Then, too, the Kenneth
MacRaes came to tell us of their experiences with Highland
ghosts — hauntings we shall follow up on next time we’re in
Scotland. And a fellow author, MacDonald Robertson,
offered us his index-card file on ghosts of Scotland. Unfor-
tunately, only a few of these cases were of sufficiently
recent origin to be looked into with any reasonable degree
of verification, but Mr. Robertson’s enthusiasm for the
good cause made up for it.
That evening, we drove out to Roslin, a suburb of
Edinburgh, to visit a famed Scottish medium, Anne Don-
aldson. She gave us a pretty good sitting, although most of
the material obtained was of a private or personal nature.
The next day we set out early for the border country
between Scotland and England, traditionally a wild area
with a long association of war and strife. Hours of driving
over sometimes unlit, unmarked roads, with only sheep
populating the rolling hills, finally brought us to Hermitage
Castle, an ancient medieval fortress associated with the de
Soulis family, and dating back to the thirteenth century. It
was here also that the Earl of Bothwell, wounded in a bor-
der raid, was visited by Mary Queen of Scots, his lover, in
1566.
There is Nothing Like a Scottish Ghost
659
Rising squarely in a commanding position on the
border, this fortress boasts of a dungeon into which numer-
ous enemies were thrust to starve to death. Their remains
were never removed. This barbaric custom was general
usage in the Middle Ages, and Hermitage is by no means
unique in this respect.
Our reasons for visiting this famous ruin were not
entirely sight-seeing. One of the early owners of the castle,
Lord Soulis, was a black magician and committed a num-
ber of documented atrocities until he was caught by his
enemies and dispatched in a most frightful manner. Ever
since his ghost has been said to return on the anniversary
of this deed to haunt the walls and ruined chambers, espe-
cially the ancient kitchen downstairs.
J. R. Wilson, now the custodian of the castle, readily
played the bagpipes for us to set the mood, but he had
never seen or heard a ghost.
"The only thing I know,” he said, "is that some dogs
will not go into the castle. A lady was here a while ago,
and her dog just absolutely refused to go near it, set up a
howl and refused to budge.”
But there were other dogs which did, in fact, go
inside the castle walls. Those, presumably, were the dogs
which didn’t believe in ghosts.
Back of Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, residence of
Mary Queen of Scots and other Scottish monarchs, stands
a little house of modest appearance going by the quaint
name of Croft-en-Reigh. This house was once owned by
James, Earl of Moray, half brother of Mary, and Regent of
Scotland in her absence. Today, the house is subdivided
into three apartments, one of which belongs to a Mrs.
Clyne. But several years ago this was the official residence
of the warden of Holyrood Palace. The warden is the chief
guide who has charge of all tourist traffic. David Graham,
the onetime warden, has now retired to his nearby house in
Portobello, but fourteen years ago he had a most unusual
experience in this little house.
“There were twelve of us assembled for a seance, I
recall,” he said, “and we had Helen Duncan, who is now
dead, as our medium. There we were, seated quietly in the
top floor of Croft-en-Reigh, waiting for developments.”
They did not have to wait long. A figure materialized
before their astonished eyes and was recognized instantly:
Mary Queen of Scots herself, who had been to this house
many times in moments of great emotional turmoil. Within
a moment, she was gone.
On several occasions, Mr. Graham recalls, he saw the
ghost of a short man in sixteenth century clothes. “I am
French,” the man insisted. Graham thought nothing of it
until he accidentally discovered that the house was built by
an architect named French!
* 150
The Strange Case of Mrs. C’s
Late but Lively Husband
DEATH IS not the END, no, definitely not. At least not
for Mr. C. who lived the good life in a fair-sized city in
Rhode Island. But then he died, or so it would appear on
the record. But Mrs. C. came to consult me about the very
unusual complaint of her late husband’s continuing
attentions.
When someone dies unexpectedly, or in the prime of
his physical life, and finds that he can no longer express his
sexual appetite physically in the world into which he has
been suddenly catapulted, he may indeed look around for
someone through whom he can express this appetite on the
earth plane. It is then merely a matter of searching out
opportunities, regardless of personalities involved. It is
quite conceivable that a large percentage of the unexplained
or inexplicable sexual attacks by otherwise meek, timid,
sexually defensive individuals upon members of the oppo-
site sex — or even the same sex — may be due to sudden
possession by an entity of this kind. This is even harder to
prove objectively than are some of the murder cases involv-
ing individuals who do not recall what they have done and
are for all practical purposes normal human beings before
and after the crime. But I am convinced that the influence
of discarnates can indeed be exercised upon susceptible
individuals — that it to say, appropriately mediumistic indi-
viduals. It also appears from my studies that the most
likely recipients of this doubtful honor are those who are
sexually weak or inactive. Evidently the unused sexual
energies are particularly useful to the discarnate entities for
their own gains. There really doesn’t seem to be any way
in which one can foretell such attacks or prevent them,
except, perhaps, by leading a sexually healthy and balanced
life. Those who are fulfilled in their natural drives on the
earth plane are least likely to suffer from such invasions.
On the other hand, there exist cases of sexual posses-
sion involving two partners who knew each other before on
the earth plane. One partner was cut short by death, either
violently or prematurely, and would now seek to continue a
pleasurable relationship of the flesh from the new dimen-
sion. Deprived of a physical body to express such desires,
however, the deceased partner would then find it rather
difficult to express the physical desires to the partner
remaining on the earth plane. With sex it certainly takes
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
660
two, and if the remaining partner is not willing, then diffi-
culties will have to be reckoned with. An interesting case
came to my attention a few months ago. Mrs. Anna C.
lives with her several children in a comparatively new
house in the northeastern United States. She bought the
house eighteen months after her husband had passed away.
Thus there was no connection between the late husband
and the new house. Nevertheless, her husband’s passing
was by no means the end of their relationship.
“My husband died five years ago this past September.
Ever since then he has not let me have a peaceful day,” she
explained in desperation, seeking my help.
Two months after her husband had died, she saw
him coming to her in a dream complaining that she had
buried him alive. He explained that he wasn’t really dead,
and that it was all her fault and her family’s fault that he
died in the first place.
Mr. C. had lived a rather controversial life, drinking
regularly and frequently staying away from home. Thus
the relationship between himself and his wife was far from
ideal. Nevertheless, there was a strong bond between them.
“In other dreams he would tell me that he was going
to have sex relations with me whether I wanted him to or not.
He would try to grab me and I would run all through the
house with him chasing after me. I never let him get hold
of me. He was like that when he was alive, too. The most
important thing in life to him was sex, and he didn’t care
how or where he got it. Nothing else mattered to him,” she
complained, describing vividly how the supposedly dead
husband had apparently still a great deal of life in him.
"He then started climbing on the bed and walking up
and down on it and scaring me half to death. I didn’t know
what it was or what to do about,” she said, shaking like a
leaf.
When Mr. C. could not get his wife to cooperate
willingly, he apparently got mad. To express his displea-
sure, he caused all sorts of havoc around the household. He
would tear a pair of stockings every day for a week, knock
things over, and even go to the place where his mother-in-
law worked as a cook, causing seemingly inexplicable phe-
nomena to occur there as well. He appeared to an aunt in
Indiana and told her to mind her own business and stay
out of his personal relationship with Mrs. C. (It was the
aunt who tried to get rid of him and his influences by per-
forming a spiritualist ritual at the house.) Meanwhile, Mr.
C. amused himself by setting alarm clocks to go off at the
wrong times or stopping them altogether, moving objects
from their accustomed places or making them disappear
altogether, only to return them several days later to every-
one’s surprise. In general, he behaved like a good polter-
geist should. But it didn’t endear him any more to his
erstwhile wife.
When Mrs. C. rejected his attentions, he started to
try to possess his ten-year-old daughter. He came to her in
dreams and told her that her mother wasn’t really knowl-
edgeable about anything. He tried everything in his power
to drive a wedge between the little girl and her mother. As
a result of this, the little girl turned more and more away
from her mother, and no matter how Mrs. C. tried to
explain things to her, she found the little girl’s mind made
up under the influence of her late father.
In a fit of destructiveness, the late Mr. C. then
started to work on the other children, creating such a state
of havoc in the household that Mrs. C. did not know
where to turn any longer. Then the psychic aunt from
Indiana came to New England to try to help matters. Sure
enough, Mr. C. appeared to her and the two had a cozy
talk. He explained that he was very unhappy where he was
and was having trouble getting along with the people over
there. To this, the aunt replied she would be very happy to
help him get to a higher plane if that was what he wanted.
But that wasn’t it, he replied. He just wanted to stay where
he was. The aunt left for home. Now the children, one by
one, became unmanageable, and Mrs. C. assumed that her
late husband was interfering with their proper education
and discipline. “I am fighting an unseen force and cannot
get through to the children,” she explained.
Her late husband did everything to embarrass her.
She was working as a clerk at St. Francis’ rectory in her
town, doing some typing. It happened to be December 24,
1971, Christmas Eve. All of a sudden she heard a thud in
her immediate vicinity and looked down to the floor. A
heavy dictionary was lying at her feet. The book had been
on the shelf only a fraction of a second before. A co-worker
wondered what was up. She was hard-pressed to explain
the presence of the dictionary on the floor since it had been
on the shelf in back of them only a moment before. But
she knew very well how the dictionary came to land at her
feet.
Mr. C. prepared special Christmas surprises for his
wife. She went to her parents’ house to spend the holiday.
During that time her nephew George was late for work
since his alarm had not worked properly. On inspection it
turned out that someone had stuck a pencil right through
the clock. As soon as the pencil was removed, the clock
started to work again. On investigation it turned out that
no one had been near the clock, and when the family tried
to place the pencil into the clock, as they had found it, no
one could do it. The excitement made Mrs. C. so ill she
went to bed. That was no way to escape Mr. C.’s atten-
tions, however. The day before New Year’s Eve, her late
husband got to her, walking up and down on the bed itself.
Finally she told him to leave her and the children alone, to
go where he belonged. She didn’t get an answer. But phe-
nomena continued in the house, so she asked her aunt to
come back once again. This time the aunt from Indiana
brought oil with her and put it on each of the children and
Mrs. C. herself. Apparently it worked, or so it seemed to
The Strange Case of Mrs. C’s
Late but Lively Husband
661
Mrs. C. But her late husband was merely changing his tac-
tics. A few days later she was sure that he was trying to get
into one of the children to express himself further since he
could no longer get at her. She felt she would be close to a
nervous breakdown if someone would not help her get rid
of the phenomenon and, above all, break her husband's
hold on her. "I am anxious to have him sent on up where
he can’t bother anyone anymore,” she explained.
Since I could not go immediately, and the voice on
the telephone sounded as if its owner could not hold out a
single day more, I asked Ethel Johnson Meyers, my mediu-
mistic friend, to go out and see what she could do. Mrs. C.
had to go to Mrs. Meyers’ house for a personal sitting first.
A week later Ethel came down to Mrs. C.’s house to con-
tinue her work. What Mrs. Meyers discovered was some-
what of a surprise to Mrs. C. and to myself. It was Ethel's
contention that the late husband, while still in the flesh,
had himself been the victim of possession and had done the
many unpleasant things (of which he was justly accused)
during his lifetime, not of his own volition but under the
direction of another entity. That the possessor was himself
possessed seemed like a novel idea to me, one neither Mrs.
Meyers nor I could prove. Far more important was the fact
that Mrs. Meyers’ prayers and commands to the unseen
entity seemed to have worked, for he walks up and down
Mrs. C’s bed no more, and all is quiet. I believe that hold
Mr. C. had upon his wife after his death was so strong
because of an unconscious desire on her part to continue
their relationship. Even though she abhorred him — and the
idea of being sexually possessed by a man who had lost his
physical body in the usual way — something within her,
perhaps deeply buried within her, may have wanted the
continuous sexual attention he had bestowed upon her
while still in the body.
m 151 ___
The Ghost of the Little White Flower
Mrs. D. AND HER son Bucky lived in a comfortable house
on a hilltop in suburban Kentucky, not far from Cincin-
nati, Ohio, a pleasant, white house, not much different
from other houses in the area. The surroundings are lovely
and peaceful, and there’s a little man-made pond right in
front of the house. Nothing about the house or the area
looks the least bit ghostly or unusual. Nevertheless Mrs. D.
needed my help in a very vexing situation.
Six months after Mrs. D. had moved into the house,
she began to hear footsteps upstairs when there was no one
about, and the sound of a marble being rolled across the
hall. Anything supernatural was totally alien to Mrs. D.
Nevertheless, Mrs. D. had a questioning and alert
mind, and was not about to accept these phenomena with-
out finding out what caused them. When the manifesta-
tions persisted, she walked up to the foot of the stairs and
yelled, “Why don’t you just come out and show yourself
or say something instead of making all those noises?"
As if in answer, an upstairs door slammed shut and
then there was utter silence. After a moment’s hesitation,
Mrs. D. dashed upstairs and made a complete search.
There was no one about and the marble, which seemingly
had rolled across the floor, was nowhere to be seen.
When the second Christmas in the new house
rolled around, the D.s were expecting Bucky home from
the Army. He was going to bring his sergeant and the
sergeant s wife with him, since they had become very
friendly. They celebrated New Year’s Eve in style and high
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
662
spirits (not the ethereal kind, but the bottled type). Never-
theless, they were far from inebriated when the sergeant
suggested that New Year’s Eve was a particularly suitable
night for a seance. Mrs. D. would have no part of it at
first. She had read all about phony seances and such, and
remembered what her Bible said about such matters. Her
husband had long gone to bed. The four of them decided
to have a go at it. They joined hands and sat quietly in
front of the fireplace. Nothing much happened for a while.
Then Bucky, who had read some books on psychic phe-
nomena, suggested that they needed a guide or control
from the other side of life to help them, but no one had
any suggestions concerning to whom they might turn.
More in jest than as a serious proposal, Mrs. D. heard her-
self say, “Why don’t you call your Indian ancestor Little
White Flower!” Mr. D. is part Cherokee, and Bucky, the
son would, of course, consider this part of his inheritance
too. Mrs. D. protested that all this was nonsense, and that
they should go to bed. She assured them that nothing was
likely to happen. But the other three were too busy to
reply, staring behind her into the fireplace. When she fol-
lowed the direction of their eyes she saw what appeared to
be some kind of light similar to that made by a flashlight.
It stayed on for a short time and then disappeared alto-
gether.
From that day on Mrs. D. started to find strange
objects around the house that had not been there a moment
before. They were little stones in the shape of Indian
arrows. She threw them out as fast as she found them. Sev-
eral weeks later, when she was changing the sheets on her
bed, she noticed a huge red arrow had been painted on the
bottom sheet — by unseen hands.
It was in the winter of 1 963. One afternoon she was
lying down on the couch with a book trying to rest. Before
long she was asleep. Suddenly she awoke with a feeling of
horror which seemed to start at her feet and gradually work
its way up throughout her entire body and mind. The
room seemed to be permeated with something terribly evil.
She could neither see nor hear anything, but she had the
feeling that there was a presence there and that it was very
strong and about to overcome her.
For a few weeks she felt quite alone in the house, but
then things started up again. The little stone arrowheads
appeared out of nowhere again all over the house. Hysteri-
cal with fear, Mrs. D. called upon a friend who had dab-
bled in metaphysics and asked for advice. The friend
advised a seance in order to ask Little White Flower to
leave.
Although Little White Flower was not in evidence
continuously and seemed to come and go, Mrs. D. felt the
woman’s influence upon her at all times. Later the same
week, Little White Flower put in another appearance, this
time visual. It was toward 4 o’clock in the morning when
Mrs. D. woke up with the firm impression that her tor-
mentor was in the room. As she looked out into the hall,
she saw on the wall a little red object resembling a human
eye, and directly below it what seemed like half a mouth.
Looking closer, she discerned two red eyes and a white
mouth below. It reminded her of some clowns she had seen
in the circus. The vision remained on the wall for two or
three minutes, and then vanished completely.
After several postponements I was finally able to
come to Kentucky and meet with Mrs. D. in person. On
June 20, 1964, I sat opposite the slightly portly, middle-
aged lady who had corresponded with me for several
months so voluminously.
As I intoned my solemn exorcism and demanded Lit-
tle White Flower’s withdrawal from the spot, I could hear
Mrs. D. crying hysterically. It was almost as if some part
of her was being torn out and for a while it seemed that she
was being sent away, not Little White Flower.
The house has been quite ever since; Little White
Flower has presumably gone back to her own people and
Mrs. D. continues living in the house without further
disturbances.
♦ 152
Raynham Hall
Three-hundred-year-old Raynham Hall is a rambling
structure of some size within a 20,000-acre estate, where
American servicemen were stationed during World War II.
Since then the house has been closed to outsiders and,
since the Townshends are not exactly afflicted with
poverty, the widely practiced custom of admitting tourists
for half a crown never invaded the august portals of the
Hall.
As reported in the January 4, 1937 issue of Life mag-
azine, it all started innocently enough with an order to
photograph the interior of the stately mansion. Indre Shira,
Ltd., a London firm of Court photographers was hired to
perform the task. In September 1936 the company sent
Captain Hubert C. Provand and an assistant to Raynham
Hall to do the job.
Immediately after his arrival, Captain Provand set out
to work. He had no use for the supernatural, and if he had
heard of the ghostly legends he put no stock in them. But
one of his cameras was smashed by seemingly unseen
hands. Still he refused to accept the possibility of a ghost
being the culprit. At one point during their meticulous
work of photographing the interior of the Hall, the two
men found themselves facing the famous grand staircase in
the Great Hall downstairs. "Look!” the assistant suddenly
said, and pointed toward the staircase, terror etched on his
The famous Brown Lady of Raynham Hill
Raynham Hall
663
face. The captain looked but saw nothing. The young man
insisted he saw a white figure slowly descending the stairs.
“Well,” the skeptical captain replied, "if you’re so sure of
it, let’s photograph it.” Quickly they pointed their camera
toward the staircase and made an exposure. This was done
with flash, but one must remember that in 1936 flash pho-
tography was not what it is today, and the intensity of the
flash light very much weaker than with modern flashbulbs.
At this the figure dissolved — at least the assistant reported
it was no longer visible to him. The two photographers
then sealed the plate and took it to the chemists’ firm of
Blake, Sanford & Blake, where the negative was developed.
The chemists attested to the fact that nothing had been
wrong with either negative or developing, and that the fig-
ure on the staircase was not due to slipshod handling of
any kind.
The striking figure is that of a woman in flowing
dress, descending the staircase. It is white and smoke-like,
and the stairs can be seen through it. When the results
were shown to the Townshends, there was a moment of
embarrassed silence. Then the photograph was compared
with a portrait of Lady Dorothy Walpole which hung in
one of the upstairs passages. It was also pretty much the
same as the reported apparition of the lady seen by a num-
ber of Townshend house guests over the years.
What made Dorothy Walpole a ghost, way back in
the 1780s, was a little inconvenience called mental depres-
sions, but in those days this was considered a disease not
fit to be discussed in polite society. Being of gentle birth,
the lady was therefore "contained” in a room upstairs and
spent her last years in it, finally passing across the thresh-
old of death no longer in her right mind. Perhaps she was
not aware of this change and considers Raynham Hall still
her rightful home, and herself free now to range it at will,
and to smash intruding photographers’ cameras if she so
desires.
Life published the picture with all the facts and left it
to the readers to make up their own minds. I have shown
this picture on national television and before many college
audiences and have never failed to get gasps from the audi-
ence, for it is indeed the very model of what a ghost pic-
ture should look like.
» 153
The Ghost of the Pennsylvania
Boatsman
WHEN I DECIDED to spend a quiet weekend to celebrate
my birthday at the picturesque Logan Inn in New Hope,
Pennsylvania, I had no idea that I was not just going to
sleep in a haunted bedroom, but actually get two ghosts for
the “price” of one!
The lady who communicated with my companion
and myself in the darkness of the silent January night via a
flickering candle in room #6, provided a heart-warming
experience and one I can only hope helped the restless one
get a better sense of still “belonging” to the house. Mrs.
Gwen Davis the proprietor, assured me that the ghost is
the mother of a former owner, who simply liked the place
so much she never left.
Mrs. Davis pointed me toward the Black Bass Inn in
nearby Lumberville, an 18th-century pub and now hotel
right on the Delaware Canal. The place is filled with Eng-
lish antiques of the period and portraits of Kings Charles I,
II and James II, providing that this was indeed a Loyalist
stronghold at one time.
I went around the place with my camera, taking any
number of photographs with fast color film in existing
light. The story here concerned the ghost of a young man
who made his living as a canal boatsman. Today, the canal
The Black Bass Inn — Pennsylvania
is merely a curiosity for tourists, but in the nineteenth cen-
tury it was an active waterway for trade, bringing goods on
barges down river. The canal, which winds around New
Hope and some of the nearby towns gives the area a charm
all its own.
CHAPTER NINE: Stay-Behinds
664
In the stone basement of the Black Bass, where the
apparition had been seen by a number of people over the
years, according to the current owner, Herbie Ward, I took
some pictures and then asked my companion to take one of
me. Picture my surprise when here appeared a white shape
in the picture which cannot be reasonably explained as
anything but the boatsman putting in a kind of appearance
for me. The boatsman died in a violent argument with
another boatsman. By the way, the name of the boatsman
was Hans. Maybe he felt the two Hanses ought to get in
touch?
The Ghost of the Pennsylvania Boatsman
665
' *
CHAPTER TEN
Poltergeists
THE TERM Poltergeist is German. German researchers in the paranormal were the first ones to
concentrate their efforts toward a better understanding of the phenomena associated with pol-
tergeist activities. The word simply means “noisy ghost” and refers to events that parapsy-
chology nowadays prefers to call physical phenomena, which are invariably three-dimensional, whether
moving objects or visual or auditory effects produced by means that are other than ordinary or
explicable.
The German scientists also decided that these events were connected with, and caused by, a
young person at the threshold of puberty; the energies that make the sometimes very violent phenom-
ena possible were actually the unreleased sexual energies of the young people in the household. They
went so far as to accuse some of these young persons of unwittingly causing the phenomena, often to
“attract attention.”
This is a half-truth. Young people at the border of their sexual awakening can be the source of the
energy allowing the phenomena to occur, but so can mentally handicapped people of any age and sex-
ually frustrated individuals of any age, consciously or unconsciously. A poltergeist, then, is nothing
more than that stage of a haunting when manifestations occur that are clearly of a physical nature,
such as the movement or the throwing of objects. The originator, however, is not the youngster or
mentally handicapped older person: they are merely the source, tapped against their will and usually
without their knowledge, by a ghostly entity desperately trying to get attention for their plight from
people in this world. Not to harm anyone, but to get people to notice their presence.
Years ago I pointed out that psychic phenomena use the same energies as does sexual activity,
and often the repression of those energies can lead to unwanted psychical phenomena. In the 1930s,
the British Society of Psychical Research undertook some tests with the help of a deep trans medium.
Ectoplasm derived from the body of the trans medium turned out to be an albumin substance secreted
through the glandular system. This ectoplasm
was identical with seminal fluids. Poltergeists
667
Poltergeists are not what the popular movies show
them to be. As a matter of fact, these films are pure hokum
in every respect, from the phenomena shown to the so-
called researchers and their “instruments.” As so often
happens, the indiscriminate exploitation of the paranormal
reality by films and television paints a false picture, only to
frighten people into fearing something that is simply not
true.
* * *
How, then, does one deal with a poltergeist? No dif-
ferently than the way one relates to an earthbound spirit, a
ghost who is unable to realize her or his true condition.
Contact can usually be established through a deep trance
medium. This way the entity is calmed or released.
Remember that the majority of ghosts are not able to
obtain the kind of energies necessary to manifest physically
or move objects. Only when there is a powerful source
close at hand can they draw on the larger energies neces-
sary for such a feat.
Of course it can be frightening to see objects move
seemingly of their own volition. But they don’t — the elec-
tromagnetic force manipulated by the ghost is responsible
for this even if the ghost itself is not visible.
Even as startling an event as the movement of a knife
through the air (as in the case in Rye, New York) is not an
attack on anyone but an attempt to get attention, and, if
possible, help.
True poltergeist cases are much rarer than “ordinary”
hauntings, but they do occur. In every case I have investi-
gated, a power source exists, either among the living or
even among the discarnate, who have passed on in a state
of mental distress or even insanity. Some of my cases
follow.
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
668
» 154
The Devil in Texas
I AM FREQUENTLY ASKED to comment on poltergeists, or
noisy ghosts, a term derived from the German and some-
how conjuring up the image of violent physical activity
beyond the pale of ordinary understanding. Poltergeists
have been generally considered the work of youngsters in a
house — youngsters below the age of puberty, when their
physical energies have not yet been channeled either sexu-
ally or occupationally and are therefore free to play pranks
on others in the household. The majority of parapsycholo-
gists consider poltergeists the unconscious expression of
such repressed feelings, attention getters on the part of
young people, and do not connect them to supernormal
beings such as spirit entities or any other form of outside
influence. I, however, have investigated dozens of cases
involving poltergeists where physical objects have been
moved or moved seemingly by their own volition and
found that another explanation might be the true one.
In each case, to be sure, there were young people in the
household, or sometimes mentally handicapped adults. I
discovered, for instance, that a mentally handicapped adult
has the same kind of suppressed kinetic energy that is
capable of being tapped by outside forces to perform the
physical phenomena as the unused energy of youngsters. I
also discovered that in each and every case with which I
came in contact personally there had been some form of
unfinished business in the house or on the grounds on
which the house stood. Sometimes this involved a previous
building on the same spot. At other times it involved the
same building in which the activities took place. But in
each instance there was some form of psychic entity pre-
sent, and it is my conviction that the entity from beyond
the physical world was responsible for the happenings,
using, of course, the psychical energy in the young people
or in the retarded adult. Thus, to me, poltergeists are the
physical activities of ghosts expressed through the psychic
powers within young people or mentally handicapped older
people, but directed solely by outside entities no longer in
the flesh. This link between the physical energies of living
persons and the usually demented minds of dead persons
produces the physical phenomena known as poltergeist
activities, which can be very destructive, sometimes threat-
ening, sometimes baffling to those who do not understand
the underlying causes.
The purpose these physical activities is always to get
the attention of living persons or perhaps to annoy them
for personal reasons. The mentality behind this phenome-
non is somewhere between the psychotic and the infantile,
but at all times far from emotionally and mentally normal.
But it can still be dealt with on the same basis as I deal
with ordinary hauntings. That is to say, the cause of the
activities must be understood before a cure for them can be
found. Making contact with the troubled entity in the non-
physical world is, of course, the best way. When that is not
possible, a shielding device has to be created for the living
to protect them from the unwanted poltergeist activities. In
the well -publicized Seaford, Long Island, case a few years
ago, a young boy in the household was held responsible for
the movement of objects in plain daylight. Even so astute
an investigator as Dr. Karlis Osis of the American Society
of Psychical Research, who was then working for Parapsy-
chology Foundation of New York City, could not discern
the link between the boy’s unconscious thought and the
unseen, but very real, psychic entities beyond the world of
the flesh. In his report he intimates that the activities were
due to the unconscious desires of the youngster to be
noticed and to get the sort of attention his unconscious self
craved. I was not involved in the Seaford case personally
although I was familiar with it, having discussed the matter
with Mr. Herman, the boy’s father. I did not enter the case
because certain aspects of it suggested publicity-seeking on
the part of the family, and at any rate others in my field
had already entered the case. I saw no reason to crowd the
scene, but I did go into the background of the house with
the help of medium Ethel Johnson Meyers independently
of the investigation conducted by Dr. Osis. For what it
may be worth at this late date, my sitting with Mrs. Mey-
ers disclosed that a burial ground had existed on the very
site of the Seaford house and that the disturbances were
due to the fact that the house had been erected on the spot.
They had not occurred earlier since no physical medium
lived in the house. When the young man reached the age
of puberty, or nearly so, his energies were available to
those wishing to manifest, and it was then that the well-
publicized movement of objects occurred.
Similarly, two years ago a case attracted public atten-
tion in the city of Rosenheim, Bavaria. A young lady work-
ing for an attorney in that city was somehow able to move
solid objects by her very presence. A long list of paranor-
mal phenomena was recorded by reputable witnesses,
including the attorney himself. Eventually Dr. Hans Ben-
der of the University of Freiburg entered the case and after
investigation pronounced it a classical poltergeist situation.
He too did not link the activity with any outside entity that
might have been present on the premises from either this
house or a previous one standing on the spot. It seems to
me that at the time great haste was taken to make sure that
a physical or temporal solution could be put forward, mak-
ing it unnecessary to link the phenomena with any kind of
spirit activity.
But perhaps the most famous of all poltergeist cases,
the classical American case, is the so-called Bell Witch of
Tennessee. This case goes back to the 1820s and even so
illustrious a witness as Andrew Jackson figures in the pro-
ceedings. Much has been written and published about the
Bell Witch of Tennessee. Suffice it to say here that it
involved the hatred of a certain woman for a farmer named
The Devil in Texas
669
John Bell. This relationship resulted in a post-mortem
campaign of hatred and destructiveness ultimately costing
the lives of two people. In the Bell Witch of Tennessee
case the entire range of physical phenomena usually associ-
ated with poltergeistic activities was observed.
Included were such astounding happening as the
appearance or disappearance of solid objects into and out of
thin air; strange smells and fires of unknown origin; slow
deliberate movement of objects in plain sight without
seeming physical source; and voices being heard out of the
air when no one present was speaking. Anyone studying
the proceedings of this case would notice that the phenom-
ena were clearly the work of a demented individual. Even
though a certain degree of cunning and cleverness is neces-
sary to produce them, the reasoning behind or, rather, the
lack of reasoning, clearly indicates a disturbed mind. All
poltergeist activities must therefore be related to the psy-
chotic, or, at the very least, schizophrenic state of mind of
the one causing them. As yet we do not clearly understand
the relationship between insanity and free energies capable
of performing acts seemingly in contradiction of physical
laws, but there seems to be a very close relationship
between these two aspects of the human personality. When
insanity exists certain energies become free and are capable
of roaming at will at times and of performing feats in con-
tradiction to physical laws. When the state of insanity in
the mind under discussion is reduced to normalcy these
powers cease abruptly.
I have, on occasion, reported cases of hauntings and
ghostly activities bordering upon or including some polter-
geist activities. Generally we speak of them as physical
phenomena. A case in point is the haunted house belong-
ing to Mr. and Mrs. John Smythe of Rye, New York. The
phenomena in this house included such physical activities
as doors opening by themselves, footsteps, the sound of
chains rattling, ashtrays flying off the table by themselves,
and, most frightening of all, a carving knife taking off by
itself on a Sunday morning in full view of two adult, sane
people and flinging itself at their feet, not to hurt them but
to call attention to an existing unseen entity in the house.
These are, of course, the kind of activities present in pol-
tergeist cases, but they are merely a fringe activity under-
lining the need for communication. They are not the entire
case, nor are they as disorganized and wanton as the true
poltergeist cases. In the case of Rye, New York, the physi-
cal activities followed long-time mental activities such as
apparitions and impressions of a presence. The physical
phenomena were primarily used here to make the message
more urgent. Not so with the true poltergeist case, where
there is no possibility of mental communication simply
because the causing person in incapable of actual thinking.
In such a case all energies are channeled toward destructive
physical activity and there is neither the will nor the ability
to give mental impressions to those capable of receiving
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
670
them, since the prime mover of these activities is so filled
with hatred and the desire to manifest in the physical
world that he or she will not bother with so rational an
activity as a thought message.
It is therefore difficult to cope with cases of this kind
since there is no access to reasoning, as there is in true
ghost cases when a trance medium can frequently make
contact with the disturbed and disturbing entity in the
house and slowly, but surely, bring it back to the realm of
reason. With the true poltergeist case nothing of the sort
can be established and other means to solve it have to be
found. It is therefore quite natural that anyone who
becomes the victim of such activities and is not familiar
with them or with what causes them will be in a state of
panic, even to the point of wanting to abandon his prop-
erty and run for his life.
On September 1, 1968, I was contacted by a gentle-
man by the name of L. H. Beaird. He wrote to me from
Tyler, Texas, requesting that I help him understand some
of the extraordinary happenings that had made his life hell
on earth during the period of three years between 1965 and
1968. Through his daughter who was married in Austin he
learned of my work with ghosts and finally concluded that
only someone as familiar with the subject as I could shed
light on the mysterious happenings in his home. He had
purchased their home in 1964, but after three years of liv-
ing with a poltergeist and fighting a losing battle for sur-
vival he decided that his sanity and survival were more
important, and in 1968 he sold it again, losing everything
he had put into it. The move, however, was a fortuitous
one, for the new home turned out to be quiet and peaceful.
Once Mr. Beaird got his bearings again and learned to
relax once more he decided to investigate what had
occurred during the previous three years and find some
sort of answer to this extraordinary problem.
I had never heard of Tyler before and decided to look
it up on the map. It turned out to be a city of about 60,000
inhabitants also known as the “rose capital’’ because of the
large number of horticultural activities in the area. Tyler
is connected with Dallas and Houston by a local airline
and lies about halfway between Dallas and Shreveport,
Louisiana. It has one television station, one newspaper and
some pleasant ordinary citizens going about their various
businesses. The people of Tyler whom I got to know a
little after my visit later on are not concerned with such
things as the occult. In fact, anyone trying to lecture on the
subject would do so in empty halls.
Howard Beaird works in a nearby hospital and also
runs a rubber stamp shop in which he has the company of
his wife and more orders than he can possibly fill. Their
son, Andy, was enrolled in barber school at the time of my
visit and presumably is now cutting people’s hair to every-
one’s satisfaction somewhere in Texas. The big local hotel
is called the Blackstone and it is about the same as other
big hotels in small towns. Everything is very quiet in
Tyler, Texas, and you can really sleep at night. There is a
spirit of not wanting to change things, of letting sleeping
dogs lie as much as possible, pervading the town, and I
have the distinct impression that cases such as the polter-
geist case were not exactly welcome subjects for discussion
over a drink at the local bar.
It must be held to Mr. Beaird’s credit that despite the
indications of small-town life he felt compelled to make
inquiries into the extraordinary happenings in his life, to
look into them without fear and with great compassion for
those involved — his wife and son. Others in his position
might have buried the matter and tried to forget it. This is
particularly important since Mr. Beaird is reasonably pros-
perous, does business with his neighbors and has no inten-
tion of leaving Tyler. To ask me for an investigation was
tantamount to stirring things up, but Beaird took this cal-
culated risk because he could not live with the knowledge
of what he had observed and not know what caused it.
At the time of our correspondence in September 1968
the phenomena had already ended, as abruptly as they had
come. This too is typical of genuine poltergeist activities,
since they depend solely on the available free energies of
living people. As will be seen in the course of my investi-
gation, that energy became no longer available when the
principals were removed from the house. There are other
factors involved, of course. It is not as simple as plugging
in on a power line, but in essence poltergeist activities
depend not only the desire of the disturbing entity to man-
ifest but also on the physical condition of the unconscious
part of those whom they wish to use as power supplies.
The house which the Beairds had to leave under
pressure from their poltergeists is on Elizabeth Street. It is
a one-story ranch-type dwelling, pleasant enough to look at
and about fourteen or fifteen years old. The new owners
are not particularly keen on the history of their house, and
it is for that reason that I am keeping confidential the
actual location, but the house has not been altered in any
way since it has been sold to Mr. M. and his family. One
enters the house through a porch that is located somewhat
above the road. There is a garage and a steep driveway to
the right of the porch. Once one is inside the house one is
in the living room with a den to the left and a dining area
to the right. Beyond the living room are the kitchen and a
rather long room leading directly to a breakfast room. On
the extreme left are two bedrooms. To the right of the
house behind the garage is the workshop, which, in the
period when Mr. Beaird owned the house, was used as
such. There is also a concrete slab separating the shop
from the garage proper, and the garage contains a ladder
leading up to the attic.
Howard Beaird, sixty-five years of age, is a pleasant
man with a soft Texas accent, polite, firm, and obliging in
his manner. He was overjoyed when I expressed an interest
in his case and promised to cooperate in every way. In
order to get a better understanding of the extraordinary
happenings at Tyler I asked that he dictate in his own
words the story of those three years in the house that had
come to be three years of unrelenting terror. The principals
in this true account besides Howard Beaird are his wife,
Johnnie, whom he has always called John; a daughter
named Amy who lives in another city and was in no way
involved in the strange experiences at Tyler; and a son,
Andy, now nineteen, who shared all of the unspeakable
horror of the experiences between 1965 and the early part
of 1968 with his parents. Most of the others mentioned in
his account have been dead for several years. A few are still
alive, and there are some names in this account Mr. Beaird
has never heard of. Here then is his own account of what
occurred in the little house on Elizabeth Street in Tyler,
Texas:
My story begins late in 1962, which marked the end
of nearly thirty-nine years of employment with the same
company. During the last twenty years of that time John
worked in the same office with me; in fact her desk was
only a few feet from mine. We were both retired during
September of 1962.
John had always been an excellent employee, but
devoted much more time to her work than the company
required for any one person. She would never take a
vacation, and was rarely away from her job for more
than an occasional half-day at a time, mainly, I think,
because she would trust no one with her work. I cannot
say when her mind began to show signs of being dis-
turbed, although as I think back on it today, she had
acted a little strangely for several years prior to the time
of our retirement. This, however, did not affect her
work in any way; in fact she was even more precise in it
than ever, and I suppose I just could not bring myself to
admit that there was anything wrong with her mind. At
any rate, during the next twelve months she began to
act more abnormally than ever, especially when at home,
until finally it was necessary that she enter a mental
institution. Although the doctors there were reluctant to
release her, they did not seem to be having any success
in whatever treatment they were giving her, so I asked
for her release after about three months. Being of very
modest means I naturally had to obtain employment as
soon as possible, but after working about three months
in another city I felt that it was most urgent that I move
my family from Grand Saline, Texas, to some other
place, believing that the mere change of environment
would play a big part in helping John to get well. So
about the middle of 1964 we moved to Tyler, Texas, a
place where John had always said she would like to live.
We bought a house, and after about a month I obtained
employment which, in addition to a sideline business I
had begun a few years before, gave us a satisfactory, if
not affluent, living. For almost a year John did seem to
be better; she would go places with Andy and me, to
the Little League baseball games in which Andy played,
to the movies occasionally, sometimes to bowling alleys
and a miniature golf course, but all of a sudden she
stopped.
She had not actually kept house since we made the
move and had not cooked a single meal for Andy or me.
The Devil in Texas
671
About this time she started walking to a drugstore in a
nearby shopping center for breakfast, and then in the
late afternoon just before I would get home she would
walk to a restaurant a few blocks away for the evening
meal, usually by herself. A little later she began calling a
taxi nearly every morning to go to a different place for
breakfast: once to a downtown hotel; once way out on
the other side of town to a roadside restaurant on the
Mineola Highway, and to many other places within the
course of a few weeks. Always in the evenings though
she would go to the restaurant near our home. She
would come home usually just after I arrived, and would
change clothes and stay in her room from then on. She
would get up very early in the morning, about 5 o’clock,
something she had never done during our entire married
life. For the past few years she insisted that people were
spying on her, and finally, when I did not agree with
her, she accused me of being at the head of this group
set out to torment her, and even said that I had televi-
sion cameras set up in the house to spy on her.
John smoked almost incessantly, every kind of ciga-
rette made, but later began to smoke little cigars the size
of a cigarette, and still later started on the big regular
ones that men smoke. Once she bought a small can of
snuff. She had never used snuff before. This was a little
while after she had begun to lay cigarettes down just
anywhere, although there were plenty of ashtrays
throughout the house. She also began putting lighted
cigarettes on table tops, the arms of a divan, or even on
the bed, and if Andy or I had not been there to put
them out, no doubt the house would have eventually
been burned down. She did burn holes in several sheets
and in the mattress on her bed. When that happened I
told her that she simply could not smoke any more. She
did not protest. Andy and I searched the house and
found cigarettes and matches everywhere. John had hid-
den them everywhere, inside a little table radio by
removing the back, inside a flashlight where the batteries
are supposed to be, in those little shoe pockets she had
hanging in her closet, in a little opening at the end of
the bathtub where a trap door in the closet exposes the
pipes for repairs, under the mattress, inside pillow cov-
ers, and even in the dog house outdoors. We gathered
up cigarettes, matches, and cigarette lighters every day
when I got home and there is no telling how many we
finally found and destroyed. Of course she would get
more every day at the shopping center, and once we
even found one of those little automatic rollers that a
person can use to make his own cigarettes.
Exactly what part John played in the frightening
events that took place at our house I cannot say. I am
convinced though, as is Amy, that there was some con-
nection. The three years from late 1962 to the summer
of 1965 preceded the most awesome, fantastic chain of
events that the human mind can imagine. In fact, as
these unbelievable episodes began to unfold before us I
was beginning to doubt my own sanity. Andy, who was
13 at the time this began, shared with me every one of
the horrible experiences, which started in midsummer
1965 and lasted without interruption until near the end
of 1966, when we were “told” that they were over with,
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
only to find that during the next fifteen months we were
in for even worse things. If Andy had not been with me
to substantiate these awful experiences I would have
indeed considered myself hopelessly insane.
The frightening events began to take place near the
middle of 1965, about the time John quit going places
with Andy and me. When at home she would stay in
her bedroom and close the door and leave it closed after
she went to bed. Andy and I slept in the same bed in
another room.
During our first year at this house we were not both-
ered by the usual summertime insects, so I did not
bother to repair the screens needing fixing at that time.
However, during July of 1965, Andy and I would go to
bed, and as soon as we turned out the light we were
plagued by hordes of June bugs of all sizes, which
would hit us on our heads and faces, some glancing off
on the floor, others landing on the bed, and some miss-
ing us entirely and smashing themselves against the
metal window blinds. Night after night we fought these
bugs in the dark, grabbing those that landed on the bed
and throwing them against the blinds as hard as we
could.
Then we discovered that at least half of the bugs that
hit us were already dead, in fact had been dead so long
that they were crisp and would crumble between our
fingers when we picked them up! I would get up and
turn on the lights, and the raids would cease immedi-
ately; we could see no sign of them in the air ... only
those hundreds that littered the floor and bed. The
instant I turned off the light, though, the air would be
filled with bugs again, just as if someone were standing
there ready to throw handfuls at us as soon as it was
dark. One night I got up and swept and vacuumed the
entire room, moved every piece of furniture away from
the walls, dusted the backs of the dresser, chest and
tables, and vacuumed the floor again. When I was
through I could swear that there was not a living crea-
ture in that room other than Andy and me. I got some
rags and stuffed them in the cracks beneath the closet
door and the one leading from the room into the hall.
The windows were closed. The room was absolutely
clean. Andy was in bed, awake. I turned off the light. At
that exact instant hundreds of bugs hit us!
About this time John began to act more strangely
than ever, doing things she would not dream of doing
under ordinary circumstances. For example, I might
look in my closet to get a shirt or a pair of trousers, and
there would not be any there. I do not know what
prompted me to do it, but I would go to John’s closet,
and there would be my clothes hanging alongside some
of hers.
At this time I had a rubber stamp shop in a room
behind the garage, which was a part of the house, and I
worked out there every night. There was no direct con-
nection from the house. One had to go out the kitchen
door into the garage and then through another door into
the shop. On many occasions I would hear the kitchen
door being opened, and would rush to the shop door to
see who it was. No matter how hard I tried, though, I
could never get there fast enough to see anybody. . .only
my clothes, suits, shirts, etc., on hangers just as they
landed in the middle of the garage floor.
672
It was during the hottest part of summer while we
had the air-conditioners running that other strange
things took place for which we assumed John was
responsible. Andy or I would suddenly find the bath-
room wall heater lighted and the flames running out the
top, with the door closed. The room would be hot
enough to burst into flames. John insisted that she had
not lit the heater . . . that one of us had. After this had
happened several times, I removed the handle that turns
on the gas. A short time later, while I was out in the
shop, Andy came running out and called me in. There
was a bunch of paper towels stuffed into the heater
where the burners are and they were on fire, some of
them on the floor, burning. I then decided to turn off all
the pilot lights in the house. This was on the weekend
before Labor Day, and I did not know how I could pos-
sibly go to work on Tuesday following the holiday and
leave John at home alone, since Andy would be in
school. I had talked with Dr. until I could deter-
mine what I would eventually be able to do with her,
but the psychiatric wards were already running over,
and he did not want to admit her as a patient. I decided
to tell John that if she did “any of those things” again I
would have to put her in jail. Monday night she started
waving a pistol around, so I called the police station and
told them the predicament I was in. They said they
would keep her until things could be settled and told me
to bring her on down. She went without protest. When
my lawyer returned he made appointments for her to be
examined by two psychiatrists, after which I thought
there would be no further question about the need for
commitment, and she stayed at home that week. How-
ever, on the Monday following Labor Day she called her
sister-in-law Mack in Daingerfield, Texas, about a hun-
dred miles from Tyler, and asked if she could visit her
at once. I was at work and knew nothing of this until
Mack got to Tyler and asked it if would be all right for
John to go with her. I objected, but my lawyer advised
me that I should let her go, as she could be brought
back for the commitment hearing, so they left that day
for Daingerfield.
A few days later John’s lawyer had her examined by
a psychiatrist again, and he finally said that she might
benefit somewhat from getting a job, although she
would have to undergo psychiatric treatment at various
times in the future. It would be almost impossible to
have her committed voluntarily, so we decided to just
let things stand as they were. For the record, John’s
attorney insisted that I be examined by the same doctors
who had examined her. The reports on me were
favorable.
Shortly after John had gone off to stay with Mack,
Andy and I were lying in bed with the lights off, talking
about the terrible things we had gone through. Suddenly
I heard a voice calling my name ... a high-pitched, falset-
to voice that seemed to be coming from out in space. The
voice said it was John, and although it sounded nothing
at all like her, I am convinced it was, since she talked
about several things that only she and I knew of . . . .
One was about some disagreeable words she had had
with one of my sisters at the time of my father’s death
in 1950. She said that although my other sister had
insulted her, she was good, and that she had forgiven
her. Andy did not hear any part of this conversation.
Apparently John, or the voice, could talk to either of us
without the other listening to the voice. I even suspected
that Andy was doing the talking, and I held my fingers
to his lips while listening to the voice. I knew then it
could not have been coming from his lips.
One night while I was lying in bed and Andy was in
the bathroom I heard his voice say “good-bye,” though,
just before he came to bed, and he told me he had been
talking with his mother. During the following weeks we
heard six other voices from right out of nowhere, all from
people who had been dead for some time. I knew all but
one of them while they were living. Two of them had
always been friendly toward me, and both were old
enough to be my mother. Andy also knew these who
women and one of the men named George Swinney.
This latter person was killed in an accident some time
after he visited us “by voice.” The other two women
were mothers of friends of mine and both had died some
time before we moved to Tyler. One was Mrs. Snow
and the other was Mrs. Elliott, and theirs were the next
two voices we heard after John had left, and they came
to us about the time the visits by Henry Anglin started.
He was the only one of the lot who gave us trouble to
start with; in fact I am convinced that he is the one
responsible for the bug raids and other awful things that
happened to us.
One of the work benches in my shop was against the
wall dividing the shop and the kitchen, and at the bot-
tom of the wall was an opening with a grill over it to
handle the return air from the central heating system.
For some reason the grill on the shop side had been
removed, and by stooping down near the floor under the
bench I could see much of what was going on in the
kitchen. I worked in the shop every night, and when
these “ghosts” first began visiting us they would call my
name, the voices seeming to come from the opening into
the kitchen. I would stoop down and answer. At that
time I would carry on lengthy conversations with all of
them. Mrs. Snow and Mrs. Elliott were very friendly
and seemed to want to give me all kinds of good advice.
Henry Anglin was just the opposite. He was extremely
mean and demanded that I do all sorts of things I would
not do. When I refused, he would be very nasty. Once
he got a can of insect spray we kept on the kitchen cabi-
net top and held it down at the opening to my shop. He
would start spraying through the hole. He used a whole
can of spray and in that little room I nearly suffocated.
One cannot imagine what a feeling it is to see a can of
insect spray suspended in midair with apparently nothing
holding it and to have it sprayed right in one’s face! When
I went inside I could see the dents made by the edge of
the can where he had banged it against the wall.
About the middle of September 1965 the nightly bug
raids began to taper off. We thought that we were going
to get a few nights’ sleep without fear. However, when
we went to bed we would feel something moving on an
arm or in our hair — after we had turned off the lights.
We jumped up and found one or several slugs some-
where on us or on the bed. They are the ugliest, slimiest
wormlike creatures that can be imagined, big at the head
and tapering to a point toward their rear end. They have
The Devil in Texas
673
whiskers on each side of the head, and although they
have eyes, they are not supposed to see very well,
according to Andy, who, strangely enough, was studying
them at school at that time. The large ones are as big as
a Vienna sausage, about three inches long, and leave a
silvery looking trail wherever they crawl. When the first
few of these creatures appeared Andy thought they had
clung to his shoes while he was playing in the yard and
had gotten into the house that way. However, night
after night the number of slugs increased, and we went
through the same torture as with the bugs, only much
worse. One cannot imagine how awful it is to wake up
in the middle of the night and find oneself surrounded
by a horde of slimy, ugly worms! Andy said that salt
would dissolve the slugs. So we sprinkled salt all around
the baseboard, around the bed legs, but still the slugs
came as soon as the lights were out. A few nights later we
were again bombarded with bugs . . . not June bugs this
time, but the wood louse, the little bug about the size of
a blackeyed pea. They have lots of tiny legs, will roll up
into a round ball when touched, and are generally called
pill bugs. I knew they could not fly, yet there they
came, hitting us just as if they were shot out of a gun, at
the exact moment we turned out the lights! Mixed in
with these were some bugs I had never seen anywhere
before, like a doodle bug but brown in color. I knew
doodle bugs couldn't fly, and these things no more had
wings than I did. Yet there they came, shooting through
the air, and, just as the June bugs had done, they started
out one or two at a time, until finally dozens began hit-
ting us at once the moment the lights were out. I also
found little pieces of clear material which looked like
pieces of broken glass. I finally discovered that these
pieces were making the loud noise against the blinds. . .
some of them landed on the bed along with the peculiar
bugs. I then washed off a piece about the size of a pea
and tasted it; it was pure rock salt! I had not the slight-
est idea where it came from, as we certainly had had no
use for any here. As baffling as the idea of bugs flying
without wings was, it was no more so than rock salt sail-
ing through the air with apparently nothing to propel it.
There was absolutely no human being in the house
except Andy and me.
A day or two after John had left, I cleaned up her
room thoroughly, moved every piece of furniture, swept,
vacuumed, dusted, and made up the bed, putting on a
spread that came nearly to the floor. A few days after
the second series of bug raids, Andy called me into
John's room. He raised up the spread, and there under
the bed was a conglomeration of objects, among which
was a ten-pound sack of rock salt, most of which had
been poured in a pile on the carpet under the bed.
There was an old hair net mixed with it, some burned
matches, an unwrapped cake of "hotel” soap, and on top
of the pile was a note, printed the way a six-year-old
child would do it, “Evil spirit go away.”
In the next few days we began looking through
things in John’s room and found lots of notes written in
longhand, most of which were like those of a child just
learning to write, although a few words were unmistak-
ably John’s handwriting. They were mainly of people’s
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
names, a date which might be the birthdate, and then
another date some time in the future. . .some up past
1977. There were many names contained in the notes.
One name was of a man I am sure John could not have
known. He was Henry Anglin, a pitifully ignorant old
man who used to farm just west of Grand Saline, and,
like all farmers in the adjoining territory back in 1918,
would come to town each Saturday to buy groceries and
other supplies for the following week. When I was
about fourteen years old I worked in a department store
that also handled groceries. My job was to keep track of
the farmers’ stacks of groceries so that when they were
ready to leave in the evening I could show them where
their purchases were and help load their wagons. Henry
Anglin was among the people I regularly waited on. He
seemed old to me then and that was about fifty years
ago. I have no doubt that he has long since died. I can-
not imagine how his name entered John’s mind. There
were also some typewritten sheets in John’s room which
contained the same items as the notes we had found.
One mentioned a certain "Tink” Byford. There was a
date that was probably his birthdate, then a date in
1964. We had moved to Tyler in July 1964, and it was
several months after that when I read in the paper that
"Tink” Byford had been killed in an auto accident while
returning to Grand Saline from Dallas. Another name
was "Bill” Robertson, a friend of both of us. There was
an early date, then “Hosp. 1965, death 1967.” There
were many other names, some now dead, but most still
living, always with two dates! One day when I got home
from work Andy and I found in the living room
between the divan and table a new bar of soap which
had been crumbled up and scattered over a two-or
three-foot area. Andy found a potato masher in John's
room with soap on it, so we assumed it was used in the
living room where the soap was scattered. We did not
clean it up right away. That night, after we went to bed,
several pieces of soap about the size of a quarter hit our
blinds like bullets, although the door to the living room
was closed and the den and hallway are between the liv-
ing room and our bedroom.
I had to wash some clothes that night and it was
after dark when I hung them on the line. While I was
doing that, Andy came to the door and advised me that
bugs and slugs were flying all over the house. I told him
I thought I had heard something thud against the dog
house near the clothesline. He checked and picked up a
little leather wallet about the size of a billfold, which
we had seen earlier in John’s room, filled with loose
tobacco. I told him to put it into the garbage can at the
end of the house. The can had a lid on it. When I got
through, it was time to take a bath and go to bed.
While I was in the tub and Andy in the den, I heard
something that sounded like a shotgun just outside the
bathroom window. I called Andy to run out and see
what he could find; he had heard the noise too. Just
beneath the window he picked up the same leather purse
he had put into the garbage can an hour earlier! It had
hit the house flat, I suppose, near the bathroom window,
to cause such a loud noise.
During the preceding days we had found several
other notes, all written or printed in the same peculiar
way, as a little child might write. I had no idea what
they meant, if anything, but some examples are:
674
Johnnie Beaird Joe Bailey — 1972 Amy Beaird
Reid Lesser — 1966 The End
1913 Murder Tink Byford — 1964
Bill Robertson — 1967
The dog — leave 1965
Die 1972
In a little notebook we found:
Allie L. Lewis (This woman worked for the same
company we did, and probably still does).
Luther Anderson (He owns a truck line that hauls
salt).
Die 1980
Jeraldine Fail (This woman used to be a good friend
of John's).
Die 1977
Louise Beaird (This is my sister, who would be 1 1 8
years of age in 2018).
Die 2018
One day we found an old wooden box where John
had kept her canceled checks. She had burned some-
thing in it, as the ashes were still in the box. The only
thing left was one half of a calling card saying, “burn
spirit burn." On just a scratch of paper were the words,
“Johnnie Beaird — Death 1991."
There were many more. Note the peculiar use of cap-
ital letters. All of these notes were printed:
JoHN is
goIN to Die
Be Nice
There IS A
I pOisOned
FROnt
Hertz in Mt
little
OF
PleaSant
FOOLS
OLD
SnEak
white kittEn
FOOLish
AWAY
ShALL i
MacK
From There
poisOn The
(I checked,
Jap Cat
and there is
(Andy did
not a Hertz
have a white
in Mt. Pleas-
kitten which
ant).
had died for
some reason,
and at this
time still had
a Siamese
cat).
On a Canton bank blank check was written in the
“pay to" line: Johnnie B. Walker $1 ,000,000; in the
“for" line: Bill is NUTTY, and on the “signature" line;
ha ha.
The ghastly events continued through October and
into November, when they seemed to be letting up a lit-
tle. One day early in the month when I got home from
work Andy took me into John's room. Lined up under
the edge of her bed but behind the spread were some
pictures in little frames of various kinds. There was one
of Amy, of John and Andy, of me, of Thelma Lowrie,
who had been John’s best friend and who had died in
1951, and several others. I don’t know what significance
they were supposed to have, but I left them right there.
I assumed that John had been to the house that day.
Bugs, dead and alive, continued to bombard us every
night; even the slugs started flying through the air,
smashing against the blinds and walls, making an awful
mess wherever they hit.
I decided to clean up both bedrooms as soon as I
could, and to start taking up the carpets. While I was
doing that Andy found a note in John’s room saying:
“Bugs will end for ThursDay Dec. 29." I think the 23rd
was the day I cleaned up our room, and the bugs were
worse than ever that night, so we decided that maybe it
was meant that the 23rd would be the last night. The
next night, strangely enough, was pretty quiet.
On the 24th I took up the carpet in John’s room.
While doing that I was hit by hundreds of bugs, slugs,
and even some of the nails I pulled out of the floor simply
flew through the air and hit against the blinds. Finally I
was able to completely clean the room, paint the walls
and woodwork, put up curtains, and the room looked
very nice when I was finished.
On November 26 I cleaned the house thoroughly,
and no unusual activity took place that night. On the
27th bugs were everywhere. Just before dark I was tak-
ing a bath, and when I was through, standing up in the
tub, I saw something hit the screen but could not tell
what it was. I called Andy from the den and told him to
go out to see what it was. It turned out to be one of
John’s rubber gloves I had put out beside the garbage
can to be hauled off.
On Thanksgiving day I took all of our outside locks
and had Andy take them to a locksmith in town the
next morning to have them changed and get new keys,
as I was convinced that John had been somehow coming
from Daingerfield and using her keys to get in. I put the
locks in place on Saturday. On Wednesday, December
1, 1965, somebody (I supposed it was John) punched a
hole in the back screen door near the hook and
unhooked the door. If it was John, though, her key
would not fit.
December 4 was the worst. It was Saturday, and we
went to bed about 10:30. Something that sounded
exactly like fingers drummed lightly on the bed.
Although we were under the covers we could feel what-
ever it was tugging at the sheets, actually trying to jerk
the covers off us! We would turn on the light and the
tugging would stop. There were no bugs that night, but
when the lights were off both Andy and I could feel
something on our arms that seemed like small flying
bugs bouncing up and down, sort of like gnats might
do. We would slap at them, but there was absolutely
nothing there. We would turn the lights on and see
nothing. We sprayed the air everywhere with insect
spray but it did no good. It felt exactly like someone
lightly grabbing the hair on your arms with the thumb
and forefinger, not actually pulling very hard at first, but
later jerking the hair hard enough to hurt.
While we were lying in bed with the light on, my
shoes, weighing possibly two pounds each, flew right
over our heads and landed on the other side of the bed.
Andy's house shoes got up from the floor and flung
themselves against the blinds. My clothes, which were
hanging in the closet with the door closed, got out of
there somehow without the door being opened and landed
across the room. Finally we turned off the lights and
The Devil in Texas
675
heard a strange sound we could not identify. It was
under the bed, and sounded like bed rollers being
turned rapidly with the fingers; but the bed was not
even on rollers! Suddenly something hit the blind like a
bullet. We turned on the light and found that the han-
dle from the gas jet under the bed had unscrewed itself,
and both the bolt and the handle had flung themselves
against the blind. Then the bed started moving away
from the wall. We would roll it back again only to have
it do the same thing over and over. That was about all
we could stand, and as it was 2 A.M. Sunday, I told
Andy to put on his clothes. We went to a motel to spend
the rest of the night.
As we were walking down the driveway, after closing
and locking the door, a handkerchief still folded hit me on
the back of the neck. Just as we got in the car another
handkerchief I had left on the bedside table hit me on
the back after I had closed the car doors.
We were so weary that we were asleep almost by the
time we were in bed at the motel, and nothing happened
to us while we were there. We came home about 9:30
the next morning. Some of John's clothes were in my
closet, and most of mine were in hers. All sorts of weird
notes were flying all about the house. I cleaned the
house, and just as I was through, a big cigar hit the back
of my neck from out of nowhere. I put it in the kitchen
waste basket. Andy wanted some soup, so I started to a
Cabell grocery store a few blocks away. Just as I left the
house Andy saw the cigar jump up out of the waste bas-
ket and land on the floor. He put it back in the basket.
When he came to the door to tell me about it I was get-
ting into the car parked at the foot of the driveway, and
when I turned toward him I saw the cigar come sailing
over his head and land at the side of the car, about 60
feet from the house. When I came back and stepped in
the door from the garage to the kitchen I saw a clean
shirt of mine coming flying from the den and land near the
back door of the kitchen.
By this time I had decided that it did absolutely no
good to change the locks on the doors, although John
had not broken in, if, indeed, this was John. Apparently
whoever it was did not need a door, nor did he need to
break in. Andy and I were standing in the kitchen
watching things fly through the air, when all of a sud-
den his cap, which had been resting on the refrigerator,
hit me in the back of the head. A roll of paper towels
flew through the air; a can of soup on the cabinet top
jumped off onto the floor several times after Andy
picked it up and put it back.
All of a sudden we heard a click. The toaster had
been turned on, and the click meant it had turned itself
off. There was a piece of soap in it, melted! A note nearby
read “clean toaster." I felt something like a slight brush
on my shoulder and heard Andy shout, “Look out!” He
saw the faint outline of a hand which looked like his
mother’s vanish near my head.
Later, while in the den, I began to ask questions
aloud, such as: “John, tell me where we stayed last
night?” A few seconds later a note came floating down
in front of us, reading: “Motel on T. B. Road. Couldn't
get in.” “Got to go, you’ve ruined me.” We did spend
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
the night before at a motel on the road to the Tubercu-
losis Hospital where I work. I then said aloud, trying to
sound funny in a totally unfunny situation: “With all
that power, why don’t you just drop $5,000 on us?”
Almost immediately a check with nothing but $5,000
written on the face dropped from out of nowhere. I said,
“John, why don’t you appear here before us right this
minute?” In about five seconds a note came down say-
ing, “Can't come ToDay haPPy YuLeTide.” I then
asked, “Are we going to be able to sleep tonight?" This
answer came down to us: “CaN’t maKE aNyTHing
haPPen tONighT you BROKE MY POWER Call
HOUsTon.”
Previously she told me to call Houston police and ask
them about a witch who had solved the murder of a
man named Gonzales. I felt like a fool, but I did call the
Houston police department. I told them they could
think I was drunk, crazy, or anything they wished to,
but I just wanted a yes or no answer, and asked if they
had any record of a witch ever helping the Houston
police solve a murder of a man named Gonzales. The
man I talked to did not appear surprised and simply
asked me to wait a moment, and a few seconds later said
that he could find no record of any such event.
John had also given us directions for breaking her
power. It was to “break an egg, mix with a little water
and a dash of salt and then throw it out in the back
yard."
I have never been superstitious before, and this
sounded awfully silly to me, but I think I would have
done absolutely anything I was told if it meant a chance
to put an end to these uncanny events, so I told Andy
to go ahead and follow the directions. That night we
had a few bugs and a note came floating down reading,
“power will end at 10 o’clock give or take an hour.”
For several days we received what seemed like hun-
dreds of notes from right out of nowhere, simply material-
izing in midair, some folding themselves as they came
toward us. Some time after he had seen the hand vanish
near my head, Andy was sitting in the den facing the
outside windows. For a few fleeting seconds he saw the
outline of John in front of the windows. Her back was
to him as she looked out the windows, and Andy heard
a faint "goodbye” just as the figure melted in the air.
We heard other voices after talking with John. All
seemed very strained, especially the female speakers, and
they would often say that they had a "mist” in their
throat and could not continue talking to me, although
they could always talk to Andy and he would hear
them. I have dozens of notes that fell down to us from
somewhere above, and most of them are from the same
two people who stayed with us for the longest period of
time. One of these was Mrs. Elliott, who had been dead
for three or four years when all this began to happen.
The other was from Mr. Gree, of whom I had never
heard, but who seemed eager to help Andy and me with
advice especially concerning the care of Andy's cats and
dogs. We were “visited” by a great variety of "people,”
some long since dead, some still living, most of whom
we know, or knew, but also some well-known public fig-
ures whose names were often in the news. I dated the
notes from then on, but at times so many descended on
us at once that I did not try to record the exact order in
which we received them.
676
It was Henry Anglin who tormented us from the
very beginning, and who caused us to move out of the
house. One night Anglin came to our room after we had
gone to bed and his voice asked if he could cook himself
an egg. We heard nothing else from him that night, but
the next morning when I went to the kitchen to prepare
breakfast, there in a teflon -lined skillet on the stove
burner which was turned down low was an egg burned
to a crisp!
Another night Anglin came to our room and insisted
that I call Houston. This was about the time he was
beginning to be so terribly mean. I told him that I had
already made one silly call to the Houston police, and
that I had no intention of doing it again. He countered
that I had not questioned them enough, and for me to
phone them again. I refused, and he tormented us
relentlessly. Finally he said he would leave us alone if
we would drive around the loop, which was a distance
of a little over twenty miles around the city of Tyler.
Andy and I put on our clothes and did just that. We
drove completely around the town, and sure enough,
when we got home we were able to sleep the rest of the
night without further trouble.
A few nights after this, both Mrs. Elliott and Mrs.
Snow told me verbally, while I was working in my shop,
that they had taken Henry Anglin “back to his grave,”
and had driven a stake, prepared by Mr. Gree, through
Anglin’s heart. They promised that he would not bother
us again.
About this time we received notes allegedly from
people who were still living, and also some from persons
other than those previously mentioned who had been
dead for several years. Among those still living were
Mrs. W. H. Jarvis, and Odell Young, who lives in
Grand Saline at this time. I also had one note from Mr.
W. H. Quinn, who had been dead for several years. He
used to be a railroad agent in Grand Saline. For a num-
ber of years I had occasion to have him sign numerous
shipping papers, so I had become familiar with his
handwriting. The note I got from him was written in the
same backhand fashion. I believe that this note was writ-
ten by him:
Dear Howard and Andy,
I pay tribute to you. You have put up with a lot
from old man Anglin. It is all over now. Friday I
am going to my grave to join my wife, whom I love.
I am going to Marion’s house to see him once more.
He is my favorite child. I have always like you, John
and the boy and hope someday you will be together
again.
Hiram Quinn
P.S. I enjoyed hearing about John going with Marion
to get new teeth.
The P.S. about his son’s false teeth refers to the time
about thirty years ago when John and I went to see
Marion just after he had received his first set of den-
tures. At that time we lived just across the street from
Marion and his wife and were friendly with them.
We also got notes allegedly from Marilyn Monroe,
Dorothy Kilgallen, and former Governor Jim Allred,
who sympathized with us for what Henry Anglin was
doing to us and about John’s condition. Mrs. Snow and
Mrs. Elliot had previously told us that Anglin had
caused many deaths, some by auto accident, and some
by switching a person’s pills, as they said he had done in
the case of Dorothy Kilgallen. The note we received with
her name also said that was the cause of her death. I am
not certain, but I believe they also said Anglin caused
Marilyn Monroe’s death.
None of the people still living, except John, ever
spoke to me; they just dropped their notes from the air.
Mrs. Jarvis actually spoke to Andy, though, and had
him tell me to answer aloud each of the questions she
put in her note to me. Mr. Quinn’s note was struck in
the grate between the kitchen and my shop.
For the first few weeks in January 1966 only Mrs.
Elliott and Mr. Jack Gree “visited” us. She and I had
lots of conversations, but she gradually got so she could
barely talk to me, although Andy could still hear her.
The notes were written either on some note paper Andy
kept in the kitchen or on some Canton, Texas, bank
deposit slips in John’s room. If I was working in the
shop she would stick the notes in the grill and bang on
the wall to attract my attention, and then I would stoop
down under the work bench and retrieve the note. Mr.
Gree, who told us we had never heard of him, had a
very low, deep, gruff voice. Most of his communications
to me were in the form of notes, however, but he and
Andy carried on lengthy conversations nearly every day.
He also used the grill “post office” for depositing his
notes, then banged on the wall to let me know they were
there.
At times, when Andy and I were in the car, Mrs.
Elliott or Mr. Gree would be with us. They would ride
along for a while and then suddenly say they were going
to Canada, Russia, Minnesota, or some other far-off
place, saying it took only two or three minutes for them
to travel those distances, and then we might not hear
anything else from them until the next day or night.
Early in January of 1966 Andy came out to my shop
and said Mr. Gree wanted to know if it was OK for him
to use the telephone, and of course I told him it was. I
did not know what control I would have had over the
situation anyway. That first time he said it was some-
thing personal and asked Andy if he would mind leav-
ing the room. I could hear the phone being dialed, and
stooped down near the floor so I could look through the
grilled opening, but of course I could not see anyone
there and could not quite see the phone itself. After that
he used the phone many times, while I was working and
while Andy was studying at the kitchen table in full
view of the telephone. It was really spooky to see the
receiver stand up on end by itself and then after a while
put itself back down where it belonged, but always upside
down. Some nights he would dial many times after we
had gone to bed, and we could hear the sound plainly in
our bedroom. The next morning I would find the
receiver on the phone upside down. One night while
Andy was taking a bath Mr. Gree called somebody and
I heard him say in a low, deep voice, “I’m weird. . .I’m
unusual.” I thought to myself, “You can say that again.”
He repeated it several times and then all I could hear
The Devil in Texas
677
would be a series of low grunts, from which I could not
make out any real words. One evening while we were in
the car coming home from the post office I asked Andy
whom he supposed Mr. Gree called on the phone.
Without a moment’s hesitation Mrs. Elliott, who we did
not know was with us, spoke up and said he was calling
her. We did not ask her where she was when she
received the call!
Both Mr. Gree and Mrs. Elliott certainly had Andy’s
welfare in mind. Practically every day for the whole
month of January there was a note from one of them
stuck in the screen door. It appeared to be Mrs. Elliott’s
job to help get John home and to take care of Andy. She
said if she could do that she would probably go back to
her grave early.
After John had left home I felt sorry for Andy. He
was lonely being at home alone so much of the time. He
indicated a desire for a cat, and a little later for a dog.
At the insistence and complete direction of Mrs. Elliott
I spent quite a sum of money for such pets. Mr. Gree
then took over completely the direction for our taking
care of these dogs and cats.
On January 29, 1966, while I was writing a letter,
there was a pounding on the kitchen wall, indicating
that there was a note in our "post office.” It was from
Mrs. Elliott. "I love that beagle. Sorry the dogs have
been sick. I feel responsible. Andy worries. He loves
them so much. If something does happen I only hope it
isn’t the beagle. The beagle will be a better companion.
Andy would give up one if you asked him to. Not that
he wants to. But he would understand. He loves dogs.
He understands. El. Reply to this note. Reply to every
line I wrote.”
The other dog she referred to was a brown dachs-
hund, which did not look very healthy when we bought
it. It never did gain any weight and after we had given
away the black dachshund the brown one continued to
get worse. During the next few days and nights some of
the most unbelievable things happened in connection
with this brown dachshund. I would be working in my
shop and suddenly hear a slight noise on the roof of the
house. It would be utterly impossible for the dog to
jump up there from the ground, and there was nothing
else around for him to get on in order to jump up on
the house. Yet there he was clear up on the peak walking
from one end to the other ! We would get a ladder and
finally coax him down into the eave where we could get
hold of him and put him on the ground. This happened
time after time. We finally decided to leave him up
there and go on to bed. The next night Mrs. Elliott told
us she knew about the dog. We asked her how it was
possible and said we would like to see how the dog got
up there. She said we could not see it. . .that it was just
a case of “now he’s down here. . .now he’s up there.”
She said that even if we were watching him, he would
just simply vanish from his spot on the ground and at
the same instant be on the roof. Later that night Mrs.
Elliott called Andy and me and said the dog was trying
to commit suicide and for us to go to the back door and
look in the flower bed on the south side of the back
steps. Sure enough we looked, and the ground had been
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
freshly dug and looked as if it had been loosely put back
in place. We could see the dirt moving, and I told Andy
to go and get the shovel from the garage, Mrs. Elliott
said it was not in the garage, but for us to wait just a
few seconds and we would find it out in the front yard
under the tree, where it would be when it got back from
"Heaven.’’ Andy did go and found the shovel just where
she said it would be and brought it to me. I dug down
beside where the dirt was moving and pulled the dog
out by the tail. He was barely breathing and looked very
pitiful, but after a few seconds was able to feebly walk a
little. Mrs. Elliott told us that we had better put it out
of its misery that night. I told her I did not have any-
thing to put it to sleep with, but she finally told me to
just go ahead and kill it, using a hammer, a brick or
anything that would put it to death. It was a sickening
experience, but I did kill the dog with a brick, as I was
certain that it was in pain and would be better off dead.
We buried the dog where it had apparently dug its own
grave! I cannot say that the dog actually dug this hole,
crawled into it and covered itself up with dirt, as I find
it hard to see how it could possibly have dragged the
dirt in on top of it. . .1 have only Mrs. Elliott’s word for
that. I am merely starting what she told us, although I
did find the dog in the hole, covered with loose dirt, and
barely breathing when I pulled it out.
While John was away in Daingerfield, I had bought a
little plastic toilet bowl cleaner on which a disposable
pad is used. The handle had come apart the first time I
tried to use it. It cost only a few cents, and ordinarily I
would have just bought another and forgotten about it.
However, I decided to write the manufacturer, and some
time later I received a letter from them, advising me
that they were sending me another handle. Eventually I
received a notice that there was a package at the post
office. I would have had to drive about ten miles from
the place were I work to the post office and back during
the noon hour to pick it up, and since it was of no
importance I intended to just wait until Saturday to call
for the package. That evening, though, when I went to
my shop to start work there was a package on my work
bench. The shop had been locked all day and was still
locked when I started to work. I asked Andy if he knew
anything about it and he assured me that he did not
even know about the package being in the post office.
At that moment Mrs. Elliott spoke up and admitted she
had gotten it out of the post office and brought it home
to me!
Not long after John had gone to Daingerfield another
mystifying thing happened. In one of the kitchen draw-
ers where we kept some silverware in one of those little
compartments made for that purpose, there was a space
five or six inches behind that section clear across the
drawer. In there I kept a few tools such as screwdriver,
pliers, tack hammer, where they would be conveniently
available when I needed them. I had not had occasion to
look in there for some time, and when I finally did I
noticed a pistol. It was .22 cal. and looked very real, and
only when I picked it up did I discover it was just a
blank pistol. I asked Andy where it came from, but he
knew nothing whatever about it. Mrs. Elliott spoke and
said she had brought it from Daingerfield. She told us
that John had ordered it from some magazine ad and
had paid $12 for it. She said it was awfully hard for her
678
to bring it to our house and that it had taken her several
hours to do so. She did not say why she did it but inti-
mated that she just wanted us to know about it. Later,
when we were moving away from that house, the pistol
was gone, and I have not seen it since.
For many years I had owned a .25 cal. Colt auto-
matic pistol. I always kept it in good condition but it
had not been fired in thirty years at the time we moved
to Tyler. Johns mother also had had pistol exactly like
mine except for the handles, as I bought a pair of white,
carved bone handles for mine. When she died we
brought that pistol to our house, although we never had
occasion to shoot it either. We still had them both when
we moved to Tyler. With so many mysterious events
taking place, I decided to keep a pistol out in my shop,
so I brought the one that had belonged to John’s mother
and left it on top of my work bench. It stayed there for
several weeks. One night it was missing. My shop was
always locked and I had the only key. I had wrapped
my own gun in a polyethylene bag after cleaning it thor-
oughly, and put it in a little compartment between the
two drawers in a chest in my room. One of the drawers
had to be removed completely to get the gun, and even
then one had to look closely to find it. I had told no one
about the hiding place. When the gun in my shop sud-
denly disappeared I decided to get mine that I had hid-
den in the chest. However, when I looked in the hiding
place my pistol was not there, but in its place was that
one which had been in the shop ! I did not take it to my
shop then, but some time later when I did decide to,
that gun too was gone, and we have seen neither of
them since that time.
Occasionally during all this time I would write to
John, saying that I wished she would come home so that
we might be able to get her well and be happy together
again. She never replied to any of my letters, although
she wrote Andy a note now and then when he would
write her first. I talked to her on the phone a short while
later. I do not remember whether I called her on the
phone or whether she was the one who called, but she
finally said she would be home on a given date in Feb-
ruary 1967, and that Mack would bring her. When she
got to Tyler she called me at work. She had taken a
room in a private home for a few days before coming
back to our house. Andy and I talked her into coming
home that night, though, and during the remainder of
1967 things seemed to be more normal for us than they
had been in many years.
During March of 1967 I moved my shop to a build-
ing downtown. I was getting too crowded in the little
room I had been using at the house, and when I got
things all set up at the new location I thought that it
would be good for John to run the shop during the day,
or at least part of each day, which she agreed to do.
Things went along very well throughout the rest of the
year. Our daughter Amy came for a few days’ visit at
Christmas time. A little while before this, though, John
had begun to throw cigarettes all over the house again,
and there were burned places everywhere. John, of
course, insisted that she had not thrown them there.
Some time in late 1967 Mrs. Elliott reappeared and
began giving us more advice about how to handle John.
By this time I believe Andy was about to go to pieces.
One of the officials of the school Andy attended called
me and asked why Andy had not been to school. Mrs.
Elliott had said for him not to go to school anymore,
that he could take a correspondence course and get his
high school diploma that way. I tried to convince him to
return to school.
I received all sorts of notes from Mrs. Elliott, telling
me that Andy was becoming a nervous wreck, and that
if I tried to make him go back to school she would take
him with her. Andy also told me he would rather go
with her than to return to school. Finally I asked her
why she did not get away from us and never return.
The last note I received from her read as follows:
Howard,
You might wish I wouldn’t come back but I did.
You can do whatever you want to with John. I won’t
ask Jr. if he wants to come with me, though he might
kill himself. Taking John away will only make him
worry more. You don’t care. THERE IS ONE THING
YOU CARE ABOUT AND THAT IS YOU. I wish you
would leave Jr. alone. He can get a course to finish
school and get a diploma and leave you. If you cause
any trouble I’ll take him or he’ll kill himself. I could
help him go to California but that wouldn’t be good
he be better off dead, which he probably will be.
There’s not going to be a world in 1 5 years so he
doesn’t care. He just wants to have some enjoyment.
You are real silly. John’s going to get violent. That’s
the silliest thing I ever heard. Now you are really
going to hurt things when you send John away. All I
asked was 1 week. You don’t want John well you just
want rid of her, so you cause trouble and get her
mad. John doesn’t cost you all that money you selfish
fool. I can’t make John love you but I could get her
to clean house and if you had any sense (which you
don’t) you would leave her at Trumark. Now when
you send her away and start giving Jr. trouble you
are going to be sorrier than you have been or will
ever be. I don’t know Jr. is good at music and would
be excellent and be able to make 3 times your
money. Maybe he will be better off gone. You silly
old selfish idiot.
You can holler and anything else but it will be of
no avail. When you see the nut doctor, tell him
about me, maybe they'll put you away.
During the last part of March and early February the
most ghastly things yet began to happen at the house.
Henry Anglin came back. I could not hear him, but
Andy said he talked very little and what few words he
did speak were barely understandable. Andy could hear
his evil laughter. He began by putting an egg under the
mattress about where my head would be. We would not
have known at the time, of course, but he would tell
Andy to have me look in certain places. There was an
egg, broken, in one of my house shoes, one in a pocket
of my robe, one in the shade of the ceiling light, one
broken in the corner of the room where it was running
down the wall, and one broken against the chest of
drawers. There was even one inside my pillow case.
Andy said that Anglin would just give a sort of insane-
sounding laugh each time we would find another egg.
The Devil in Texas
679
We cleaned up the mess, and that was the end of the
egg episode.
A few days later when I got home from work, Andy
called me into our room and there in the middle of the
bed was our dresser. It was not very heavy, and I was
able to lift it down by myself. The next day the chest of
drawers was on the bed. This was very heavy, and it
took both Andy and me to set it on the floor again. The
following day, when I got home, Andy was not there. I
noticed that the door to the room he and I shared was
closed. That was not unusual, though, as we often kept
it closed during the day. However, when I started to
open it, it simply came off the hinges in my hands. I could
see that the pins had been removed from the hinges, so
I just leaned the door against the wall. The next day I
found the closet door wrenched from the opening,
bringing most of the door facing with it. These were
hollow doors and both of them had holes knocked in
them about the size of a fist. The next night, about nine
o’clock, while I was working at the shop, Andy tele-
phoned me and said the refrigerator was in our room. He
had heard a noise while he and John were watching tele-
vision, and got up to see what it was. To reach the bed-
room the refrigerator had had to go through the length
of the breakfast room, the den, and a hallway before
reaching our room. I knew we could not move it back
that night so I told Andy to just leave it alone and we
would decide what to do the next day. However, a little
later he called and said the washing machine, which was
located in the kitchen, had been pulled away from the
wall and the faucets behind it were leaking and water
was running all over the floor.
I told him to cut off the hydrants, which he did. I
then called the police and asked them to meet me at the
house. When we got there the holes in the two doors in
the bedroom had increased to about fifteen or twenty and
some of them were through both sides of the doors and
big enough to put one’s head through.
Pretty soon, the house was swarming with policemen
and detectives. That is when I decided to tell them as
briefly as I could what we had been going through.
Some of them, I am certain, thought the whole thing
was a hoax, and came right out and said they thought I
was being hoodwinked by John, who had enlisted
Andy’s help. That was absolutely ridiculous though, as
practically all of the strange happenings occurred when
Andy and I were together, and while John was staying with
Mack about a hundred miles away. One of the chief
detectives talked a long time with John, and later told
me that she talked sensibly, but that he was amazed at
her lack of concern about the strange things that had hap-
pened. I too had noticed that she was wholly indifferent
to the entire “show.”
About the middle of February 1968 things got so bad
that I made John give me her key to the shop, and told
her that I was going to have to do one of three things. I
was going to try and have her committed to a state hos-
pital as I was not financially able to have her take psy-
chiatric treatments, or she could take them and pay for
them herself, or I was going to get a divorce. A divorce
at my age I thought was ridiculous, but I felt as if I
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
680
could not stand to go on as things were. Andy was
going to move with me as soon as I found a suitable
place. John did not seem perturbed one way or the
other, and probably did not believe I would really do
any of those things. However, on February 24, 1 did
move out of the house, and had my attorney begin
divorce proceedings, since he again stated that he did
not think I would have a chance in trying to have her
committed. I think that when the papers were served on
John it was the first time she actually realized what was
happening. I got an apartment only a few blocks from
my shop. I told Andy to call me every night to let me
know how things were at home. I met him at a nearby
shopping center each Saturday and gave him enough
money to buy food for himself and John during the fol-
lowing week.
For several weeks we went on this way. One night
Andy called me and said that the dining table was up in
the attic. The only opening to the attic was a rectangular
hole in the garage ceiling about 1 6 by 24 inches,
through which it was absolutely impossible for the table to
go. The next night the table was back in the house
again. This happened several times. Other things also
“went” to the attic, such as a small table, an ottoman,
and another kidney-shaped end table. Finally, the dining
table came down and Andy found it in the garage, and
after considerable work was able to get it inside the
house, where it belonged.
Eventually, John was beginning to believe that the
strange things we had been talking about were really
happening. Previously she had just made fun of us
whenever we would mention them. Several weeks after I
had left, Andy was sitting in the den, playing his guitar,
when the lights went out. At first he thought that a bulb
had burned out, but when he looked at the switch he
could see that it had been turned off. This happened sev-
eral times. Once when John was going through the den
the light went out and she too saw that the switch had
been turned; Andy was not anywhere near it, and there
was nobody else who could have done it.
It was well into the second month after I left home. I
had just finished work in the shop. The telephone rang.
It was John and she sounded hysterical. She said she
was very sick and begged me to come home. I got there
a few minutes later, and she could hardly talk. She con-
tinued to beg me to come home, but I told her I could
never spend another night in that house. Finally I got
her calmed down enough to talk seriously. I finally told
her that I would come back, but that first we would
have to find another place to live. I demanded that she
never smoke again. Finally, on April 15, 1968, we
moved out of the house of horrors, and I have nor been
there since.
John has not smoked since that time. It has now been
over three months since we left the house, and John
does the normal things about the house except cook. She
is again at my rubber stamp shop and seems to enjoy it.
* * *
In retrospect, as I read over these words, I realized
how difficult it must have been for Mr. Beaird to report
on his experiences, especially to a stranger. What had
appeared completely impossible to him would, of course,
have been even more unbelievable to someone who was not
present when it happened, and he doubted his own sanity
at times, which was not surprising.
Having met Howard Beaird I am sure that he is com-
pletely sane, in fact, so sane he could not even be called
neurotic. Had I not heard of parallel cases before, perhaps I
too would have wondered about it. None of the phenomena
reported by Mr. Beaird are, however, impossible in the
light of parapsychological research. We are dealing here
with forces that seem to be in contradiction of ordinary or
orthodox physical laws, but the more we learn of the
nature of matter and the structure of the atom, the more it
seems likely that poltergeist activities connect with physics
in such a way as to make seeming de-materialization and
re-materialization of solid objects possible practically with-
out time loss. But the case was a question of studying not
so much the techniques involved in the phenomena as the
reasons behind them and those causing them.
I informed Mr. Beaird that I was eager to enter the
case, especially as I wanted to make sure that the polter-
geist activities had really ceased once and for all and would
never recur at his new location. In cases of this kind there
is always the possibility that the phenomena are attached to
one or the other person in the household rather than to a
location. Moving to another house seems to have stopped
the activities, but as there had been pauses before that cul-
minated in renewed and even stronger physical activities, I
wanted to be sure that this would not be the case in this
new location. I explained that I would have to interview all
those concerned, even the police detectives who had come
to the house on that fateful night. Mr. Beaird assured me
that he would make all the necessary arrangements, and,
after discussing my plans with his wife and son, they too
agreed to talk to me. Mack, her sister-in-law, who had
been hostess to Mrs. Beaird while most of the phenomena
took place at the house, was unable to meet me in Tyler,
but I was assured that Mrs. Beaird had never left her care
during all that time. For a while Howard Beaird had
thought that his wife had returned without his knowledge
and done some of the things about the house that had star-
tled him. This, of course, turned out to be a false impres-
sion. At no time did Mrs. Beaird leave her sister-in-law’s
house in Daingerfield, 75 miles away. Whether or not her
astral self visited the home is another matter and would
be subject to my investigation and verification as far as
possible.
Mr. Beaird also went back to his former home to talk
to the present owners. Somewhat suspicious of him, for no
apparent reason, they were willing to see me if I came to
Tyler. Mr. M. works for a local bakery and returns home
at 5:30 P.M., and since his wife would not entertain strange
visitors in the absence of her husband, my visit would have
to be at such an hour as was convenient to the M.s. Per-
haps the somewhat battered condition of the house when
the M.s had bought it from Mr. Beaird might be the rea-
son for their reluctance to discuss my visit. At any rate it
was agreed that I could call briefly on them and talk to
them about the matter at hand. Howard Beaird’s daughter,
who is now Mrs. Howard Wilson, lives in Austin, Texas.
She has had some interest in the occult and mind develop-
ment and had suggested that someone from the Silva Mind
Center in Laredo should come up to Tyler to investigate
the case. That was prior to my entering the situation, how-
ever, and now Mrs. Wilson wanted very much to come up
to Tyler herself and be present during my investigation.
Unfortunately it turned out later that she was unable to
keep the date due to prior commitments. Thorough man
that he is, Howard Beaird also talked to Detective Weaver
at the police station to make sure I could see him and
question him about his own investigation of the house. I
was assured of the welcome mat at the police station, so I
decided to set the time when I could go down to Tyler and
look for myself into what appeared to be one of the most
unusual cases of psychic phenomena.
On February 5, 1969, I arrived at the Tyler airport.
It was 5:42 in the afternoon and Howard Beaird was there
to welcome me. We had made exact plans beforehand so
he whisked me away to the Blackstone Hotel, allowed me
to check in quickly, then went with me to see Detective
Weaver at the police situation.
As we passed through town I had the opportunity to
observe what Tyler, Texas, was all about. Clean shops,
quiet streets, a few tree-lined avenues, small houses, many
of them very old — well, old anyway in terms of the United
States — and people quietly going about their business seem
to be characteristic of this small town. We passed by
Howard Beaird’s shop, a neat, tidy shop, the company
name Trumark plainly written on the window pane. As in
many small towns, the telephone wires were all above
ground, strung in a lazy haphazard fashion from street to
street. The police station turned out to be a modern con-
crete building set back a little from the street. Detective
Weaver readily agreed to talk to me. Howard Beaird left us
for the moment in a fine sense of propriety just in case the
detective wanted to say something not destined for his ears.
As it turned out, there wasn’t anything he could not have
said in front of him. Was there anything in the detective’s
opinion indicating participation by either the boy or Mrs.
Beaird in the strange phenomena? The detective shrugged.
There was nothing he could pinpoint along those lines. He
then went to the files and extricated a manila envelope
inscribed "pictures and letter, reference mysterious call at
Elizabeth, February 19, 1968, 11:00 P.M., case number
67273. Officer B. Rosenstein and officer M. Garrett.”
Inside the envelope there were two pictures, photographs
taken at the time by a police photographer named George
Bain. One picture was of the door, clearly showing the
extreme violence with which a hole had been punched into
it. The entire rim of the hole was splintered as if extremely
The Devil in Texas
681
strong methods had been employed to punch this hole
through the door.
The other picture showed a heavy chest of drawers of
dark wood sitting squarely upon a bed. Quite clearly the
description given to me by Howard Beaird had been cor-
rect. What exactly did the two police officers find when
they arrived at the house on Elizabeth Street? The house
was in disorder, the detective explained, and furniture in
places where it wasn’t supposed to be. On the whole he
bore out the description of events given by Howard Beaird.
Somehow he made me understand that the police did
not accept the supernatural origin of the phenomena even
though they could not come up with anything better in the
way of a solution. Almost reluctantly, the officer wondered
whether perhaps Andy wasn’t in some way responsible for
the phenomena although he did not say so in direct words.
I decided to discuss the practical theories concerning pol-
tergeists with him and found him amazingly interested.
"Would you like to have the photographs?” the detective
asked and handed me the folder. Surprised by his generos-
ity, I took the folder and I still have it in my files. It isn’t
very often that a researcher such as I is given the original
folder from the files of a police department. But then the
mystery on Elizabeth Street is no longer on active situation
— or is it?
After we had thanked Detective Weaver for his cour-
tesies we decided to pay a visit to the house itself. After a
moment of hesitation, the officer suggested that he come
along since it might make things easier for us. How right
he was. When we arrived at the house on Elizabeth Street
and cautiously approached the entrance, with me staying
behind at first, there was something less than a cordial
reception awaiting us. Mr. M. was fully aware of my pur-
pose, of course, so that we were hardly surprising him with
all this.
After a moment of low-key discussion at the door
between Howard Beaird and Detective Weaver on one
hand and Mr. M. on the other, I was permitted to enter
the house and look around for myself. The M. family had
come to see me, if not to greet me, and looked at me with
curious eyes. I explained politely and briefly that I wanted
to take some photographs for the record and I was permit-
ted to do so. I took black and white pictures with a high
sensitivity film in various areas of the house, especially the
kitchen area where it connects with the garage and the liv-
ing room, both places where many of the phenomena have
been reported in Mr. Beaird ’s testimony.
On developing these, under laboratory conditions, we
found there was nothing unusual except perhaps certain
bright light formations in the kitchen area where there
should be none since no reflective surfaces existed. Then I
returned to the living room to talk briefly with Mr. M. and
his family.
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
Was there anything unusual about the house that he
had noticed since he had moved in? Almost too fast he
replied, "Nothing whatsoever. Everything was just fine.”
When Mr. M. explained how splendid things were with
the house he shot an anxious look at his wife, and I had
the distinct impression they were trying to be as pleasant
and superficial as possible and to get rid of me as fast as
possible. Did they have any interest in occult phenomena
such as ghosts? I finally asked. Mr. M. shook his head.
Their religion did not allow them such considerations, he
explained somewhat sternly. Then I knew the time had
come to make my departure.
I made inquiries with real estate people in the area
and discovered a few things about the house neither Mr.
Beard nor Mr. M. had told me. The house was thirteen
years old and had been built by a certain Terry Graham.
There had been two tenants before the Beairds. Prior to
1835 the area had been Indian territory and was used as a
cow pasture by the Cherokee Indians.
I also discovered that Mrs. M. had complained to the
authorities about footsteps in the house when there was no
one walking, of doors opening by themselves, and the
uncanny feeling of being watched by someone she could
not see. That was shortly after the M.s had moved into the
house. The M.s also have young children. It is conceivable
that the entities who caused such problems to the Beaird
family might have been able to manifest through them also.
Be that as it may, the matter was not followed up. Perhaps
their religious upbringing and beliefs did not permit them
to discuss such matters and they preferred to ignore them,
or perhaps the activities died of their own volition. At any
rate, it seemed pretty certain to me that the poltergeist
activities did not entirely cease with the removal of the
Beairds from the house. But did these activities continue
in the new house the Beairds had chosen for their own?
That was a far more important question.
I asked Howard Beaird to send me a report of further
activities if and when they occurred at the new house. On
February 23 he communicated with me by letter. I had
asked him to send me samples of John’s and Andy’s hand-
writing so that I could compare them with the notes he had
let me have for further study. In order to arrive at a satis-
factory explanation of the phenomena it was, of course,
necessary to consider all ordinary sources for them.
Amongst the explanations one would have to take into
account was the possibility of either conscious or uncon-
scious fraud, that is to say, the writing of the notes by
either John or Andy and their somehow manipulating them
so that they would seem to appear out of nowhere in front
of Mr. Beaird. For that purpose I needed examples of the
two handwritings to compare them with some of the hand-
writings on the notes.
There were a number of noises in the new home that
could be attributed to natural causes. But there were two
separate incidents which, in the opinion of Howard Beaird,
could not be so explained. Shortly before I arrived in Tyler
682
a minor incident occurred which makes Howard wonder
whether the entities from beyond the veil are still with him
in the new house. One evening he had peeled two hard-
boiled eggs in order to have them for lunch the following
day. He had placed them in the refrigerator on a paper
towel. The following morning he discovered that both eggs
were frozen solid even though they were still on the lower
shelf of the refrigerator. This could only have been accom-
plished if they had spent considerable time in the freezer
compartment during the night. Questioning his wife and
son as to whether they had put the eggs in the freezer, he
discovered that neither of them had done so. He decided to
test the occurrence by repeating the process. He found that
the two new eggs which he had placed in the refrigerator
that night were still only chilled but not frozen the next
day. What had made the first pair of eggs as hard as stone
he is unable to understand, but he is satisfied that the
occurrence may be of non-psychic origin.
Then there was the matter of a clock playing a cer-
tain tune as part of its alarm clock device. Through no
apparent reason this clock went off several times, even
though no one had been near it. Even though it had not
been wound for a long time and had only a 24-hour move-
ment, it played this tune several times from deep inside a
chest of drawers. Eventually the clock was removed, and in
retrospect Mr. Beaird does not think that a supernatural
situation could have been responsible for it. But the two
separate incidents did frighten the Beairds somewhat. They
were afraid that the change of address had not been suffi-
cient to free them from the influences of the past. As it
turned out, the move was successful and the separation
complete.
I had to work with two kind of evidence. There was,
first of all, the massive evidence of mysterious notes which
had fallen out of the sky and which showed handwriting of
various kinds. Perhaps I could make something out of that
by comparing them with the handwritings of living people.
Then there was the question of talking personally and in
depth with the main participants, the Beairds, and, finally,
to see what others who knew them had to say about them.
Howard Beairds daughter, Amy, now Mrs. Howard C.
Wilson, thought that the real victim of what she thought
“a circus of horrors” was her brother Andy. "If you had
known Andy when he was small, up to the time mother
began to show real signs of her illness, it would be impos-
sible for you to recognize him as the same person now. He
was typically, for a little boy, simply brimming over with
mischievous humor. He would do anything to make people
laugh and would run simply hooting with joy through the
house when he had done something devilish.” That was
not the Andy I met when I came to Tyler. The boy I
talked to was quiet, withdrawn, painfully shy, and showed
definite signs of being disturbed.
The following morning I went to see the Beairds at
their new home. The home itself is pleasant and small and
stands in a quiet, tree-lined street. As prearranged, Mr.
Beaird left me alone with each of the two other members of
his family so that 1 could speak to them in complete confi-
dence. Andy, a lanky boy, seemed ill at ease at first when
we sat down. In order to gain his confidence, I talked about
songs and the records popular at the time, since I had seen
a number of record albums in his room. Somehow this
helped open him up; he spoke more freely after that. Now
sixteen, he was studying at a local barber college. When I
wondered how a young man, in this day and age, would
choose this somewhat unusual profession, he assured me
that the money was good in this line of work and that he
really liked it. He felt he could put his heart and soul into
it. After some discussion of the future as far as Andy was
concerned, I brought the conversation around the matter at
hand.
“When these peculiar events took place you and your
father lived alone in the other house. Did you ever see any-
one?” “Well, I had seen a vision of my mother this one
time. It looked like her but nobody was there really. . .kind
of like a shadow, or a form.” “Have you seen the notes?”
“Yes.” “Did you ever actually see anyone writing them?”
"No.” "Did you ever hear any voices?” “Yeh. I talked to
them.” “How did they sound?” "Well, the women that
were here all sounded alike. . .real high voices. The men
were dead, you know. . .the spirits, or whatever you want
to call them. They had real deep voices. They were hard to
understand.” "Did they talk to you in the room?” “From
out of nowhere. No matter where I might be.” "You didn’t
see them anywhere?” “Never saw them.” “Was your father
with you at the time you heard the voices or were you
alone?” “He was with me at times and not at others.”
“These voices. . .are they mostly in the daytime or are the
at night?” “At night. . .mostly at night, or afternoon, when
I’d get home from school.” “Did it start right after you
moved in?” “No. . .it was two or three months after. ...”
"Did you see the insects?” “Oh yes.” “Where did they
come from?” “It seemed like just out of the ceiling.”
“Could they have come in any other way?” “They couldn’t
have come in. . .not that many.” “Whose voices did you
hear?” "First of all my mother’s.” “The time she was away
at Daingerfield?” “Yes.” “What did the voice sound like?”
“The same high voice. It sounded a little like her.” “What
did she say?” “She started to talk about my grandfather’s
funeral and about someone being mean to her.”
Clearly the boy was not at his best. Whether it was
my presence and the pressure the questioning was putting
on him or whether he genuinely did not remember, he was
somewhat uncertain about a lot of the things his father had
told me about. But he was quite sure that he had heard his
mother’s voice at a time when she was away at Dainger-
field. He was equally sure that none of the insects could
have gotten into the house by ordinary means and that the
notes came down, somehow of their own volition, from the
ceiling. I did not wish to frighten him and thanked him for
The Devil in Texas
683
his testimony, short though it was. I then asked that John,
Mrs. Beaird that is, be asked to join me in the front room
so we could talk quietly. Mrs. Beaird seemed quite at ease
with me and belied the rather turbulent history I knew she
had had. Evidently the stay at her sister-in-law’s house and
the prior psychiatric treatment had done some good. Her
behavior was not at all unusual; in fact, it was deceivingly
normal. Having seen one of her earlier photographs I real-
ized that she had aged tremendously. Of course I realized
that her husband would have discussed many of the things
with her so that she would have gained secondhand knowl-
edge of the phenomena. Nevertheless, I felt it important to
probe into them because sometimes a person thinks she is
covering up while, in fact, she is giving evidence.
“Now we are going to discuss the other house,” I
said pleasantly. "Do you remember some of the events that
happened in the other house?” “Well, I wasn’t there when
they took place. They told me about it. . .and actually, you
will learn more from my son than from me because I don’t
know anything.” "You were away all that time?” “Yes.”
“Before you went, did anything unusual happen?” "Noth-
ing.” "After you came back did anything happen?” “Well,
I don't know. . .1 don’t remember anything.” "Before you
bought the house, did you have any unusual experience
involving extrasensory perception at any time?” "Never. 1
know nothing whatever about it.” "You were living some-
where else for a while.” “I was with my sister-in-law.”
“How would you describe that period of your life? Was it
an unhappy one? A confusing one? What would you say
that period was?” “I have never been unhappy. I have
never been confused.” “Why did you go?” “I felt I needed
to for personal reasons.” “During that time did you have
contact with your husband and son? Did you telephone or
did you come back from time to time?” “I did not come
back, but I had some letters from them and I believe that I
talked some — ” "Did your husband ever tell you some of
the things that had happened in your absence?” “Yes. He
told me.” “What did you make of it?” “I didn’t under-
stand it. If I had seen it, I’d have gotten to the bottom of it
somehow." “The people who are mentioned in some of
these notes, are you familiar with them? Were there any of
them that you had a personal difficulty with or grudge
against?” “None whatever. They were friends.” “Now, you
are familiar with this lady, Mrs. Elliott, who has, appar-
ently, sent some notes.” “Oh yes. She was a very good
friend of mine. Of course, she is much older. She had a
daughter my age and we were very good friends.” “Did
you have any difficulties?” “I have no difficulties,” she
replied and her eyes filled with tears. “No? You had at the
time you left here.” “Not real difficulties. For several rea-
sons, I needed a change. I didn’t intend to stay so long.
She was living alone and she worked during the day. And
we sort of got into a most enjoyable relationship whereby I
took care of certain household chores while she was
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
gone...” “What made you stay so long?” “I just really
can’t tell you what it was.” “You still have no answer to
the puzzle as to what happened?” “None. I have no idea.”
“Do you remember having any treatments?” “I’m just get-
ting old. That is the difficulty.”
It was clear that her mind had blocked out all mem-
ory of the unpleasant occurrences in her life. As often hap-
pens with people who have undergone psychiatric
treatment, there remains a void afterwards, even if electric
shock therapy has not been used. Partially this is, of
course, due to the treatment, but sometimes it is self-
induced deliberately by the patient in order to avoid dis-
cussing the unpleasant. Mrs. Beaird had returned to her
husband and son to resume life and try to make the best of
it. To go back over the past would have served no purpose
from her point of view. This was not a matter of refusing
to discuss these things with me. She did not remember
them quite consciously and no amount of probing would
have helped, except perhaps in-depth hypnosis, and I was
not prepared to undertake this with a former mental
patient. Clearly then I could not get any additional material
from the principal. I decided to re-examine the evidence
and talk again with the one man who seemed, after all, the
most reliable witness in the entire case, Mr. Beaird himself.
In particular, I wanted to re-examine his own per-
sonal observations of certain phenomena, for it is one thing
to make a report alone, quietly, filled with the memory of
what one has experienced, and another to report on phe-
nomena while being interrogated by a knowledgeable, expe-
rienced investigator. Quite possibly some new aspects
might be unearthed in this fashion. At the very least it
would solidify some of the incredible things that had hap-
pened in the Beaird household.
On the morning of February 6, 1969, I met with
Howard Beaird at my hotel and we sat down, quietly, to go
over the fantastic events of the past three years. In order to
arrive at some sort of conclusion, which I wanted very
much to do, I had to be sure that Mr. Beaird’s powers of
observation had been completely reliable. In going over
some of his statements once again I wasn’t trying to be
repetitive but rather to observe his reaction to my ques-
tions and to better determine in my own mind whether or
not he had observed correctly. In retrospect I can only say
that Howard Beaird was completely unshaken and
repeated, in essence, exactly what he had reported to me
earlier. I feel that he has been telling the truth all along,
neither embellishing it nor diminishing it. Our conversa-
tion started on a calm emotional note which was now much
more possible than at the time he first made his report to
me, when he was still under the influence of recent events.
Things had been quiet at the house and seemed to con-
tinue to remain quiet, so he was able to gather his thoughts
more clearly and speak of the past without the emotional
involvement which would have made it somewhat more
difficult for me to judge his veracity.
684
"Now we had better start at the beginning. I am
interested in discussing whatever you yourself observed.
Your wife was still in the house when the first thing hap-
pened?” “Yes.” “Were those real bugs?” "Yes.” “When
you turned the light on?” “You could see thousands of
bugs on the floor." "How did you get rid of them?” “We
had a vacuum cleaner.” “Did they come from the direction
of the windows or the door?” “The door.” “Now, after the
bugs, what was the next thing that you personally
observed?” “I heard my wife’s voice. After my son and I
had gone to bed we were lying there talking about these
things that had happened. That was after she had left
Tyler.” “Did it sound like her voice?” “No. It didn’t sound
like her voice to me but it was her. ...” “Well, how did
you know it was her?” "She told me it was and was talking
about my sister having insulted her. Nobody else knew that
except my wife and I.” “Where did the voice seem to come
from? Was it in the room?” “Yes.” “What happened after
that?” "Several nights after that, she appeared to Andy. I
heard him talking in the bathroom. He talked for two or
three minutes, and then I heard him say, well, goodbye.”
“Didn’t it make you feel peculiar? His mother was obvi-
ously not there and he was talking to her?” “Well, I had
already had my encounter with her.” “Did you call your
wife in Daingerfield?” “No.” “Why not?” “Well, she
wouldn’t have believed me. I had thought about writing
her sister-in-law and telling her that you’ve got to keep my
wife in Daingerfield. I don't want her here. Yet, I thought,
that’s a foolish thing to do, because all she’ll say is, she
wasn’t here. She wasn’t in person. Her body wasn’t here.”
“After the voice, what came next?” “Well, it was shortly
after that we started hearing these other voices.” “Did you
hear those voices?” “All of them, yes. All four.” "Did they
sound alike or did they sound different?” “The men had
deep rough voices, but I could tell them apart. And the
ladies were all subtle voices and I couldn't tell them apart,
except when they told me.” “Did you ever hear two voices
at the same time?” “I don’t believe so. However, Mrs.
Snow and Mrs. Elliott were there at the same time. That
is, they said they were. That was when Henry Anglin was
giving us so much trouble and they had to carry him back
to his grave.” “Let’s talk about anything that you have
actually seen move.” "I saw these notes that were folded.
Sometimes as many as ten or fifteen notes a day.” “From
an enclosed room?” “Well, the doors weren’t closed
between the rooms, but I’d be sitting at the table eating
something, and all of a sudden I’d see one fall. I’d look up
toward the ceiling and there ’d be one up there.” "Most of
these notes were signed ‘Mrs. Elliott’?” “Yes. Later she
signed them. At first, Elie and then El. Now after my wife
came back from Daingerfield she, too, would send me
notes through Andy. I was working in my shop and Andy
would bring me a note written with numbers, in code. 1
was A, 2 was B, and so forth. I hated to take the time to
decipher those things, but I would sit down and find out
what they said. In one note she asked me if I didn’t ‘lose’
some weight?” “Did your wife ever write you a note in
longhand or in block letters?” "No.” "Was there any simi-
larity in the writing of your wife’s note and those that later
came down from the ceiling?” “I can’t say, but Mrs. Elliott
had been after me to lose weight. I thought it was peculiar
— that my wife came from Daingerfield and asked about
my losing weight also.” “Mrs. Elliott was a contemporary
of your wife?” "She died in 1963. About a year before we
moved here.” “Were those two women very close in life?”
“Not particularly. They were neighbors.” "What about
Mrs. Snow?” “She was peculiar.” “What objects did you
see move in person?" "I saw a heavy pair of shoes lift
themselves off the floor and fly right over my bed and land
on the opposite side of the bed.” “Did they land fast or did
they land slowly?” “It was just as if I’d picked them up
and thrown them. Andy’s house shoes came the same way.
I've watched the cat being lifted up about a foot from
where he was sitting and just be suspended for several sec-
onds and it didn’t fall on the floor. I saw a can of insect
spray which was sitting on the cabinet come over and sus-
pend itself right over that opening, and spray into that lit-
tle room, and I was nearly suffocated. 1 had to open the
doors or the insect spray would have got me.” “You
weren’t holding the can?” “No.” “I am particularly inter-
ested in anything where you were actually present when
movement occurred, or voices were heard.” “I've seen my
clothes fly through the air as I was coming home.” “Did
these things occur whether your wife was physically in the
house or not?” “Yes.” “Did anything ever happen while
neither your son nor your wife was at home but you were
alone?” "I believe so.” “Your wife had some personal shock
in 1951, I believe. When her best friend died suddenly. Do
you feel her mental state changed as a result?” “Very grad-
ually, yes. She was very happy, though, when she found
out she was going to have another child, because she
thought this would make up for the loss of her friend. She
was just crazy about him.” “Now, when was the first time
you noticed there was something wrong with her men-
tally?” “In 1960 my wife took over her daughter’s room.
She stopped up all the windows with newspapers scotch-
taped against the wall and hung a blanket in each window
of the bedroom.” “Why did she do that?” “She felt some-
one was spying on her. At the office, she took the tele-
phone apart, and adding machines and typewriters, looking
for microphones to see who was spying on her.” “But the
phenomena themselves did not start until you moved into
this house?” “That’s right.”
I thanked Mr. Beaird for his honest testimony, for he
had not claimed anything beyond or different from his
original report to me. I took the voluminous handwritten
notes and the letters pertaining to the case and went back
to New York to study them. This would take some time
since I planned to compare the handwriting by both Mrs.
Beaird and Andy. I didn’t, for a moment, think that the
The Devil in Texas
685
notes had been written consciously by either one of them
and simply thrown at Mr. Beaird in the ordinary way.
Quite obviously Mr. Beaird was no fool, and any such
clumsy attempt at fake phenomena would not have gone
unnoticed, but there are other possibilities that could
account for the presence of either Mr. Beaird’s or Andy’s
handwriting in the notes, if indeed there was that
similarity.
There were already, clearly visible to me, certain par-
allels between this case and the Bell Witch case of Ten-
nessee. Vengeance was being wrought on Howard Beaird
by some entity or entities for alleged wrongs, in this case
his failure to execute minor orders given him. But there
were other elements differing greatly from the classic case.
In the Bell Witch situation there was not present, in the
household, anyone who could be classed as psychotic. In
Tyler we have two individuals capable of supplying unused
psychic energies. One definitely psychotic, the other on the
borderline, or at least psychoneurotic.
I then decided to examine the notes written in this
peculiar style longhand, almost always in block letters but
upper case letters in the middle of words where they do
not belong. It became immediately clear to me that this
was a crude way of disguising his handwriting and was not
used for any other reason. It is of course a fact that no one
can effectively disguise his handwriting to fool the expert.
He may think so, but an expert graphologist can always
trace the peculiarities of a person’s handwriting back to the
original writer provided samples are available to compare
the two handwritings letter by letter, word for word. Some
of the notes were downright infantile. For instance, on
December 6, 1965, a note read “My power is decreasing.
I’m going back to Mack. I must hurry. I would like to
come home but I don’t guess I will. 1 love you. Please give
me a Yule gift. I can’t restore my power. I am allowed only
three a year. Phone police.” What the cryptic remark, “I
am allowed only three a year,” is supposed to mean is not
explained.
Sometimes Howard Beaird played right into the
hands of the unknown writer. The Sunday morning after
he and Andy has spent the night at a motel because of the
goings on in the house, he received the notice of a package
at the post office. He knew that he couldn’t get it except
by noon on a weekday, so he asked aloud, “Is this notice
about anything important, as I don't want to come in from
the hospital if it doesn’t amount to anything?” A few sec-
onds later a note fluttered down from the ceiling reading
only "something.” That of course was not a satisfactory
answer such as an adult or reasonable person would give. It
sounded more like a petulant child having a game. On
December 6, 1965, a note materialized equally mysteri-
ously, reading, "I don’t want to admit to Mack that I’m
nutty.” Another note dated December 6, 1965, simply
read, “Howard got jilted.” Another note read "My powers
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
were restored by the Houston witch. Call the police and
ask about her.” There doesn’t seem to be any great differ-
ence between the notes signed by Henry Anglin or by Mrs.
Elliott or not signed at all by someone intimating that they
were the work of Mrs. Beaird. The letters and the forma-
tion of the words are similar. A note dated December 8,
1965, read: "Dear Howard, I love you. I have been wrong.
I want to come home but I don’t want stupid Mack to
know I am unusual. I am really two people. If things end I
won’t remember nothin’. I can be in three places at one. I
love you and Junior. Please dear.”
The note signed “Dorothy Kilgallen,” mentioned pre-
viously and received by Howard Beaird December 22,
1965, reads, “Dear Mr. Beaird: Mrs. Elliott told me about
what all has happened to your family and what Henry
Anglin is responsible for. It is very tragic. He is the reason
I am dead because he changed my pills. Good night and
good luck.” Having been personally acquainted with the
late Hearst columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, I am quite certain
that she would not have expressed herself in this manner,
dead or alive.
A note signed Pont Thornton dated December 23,
1965, reads, "Dear Howard P.S. an Andy: I no yu well. I
no yu good. I don’t drinck much do yu haf had hardships.
Anglin is a mean man. I am smarter than Henry Lee. I am
distant kin of Abe Lincoln and Lewis Armstrong and Sam
Davis Junior and Jon F. Kenede.” Not only was the note
atrociously misspelled but it lists several quite improbable
relationships. When writing as Mrs. Elliott the personality
is much more concise and logical than when the writer is
supposed to be Henry Anglin or Mrs. Beaird. But despite
the difference in style the letters are very similar. Of course
since the notes came down for almost three years it is to be
expected that there are some differences in both style and
appearance between them.
On September 17, 1967, Howard Beaird observed,
“About 9 or 10 P.M. Andy heard Mrs. Elliott call. She told
him he could talk to her and that mother could not hear so
he did and apparently mother knew nothing of it. Just as I
was getting ready for bed I heard Mrs. Elliott calling me.
The sound seemed to come toward the kitchen and as Andy
and Johnny were watching TV in her bedroom I went to the
kitchen. Mrs. Elliott called me several more times and the
sound then seemed to be coming from my room. She said
that Johnny couldn’t hear me so I tried to talk to her but
Andy said she told him she never could hear me. Anyway
before going to bed I found a very small piece of paper
folded so small on the floor in the hall and also a South
Side Bank deposit slip folded near it. The small note said
‘Be very generous. Say hi to me. Mrs. Snow.’ The larger
note said, ‘Don’t be stingy Sam be a generous Joe. George
Swiney.’ After I had gone to bed I heard Mrs. Elliott call-
ing me several times but could never make her hear me
answer. Just as I was about to go to sleep, Andy came in
and said Mrs. Elliott told him she had left me a note on
the floor. Just as I got up to look for it a note dropped in
686
the chair next to my bed. I took it to the kitchen to get my
glasses and it said, ‘Howard, I hope there won’t be any slugs.
Try to be generous, you have a lot of money. There’s so much
you could get you, John and Andy.' This was followed by a
list of objects, clothing primarily, which he could get for
his family on her suggestion. Howard Beaird tried to talk
to Mrs. Elliott to ask her where all that alleged money was
but he could never get an answer to that.
On September 29, 1967, Howard Beaird noticed that
Mrs. Elliott came to visit him around 7:30 P.M. He can’t
understand how she can make him hear her when she calls
him by name and then make it impossible for him to hear
the rest of her. Apparently the rest of the conversation has
to be relayed through Andy. On the other hand, if he
speaks loudly enough she can hear him. That night Mrs.
Elliott informed him that a Mr. Quinn had been by earlier.
A little later Mr. Quinn himself came back and Howard
Beaird actually heard him call, but he could hear nothing
else, and again Andy had to be the interpreter. Andy said
that Mr. Quinn sounded like a robot talking, and that, of
course, made sense to Mr. Beaird, since he knew that
Quinn, who had lost his voice due to cancer prior to his
death, used an instrument held to his throat to enable him
to talk. The late Mr. Quinn apparently wanted to know
how some of the people back in Grand Saline were, includ-
ing a Mrs. Drake, Mr. And Mrs. Watkins, and the
McMullens. This information, of course, could not have
been known to Andy, who had been much too young at
the time the Beairds knew these people in the town where
they formerly lived.
Mrs. Elliott also explained the reason she and the
other spirits were able to be with Mr. Beaird that evening
was that they had been given time off for the holidays —
because of Halloween, although that was a little early for
All Hallow’s Eve. Mr. Beaird thought it peculiar that spir-
its get furloughs from whatever place they are in.
On September 30, 1967, Beaird had heard nothing at
all from Mrs. Elliott during the day. Andy had been out
pretty late that night and Mr. Beaird was asleep when he
came in. Sometime after, Andy woke him and said that
Mrs. Elliott had left him a note. They found it on his bed.
It read, “Howard, think about what I said. Are you going
to do it Monday. Elliott.” Just below it was a note reading,
“John wants a vacuum cleaner and a purse. Junior wants a
coat for school and some banjo strings. Hiram.” Now the
remarkable thing about this note is that the first part was
definitely in the handwriting of Mrs. Beaird, while the sec-
ond part was a crude note put together with a lot of capital
letters where they did not belong and generally disorga-
nized. Hiram Quinn, the alleged writer, was of course a
very sick man for some time prior to his passing. When
Howard Beaird confronted the alleged Mrs. Elliott with the
fact that her note was written in the handwriting of his
wife, she shrugged it of by explaining that she could write
like anybody she wished.
On October 2, 1967, Mr. Beaird noted, “About 7:30
P.M. Mrs. Snow called my name. I was in the kitchen and
the voice seemed to come from the back part of the house
where Andy and John were. The voice sounded exactly like
Mrs. Elliott's and although I could hear it plainly enough
and answered aloud immediately I could hear nothing
else and Andy had to tell me what she had said. She just
wanted to tell me about my stamp business and how John
had been. She barely could hear me and told Andy to turn
off the attic fan and for me to go into my room and close
the door so she could hear. She couldn’t explain how I
could hear her call my name and then hear nothing more
and said it was some kind of 'law.’ ”
The notes signed by Mrs. Elliott from that period
onward frequently looked as if they had been written by
Mrs. Beaird. The handwriting is unquestionably hers. That
is to say it looks like hers. Howard Beaird does not doubt
that the notes were genuinely materialized in a psychic
sense. On October 23 he had dozed off to sleep several
times and on one occasion was awakened by the rustling of
papers on the floor beside his bed. He was alone in the
room at the time. He turned the light on and found a sort
of pornographic magazine folded up on the floor. Andy
came in at this point and explained that Mrs. Elliott had
told him she had found this magazine in Mrs. Beaird’s
room. She said that Mrs. Beaird had gotten it at the beauty
shop and the piece of paper was torn from it. On the note
was printed “Somebody loves you," signed underneath, El.
On November 12, 1967, a Sunday, Howard Beaird
heard Mrs. Elliott talk to him. She advised him that he
should go to Mrs. Beaird’s room and look for some nudist
pictures and also some hand-drawn pictures of naked men
and women. Mr. Beaird found all these things but his wife
denied any knowledge of them. The following night,
November 13, 1967, was particularly remarkable in the
kind of phenomena experienced by Howard Beaird. “Mrs.
Elliott came by before I left for the shop and told me to
look for some more lewd pictures. I found some and
destroyed them. Mrs. Elliott told me to be sure and tear
them up in front of John and maybe she would quit draw-
ing them, and also quit buying the nudist magazine pic-
tures. Later that night, about 9:15, Mrs. Elliott called me
on the telephone. That’s the first time I ever talked to a
ghost on the telephone. I could understand what she said on
the phone, yet I could never hear anything except her call-
ing my name when I was at home. Of course all she said
on the phone was to come home. I then talked to Andy
and he said she wanted me to come home right then and
get some more drawings and nudist magazines from John’s
hiding places. I did go home and got the pictures and went
back to the shop after I had destroyed them.”
Some of the notes showed the underlying conflict,
imagined or real, between the young boy and his father
which was of much concern to “guardian angel” Mrs.
The Devil in Texas
687
Elliott. On January 1 1 , 1968, a note read, "Howard, I need
to write you notes. Junior has had to worry so much. Why
do you mind him coming with me? He would be happy. It
would be right for him not to worry. I agree he must get
an education but at seventeen he could get a course and
then to college. In the meantime I will help John and him.
He could play music and he would be great at seventeen.
He would also like to take care of the house. John would
get so much better. You would be better financially and
Junior could get better. This is the only thing I will allow
or I will take him with me if he wants to ... He said he
would tell me to go and wouldn’t go but that wouldn’t
change him from wanting to. You had better pay attention
cause he wants to come. I have all the divine right to take
him. El.” This threat by the spirit of Mrs. Elliott to take
the young boy with her into the spirit world did not sit
lightly with his father, of course. Analyzed on its face
value, it has the ring of a petulant threat a mentally han-
dicapped youngster would make against his parents if
he didn’t get his way. If Mrs. Elliott was the spirit of a
mature and rational person then this kind of threat didn’t
seem, to me, to be in character with the personality of the
alleged Mrs. Elliott.
The following night, January 12, 1968, the communi-
cator wrote, "Howard, I have the divine right. I will prove
it by taking Junior and I take him tonight. You don’t love
him at all. You don’t care about anyone.” Mrs. Elliott had
not taken Andy by January 1 5, but she let Howard know
that she might do so anyway any time now. In fact, her
notes sounded more and more like a spokesman for Andy
if he wanted to complain about life at home but didn’t
have the courage to say so consciously and openly. On Jan-
uary 1 8, Mrs. Elliott decided she wasn’t going to take the
boy after all. She had promised several times before that
she would not come back any longer and that her appear-
ance was the last one. But she always broke this pledge.
By now any orthodox psychologist or even parapsy-
chologist would assume that the young man was materially
involved not only in the composition of the notes but in
actually writing them. I don’t like to jump to conclusions
needlessly, especially not when a prejudice concerning the
method of communication would clearly be involved in
assuming that the young man did the actual writing. But I
decided to continue examining each and every word and to
see whether the letters or the words themselves gave me
any clue as to what human hand had actually written them,
if any. It appeared clear to me by now that some if not all
of the notes purporting to be the work of Mrs. Elliott were
in the hand of Mrs. Beaird. But it was not a very good
copy of her handwriting. Rather did it seem to me that
someone had attempted to write in Mrs. Beaird’s hand who
wasn’t actually Mrs. Beaird. As for the other notes, those
signed by Henry Anglin, Hiram Quinn and those unsigned
but seemingly the work of Mrs. Beaird herself, they had
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
certain common denominators amongst them. I had asked
Mr. Beaird to supply me with adequate examples of the
handwriting of both Andy and Mrs. Beaird. That is to say,
handwritten notes not connected in any way with the psy-
chic phenomena at the house. I then studied these exam-
ples and compared them with the notes which allegedly
came from nowhere or which materialized by falling from
the ceiling in front of a very astonished Mr. Beaird.
I singled out the following letters as being character-
istic of the writer, whoever he or she may be. The capital
letter T, the lower case e, lower case p, g, y, r, and capital
B, C, L, and the figure 9. All of these appeared in a num-
ber of notes. They also appear in the sample of Andy’s
handwriting, in this case a list of song titles which he liked
and which he was apparently going to learn on his guitar.
There is no doubt in my mind that the letters in the psy-
chic note and the letters on Andy’s song list are identical.
That is to say that they were written by the same hand. By
that I do not mean to say, necessarily, that Andy wrote the
notes. I do say, however, that the hand used to create the
psychic notes is the same hand used consciously by Andy
Beaird when writing notes of his own. I am less sure, but
suspect, that even the notes seemingly in the handwriting
of his mother are also done in the same fashion and also
traceable to Andy Beaird.
On December 7, 1965, one of the few drawings in
the stack of notes appeared. It showed a man in a barber
chair and read, among other annotations, “Aren’t the bar-
bers sweet, ha ha.” It should be remembered that Andy’s
great ambition in life was to be a barber. In fact, when I
met and interviewed him he was going to barber school.
What then is the meaning of all this? Let us not
jump to conclusions and say Andy Beaird wrote the notes
somehow unobserved, smuggled them into Mr. Beaird’s
room somehow unnoticed, and made them fall from the
ceiling seemingly by their own volition, somehow without
Mr. Beaird noticing this. In a number of reported instances
this is a possibility, but in the majority of cases it simply
couldn’t have happened in this manner, not unless Howard
Beaird was not a rational individual and was, in fact, telling
me lies. I have no doubt that Mr. Beaird is telling me the
truth and that he is a keen and rational observer. Conse-
quently the burden of truth for the validity of the phenom-
ena does not rest on his gift of observation, but on the
possibility of producing such paranormal occurrences
despite their seeming improbability yet reconciling this
with the ominous fact that they show strong indications of
being Andy Beaird’s handwriting.
We must recognize the tension existing for many
years in the Beaird household, the unhappy condition in
which young Andy found himself as he grew up, and the
fact that for a number of years he was an introspected and
suppressed human being unable to relate properly to the
outside world and forced to find stimulation where he
could. Under such conditions certain forces within a young
person can be exteriorized and become almost independent
688
of the person himself. Since these forces are part of the
unconscious in the person and therefore not subject to the
logical controls of the conscious mind, they are, in fact,
childish and frequently irrational. They are easily angered
and easily appeased and, in general, behave in an infantile
fashion. By the same token these split -off parts of personal-
ity are capable of performing physical feats, moving
objects, materializing things out of nowhere and, in gen-
eral, contravening the ordinary laws of science. This we
know already because cases of poltergeists have occurred
with reasonable frequency in many parts of the world. In
the case of the Beaird family, however, we have two other
circumstances which must be taken into account. The first
is the presence in the house of not one but two emotionally
unstable individuals. Mrs. Beaird's increasing divorce from
reality, leading to a state of schizophrenia, must have freed
some powerful forces within her. Her seemingly uncon-
scious preoccupation with some aspects of sex indicates a
degree of frustration on her part yet an inability to do
anything about it at the conscious level. We have recog-
nized that the power supply used to perform psychic phe-
nomena is the same power inherent in the life force or the
sexual drive in humans, and when this force is not used in
the ordinary way it can be diverted to the supernormal
expression, which in this case took the form of poltergeist
phenomena. We have, therefore, in the Beaird case, a
tremendous reservoir of untapped psychic energy subject
to very little conscious control on the part of the two indi-
viduals in whose bodies these energies were stored and
developed.
Were the entities purporting to use these facilities to
express themselves beyond the grave actually the people
who had once lived and died in the community? Were
they, in fact, who they claimed to be, or were they simply
being re-enacted unconsciously perhaps by the split-off
part of the personalities of both Andy and Mrs. Beaird?
Since Howard Beaird has examined the signature of one of
those entities, at least, and found it to be closely similar, if
not identical, with the signature of the person while alive,
and since, in that particular case, access to the signature
was not possible to either Andy or Mrs. Beaird, I’m
inclined to believe that actual non-physical entities were, in
fact, using the untapped energies of these two unfortunate
individuals to express themselves in the physical world.
Additional evidence, I think, would be the fact that in sev-
eral cases the names and certain details concerning the per-
sonalities of several individuals whom Howard Beaird knew
in their former residence in Grand Saline were not known
or accessible to either his wife or the young man. I am not
fully satisfied that there could not have been some form of
collusion between Andy and these so-called spirit entities
in creating the phenomena, but if there was such collusion
it was on the unconscious level. It is my view that Andy’s
unexpressed frustrations and desires were picked up by
some of these discarnate entities and mingled with their
own desire to continue involving themselves in earth condi-
tions and thus became the driving force in making the
manifestations possible.
What about the fact that Andy Beaird’s handwriting
appears in the majority of the notes? If Andy did not write
these notes physically himself, could they have been pro-
duced in some other manner? There is no doubt in my
mind that in at least a large percentage of the notes Andy
could not have written them physically and dropped them
in front of his father without Mr. Beaird noticing it. Yet,
these very same notes also bear unmistakable signs that
they are the work of Andy Beaird’s hand. Therefore the
only plausible solution is to assume that a spiritual part of
Andy’s body was used to create the notes in the same way
in which seemingly solid objects have, at times, been mate-
rialized and dematerialized. This is known as a “physical”
phenomenon and it is not entirely restricted to poltergeist
cases but has, on occasion, been observed with solid objects
which were moved from one place to another, or which
appeared at a place seemingly out of nowhere, or disap-
peared from a place without leaving any trace. The phe-
nomenon is not unique nor particularly new. What is
unique, or nearly so in the case of the Beaird family of
Tyler, Texas, is the fact that here the obvious is not the
most likely explanation. I do not think Andy Beaird wrote
those notes consciously. I do believe that his writing ability
was used by the entities expressing themselves through
him. I believe that Andy was telling the truth when he said
he was surprised by the appearance of the notes and at no
time did he have knowledge of their contents except when
one of the other spirit entities informed him about them.
The same applies, of course, to Mrs. Beaird. In the phe-
nomenon known as a automatic writing, the hand of a liv-
ing person, normally a fully rational and conscious
individual, is used to express the views, memories and fre-
quently the style of writing of a dead individual. The notes
which fluttered down from the ceiling at the Beaird home
are not of the same kind. Here the paper had first to be
taken from one place and impressed with pencil writing in
the hand of another person before the note itself could be
materialized in plain view of witnesses. This is far more
complex than merely impressing the muscular apparatus of
a human being to write certain words in a certain way.
Why then did the phenomena cease when the Beairds
moved from one house to another if the entities expressing
themselves through Andy and Mrs. Beaird had not found
satisfaction? There was no need for them to simply leave
off just because the Beairds moved from one house to the
other. There must have been something in the atmosphere
of the first house that in combination with the untapped
psychic energies of Andy and Mrs. Beaird provided a fer-
tile ground for the phenomena.
Apparently some disturbances have continued in the
former Beaird home, while none have been reported by
them in their new house. The current owners of the old
The Devil in Texas
689
Beaird home, however, refused to discuss such matters as
psychic phenomena in the house. They are fully convinced
that their fundamentalist religion will allow them to take
care of these occurrences. To them psychic phenomena are
all the work of the devil.
And so the devil in Tyler, Texas, may yet erupt once
again to engulf a family, if not an entire community, with
the strange and frightening goings on which, for three
years, plagued the Beaird family to the point of emotional
and physical exhaustion. The Beairds themselves are out of
danger. Andy has grown up and his untapped powers will
unquestionably be used in more constructive channels as
the years go by. Mrs. Beaird has assumed her rightful posi-
tion in her husband’s house and has closed the door on her
unhappy past. Howard Beaird, the main victim of all the
terrible goings on between 1965 and 1968, is satisfied that
they are nothing now but memories. He has no desire to
bring them back. His sole interest in my publishing an
account of these incredible happenings was to inform the
public and to help those who might have similar
experiences.
m 155
Diary of a Poltergeist
PAUL Leuthold IS A man in his late forties with a pleas-
ant personality and reasonably good educational back-
ground, perhaps better read than most farmers in other
countries but, certainly, far from sophistication or knowl-
edgeability in areas of philosophy or the occult. He has a
wife and two children — a son, now in his seventeenth year,
and a daughter, a few years younger.
Life on the Leuthold farm — a modest-sized establish-
ment consisting of a house, stables, acreage, and perhaps
two dozen cattle housed in stables directly across from the
farmhouse on a narrow street in the little village of
Maschwanden — was normal and routine year after year.
That is, until the year 1960 rolled around. In the cold,
moist fall of 1960, the Leuthold family and their home-
stead became the center of a poltergeist case unique in the
annals of Swiss psychic research.
The “cast of characters” at the time consisted of Paul
Leuthold, forty-eight; Mrs. Leuthold, forty-seven; daughter
Elizabeth, ten; son Paul, thirteen; and a maid named Elfi,
age eighteen, who was somewhat mentally handicapped, a
factor not to be overlooked in cases of this kind. There was
also an Italian handyman named Angelo, who was at the
farm only a part of the time during which the uncanny
happenings took place.
Next door to the Leuthold homestead stands the
house of the Eichenberger family. Mr. Eichenberger, fifty,
was an active spiritualist, a rarity in Switzerland. His wife,
forty-five, is a simple woman without any interest in the
subject, and there were four children ranging in age from
three to nine years at the time.
At first, the strange events only puzzled the Leuthold
family, and they did not suspect that anything unusual was
happening. But when no human agency could be found
responsible for the moving of objects, disappearances and
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
690
reappearances and other obviously mischievous actions in
and around the house and stables, it dawned on Leuthold
that he was the victim of a poltergeist and he began to take
notes.
Between November 12, 1960, and August 20, 1961,
no less than 104 separate entries were made by him in his
“diary of a poltergeist.” They were brief, to the point, and
without any attempt at a rational explanation. That he left
for others to ponder over. His first entry dates from
November 12, 1960:
November 12,6 p.m. The large metal milk can has
moved 3 yards to the west. At the same time, stones are
thrown against the window — no one there.
November 13, 6 p.m. The milk container with 18 liter
milk in it has disappeared. We find it again at a far cor-
ner of the stables.
November 14, 6 p.m. Neighbor Eichenberger 's
umbrella stand disappears and the scraper, usually at the
staircase, is found outside against the wall.
Same day, half an hour later. Two boots disappear
from the stables and are later found in the feeding area
behind the potato rack. Mrs. Eichenberger, the neigh-
bor, brings our pig bucket which she found in the cellar
next to their umbrella stand! My wife had fed the pigs
barely ten minutes before and left the pig bucket in the
stables. How did it get to the cellar?
Every day now, something disappears, moves from its
accustomed spot and reappears at a strange place. Such
things as milking accessories, very necessary in the daily
work of a farmer, are not where they should be and this
interrupts the normal life on the farm.
Two bicycles are suddenly without air in their tires.
Another inconvenience, since the Swiss use bikes exten-
sively. Most of these events take place around 6 or 7 P.M.
Leuthold examined all possibilities of pranksters. His own
family and household were always accounted for at the crit-
ical times. The village is small and strangers lurking about
could not escape attention, certainly not that often.
As I carefully examined the written notes of polter-
geistic or other uncanny activities in the Leuthold house, I
realized that it was certainly worth looking into. Conse-
quently, I telephoned the farmer and we arranged for a
visit the following afternoon. The Swiss television network
had evinced great interest in my work, although they had
never heard of the Maschwanden case, or, for that matter
of any other psychic investigation. It took an American to
bring the entire area to their attention and reluctantly Jacob
Fischer, the production head, agreed to send a crew with
me.
"But we won’t pay for this, you understand,” he
added with careful Swiss frugality.
The next afternoon, my wife and I joined two news-
reel reporters, one handling the camera and the other the
sound equipment, in a station wagon. We rode along the
outskirts of Zurich, over a couple of hills and out into the
open country to the west of the city. It took us more than
an hour to get to Maschwanden, a village very few people,
especially Americans, ever visit. When we reached the
Leuthold farmhouse, we were expected. While the televi-
sion people started to set up their equipment, I lost no
time asking Paul Leuthold about the most memorable inci-
dent in the haunting of his house.
"My wife and I were inside the house. Suddenly,
there was a knock at the door which sounded as if it was
made by a hard object. My wife was in the kitchen. She
left her work and went to look outside. There was no one
outside. Shortly after, there was another knock. The maid
was downstairs in her room and she didn't see anyone
either. My wife went back to her work. Soon there was a
third set of knocks. This time, she was alerted and kept
close to the door. As soon as she heard the knocking, she
jumped outside.”
“Did she see anything or anyone?” I asked.
“She saw a piece of wood, about a yard in length,
hitting the ground from a height of about a foot.”
“You mean a piece of wood moving through the air
by itself?”
"Yes. The wooden stick was there in the air, all by
itself. Nobody could have thrown it and run away. It was
plain daylight, too.”
I examined the wooden stick. It was a heavy piece of
wood, weighing perhaps half a pound.
“How did the whole thing get started, Mr.
Leuthold?” I asked, and he brought his diary and showed
me an entry:
November 18, 5 :15p.m. The cover of the milk can is
found inside the barn, on the grassy floor. Fifteen min-
utes earlier I had left it in place in the stable.
"The next day,” he added, “the cover was again
found in the ash can.”
“Charming,” I said. “May I see the book?”
The entries followed each other in the orderly, clini-
cal manner of a medical history. Only, the patient was
invisible.
November 19, 5 a.m. I plug in the motor of the cider
press and leave it to do my milking chores. Suddenly,
there is a singe boot in the middle of the barn. The
milking pail floats in the water trough. I decide to check
on the cider press. I hear the motor sputtering as I reach
the cellar. I find the plug pulled out and the cable
pulled back about four yards.
That day was a particularly busy one for the ghost.
At 7:30 A.M. Leuthold finished his first meal and returned
to the stables.
I turn the light on and fetch a container full of
unthrashed corn, which I place inside the barn, in front
of the door leading to the stables. Elfi, the maid, is busy
washing milking equipment at a considerable distance in
the feed kitchen. I leave for a moment to go to the bath-
room, when I return, I find the light turned out and the
container of unthrashed corn gone. I find it upside
down, in the middle of the barn, and next to it, a
broom, which had not been there before either.
But that wasn’t the end of it by a long shot, that
busy morning. Half an hour later Mrs. Leuthold appeared
in the barn and asked where his watch was.
“Where it always is,” Leuthold replied, somewhat
cross, “on the window latch where I always hang it when I
clean the cattle.”
Not so, his wife replied, and dangled the watch and
chain before his eyes. She had just found them in front of
the stables on top of a milk can.
That very evening one of their cows was due to give
birth. Consequently it was necessary to have all the help
available present for the occasion. But the poltergeist was
among them.
9 p.m. The following are present to help with the
birth: schoolteacher Strickler, Max Studer junior,
Werner Siedler, my wife, Elfi the maid, my son Paul
and myself are in the stables. The spout of the milking
machine disappears under our eyes! We search and
finally find it tucked away in the aluminum shelf that
holds the rubber nipples. My wife sends Elfi to lock the
house while we are all over here. The maid returns, the
key is gone. Later we find it on the window sill outside.
We had left it in the lock on the inside.
By midnight it was all over. The calf had come and
the Leutholds went to bed. But the uncanny phenomena
did not cease. From the direction of the pigsty there was a
loud whistling sound. It changed direction from time to
time. There are people in front of the house still up, who
hear it too. Elfi, the maid, complains about the noises. The
moment she is out of the house, the whistling stops. By 2
A.M., all is finally quiet.
I asked Mr. Leuthold to show me the ash can in
which the milk bottle cover was found and the potato bin
Diary of a Poltergeist
691
where it showed up next. The lid of the potato bin weighs
perhaps twenty pounds. Anyone placing the aluminum
cover of the milk can inside it must have had considerable
strength. Two people had to pull it to open it.
All was quiet now for a few days. Then the mysteri-
ous events started up again.
December 1 , 6:30 p.m. I open the door to the stables
to do my milking chores. Everything is normal. My wife
arrives a few moments later and opens the same door.
This time a hay fork is leaning against it from the out-
side. "Where is the plate for the cat?” my wife wants to
know. "Next to the milk can, as always," I reply. It
isn’t. My wife finds the plate on top of the refuse. The
light goes on and off by itself.
Flickering lights going on and off by their own voli-
tion are old stuff with hauntings. In the Rockland County
Ghost case in Ghost Hunter I reported similar happenings
which drove to distraction a certain Broadway composer
then guesting at the Danton Walker home.
Evidently, the Swiss ghost had discovered the useful-
ness of the lights in the stables, for a series of incidents
involving the electric installations now followed.
December 2, 5:15 a.m. The light goes out by itself for
a short time. The plate for the cat disappears again and
is discovered on top of the refuse, like yesterday. I put it
back on the refuse. Suddenly, the light goes on by itself
in the barn. There is no one there who could have
turned it on.
That day turned out rather significantly for the
Leutholds, since it brought the first visual phenomena to
their tranquil midst. The incident with the knocks at the
door and the subsequent discovery by Mrs. Leuthold of
the stick of wood suspended in the air, described earlier,
took place that day around 10:15 A.M.
Saturdays are usually quiet periods in the small towns
and villages of Switzerland. But not this time. Leutholds
diary continues:
December 3, 7:35 a.m. Suddenly the light in the barn
goes on. I go to check on it and notice that the light is
also on in the hayloft. I turn out both lights and go to
the stables. Just then, I clearly hear knocking in the
hayloft. 1 go up to look, but there is nobody there. Since
it is getting lighter outside, I turn off the light in the
stables, but suddenly it is on again. I am busy distribut-
ing the fertilizer. I go inside, turn the light off again.
Shortly afterwards it is burning once more. Werner Frei,
a tractor driver, was passing by at that time. He saw the
light. There was, of course, nobody about who could
have done it.
December 4, 8 a.m. The lights go on by themselves in
the barn. Elfi is in front of the stables and asks if every-
thing is quiet. It is now 8:30. 1 reply, in jest, “The
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
692
ghost is gone.” Within seconds, the light is on again in
the stables, although no one could have gotten in to do
it.
At one time, four lights were burning simultaneously
although no human agency could be held accountable for
it. For weeks on end the Leutholds were harassed by the
poltergeist’s game of turning the lights on.
“Finally I said one day,” Leuthold explained, “it is
strange that the lights should only go on, but never off by
themselves. I had hardly finished when I stood in total
darkness in the stables — the light had been turned off.”
“As if the ghost were listening?” I said.
Leuthold nodded and smiled somewhat sheepishly.
“But it really got worse later in the week,” he said, and
showed me the entry for the eighth of December.
December 8, 7:40 a.m. Elfi goes to feed the chickens,
but the pot containing the chicken feed is gone. She
finally finds it in front of the barn door. Six pumpkins,
used for decorative purposes, are scattered around the
yard. The rabbit hutch is open and two rabbits are run-
ning around outside. The feed tray for the rabbits has
disappeared. It is later discovered by my wife on a cart
in the carriage house.
Evidently, the ghost had it in for the domestic ani-
mals as well as the people. The following day, matters got
even worse.
December 9, 7:30 a.m. The pot with the chicken feed
is gone again. The plate for the cat is again on top of
the refuse heap. Elfi prepares new chicken feed in
another pot, puts it down for a moment on the stairs
and goes into the kitchen. When she gets back just sec-
onds later, the new chicken feed is also gone. She comes
to tell me about it. I go back with her and find the
chicken feed hidden behind the stairs, covered with a
burlap bag.
The Leutholds were beginning to get furious. Mrs.
Leuthold decided to trap the furtive ghost. She put the
chicken-feed pot onto the window sill near the house door,
and tied a nylon string to it, with a small bell at the other
end, putting it down in the corridor leading away from the
entrance door. That way they thought they would hear any
movements the pot might make.
By 9:30 A.M. the pot had moved twice in both direc-
tions, yet no human agency could be discovered!
That very afternoon the poltergeist played a new kind
of trick on them. When Mrs. Leuthold entered the barn
around 2 P.M., she found all sorts of boots scattered
around, and in one of them four receipts for cattle, which
Mr. Leuthold distinctly remembered to have placed high
on a shelf that very morning. The ghost stepped up its
activities in the following days, it seems. Not content with
moving objects when nobody was looking, it now moved
them in the presence of people.
December 1 0, 9:30 a.m. The light goes on by itself in
the hayloft. The missing pot for chicken feed is finally
found near the door of the old stables. 6:30 P.M. the
light goes on in the barn, nobody is there. I put it out
just as Elfi enters and tells me the milking brush is
gone. We look everywhere, without success, just then I
notice the umbrella which is usually found in front of
the house door hanging from the window sill of the
pigsty! Elfi takes it down and replaces it next to the
entrance door of the house, and we continue our search
for the milking brush. Suddenly, the umbrella lies in
front of us on the ground near the old stables! Three
times the lights in the barn go on and I have to put
them out. There is, of course, nobody in there at the
time.
Whatever happened to the missing milking brush,
you’ll wonder. The next morning, a Sunday too, Mrs.
Leuthold was doing her chore of feeding the pigs. In one
of the feed bags she felt something hard and firm that did
not feel like pig’s feed. You guessed it. It was the milking
brush. The Leutholds were glad to have their brush back,
but their joy was marred by the disappearance of the
chicken-feed pot. If it wasn’t the pigs, it was the chickens
the ghost had it in for!
“I remember that morning well,” Mr. Leuthold said
grimly. “I was standing in the stables around quarter to
eight, when the light went out and on again and a moment
later something knocked loudly in the hayloft, while at the
same moment the light went on in the barn! I didn’t know
where to run first to check.”
Those who suspected the somewhat simple maid,
Elfi, to be causing these pranks did not realize that she was
certainly not consciously contributing to them. She herself
was the victim along with others in the house.
On the 12th of December, for instance, she put the
milk cart into a corner of the barn where it usually stood.
A few minutes later, however, she found it in front of the
chicken house.
That same day, Paul Leuthold again came to grips
with the ghost. “It was 9:1 5 in the morning and I walked
up the stairs. Suddenly the window banged shut in the
fruit-storage room ahead of me. There was no draft, no
movement of air whatsoever.”
“Your wife mentioned something about the disap-
pearing applesauce,” I said. "This sounds intriguing. What
happened?”
“On December 13th,” Leuthold replied, refreshing
his memory from his diary, “my wife put a dish of hot
applesauce on the window sill next to the house door, to
cool it off. I came home from the fields around 4:30 in the
afternoon and to my amazement saw a dish of applesauce
on the sill of the old stable, across the yard from the house.
I went to the kitchen and asked Elfi where they had put
the applesauce. ‘Why, on the kitchen window, of course.’
Silently I showed her where it now was. Shaking her head,
she took it and put it back on the kitchen window sill. A
few minutes later, we checked to see if it was still there. It
was, but had moved about a foot away from the spot where
we had placed it.”
That, however, was only the beginning. All day long
“things” kept happening. Parts of the milking machine dis-
appeared and reappeared in odd places. Lights went on and
off seemingly without human hands touching the switches.
These switches incidentally are large, black porcelain light
switches mounted at shoulder height on the walls of the
buildings, and there is no other way of turning lights on or
off individually.
At 7:45 P.M., dinner time, the entire family and ser-
vants were in the main room of the house. The barns and
other buildings were securely locked. Suddenly, the lights
in the barn and chicken house went on by themselves. The
following morning, auditory phenomena joined the long
list of uncanny happenings.
December 14, 6:50 a.m. As I leave the chicken house
I clearly hear a bell, striking and lingering on for about
half a minute, coming from the direction of the other
barn. But, of course, there was no bell there.
“This is going too far,” Mrs. Leuthold remarked to
her husband. “We've got to do something about this.”
She took the chicken-feed pot and placed it again on
the stairs from where it had disappeared some days before.
Then she tied a nylon string to the pot, with a small bell
on the other end; the string she placed inside the corridor
leading to the door and almost but not quite closed the
door. In this manner the string could be moved freely
should anyone pull on it.
The family then ate their breakfast. After ten min-
utes, they checked on the string. It had been pulled outside
by at least a foot and was cut or torn about two inches
from the pot. The pot itself stood one step below the one
on which Mrs. Leuthold had placed it!
Once in a while the ghost was obliging: that same
day, around 8 A.M., Elfi, the maid, took a lumber bucket to
fetch some wood. As she crossed by the rabbit hutch,
lights went on in the cellar, the hayloft and the chicken
house. Quickly Elfi put the bucket down to investigate.
When she returned to pick it up again, it was gone. It was
standing in front of the wood pile, some distance away —
where it was needed!
Daughter Elizabeth also had her share of experiences,
Leuthold reports:
December 14, 5:30 p.m. Elizabeth is busy upstairs in
the house. She hears something hit the ground outside.
Immediately she runs downstairs to find the six orna-
mental pumpkins scattered around the yard, all the way
to the pigsty. When she left the house again an hour
later, she found that somehow the carpet beater and
brush had found their way from inside the house to be
hung on the outside of the door!
Diary of a Poltergeist
693
And so it went. Every day something else moved
about. The chicken-feed pot, or the boots, or the milk can.
The lights kept going on and off merrily. Something or
someone knocks at the door, yet there is never anyone out-
side. Nobody can knock and run out of sight — the yard
between house and barn and the village street can easily be
checked for human visitors. The milk cart disappears and
reappears. The washroom window is taken off its hinges
and thrown on the floor. The manure rake moves from the
front of the barn to the inside of the washroom. The pigsty
gate is opened by unseen hands and the pigs promenade
around the chicken house. Lights keep going on and off.
Even Christmas did not halt the goings on.
December 24, 3 p.m. My cousin Ernest Gautschi and I
are talking in the stables, when suddenly the light goes
on — in the middle of the afternoon. 5:30 P.M. I enter
the barn to give the cows their hay, when I notice the
lights go on by themselves in the old barn. I go back
immediately and find the dog howling pitifully at the
light switch! I went on to the house to see if anyone was
outside, but nobody left even for a moment. My son,
Paul, returns with me to the barn. It was he who had
left the dog tied up outside half an hour earlier. Now he
is tied up inside the barn, and the barn door is locked
tight. How did the dog get inside?
Evidently, the poltergeist had now begun to turn his
attentions towards the dog.
December 25, 7:30 a.m. The dog is found locked into
the stables. Yet, half an hour ago Elfi left him roaming
freely outside after giving him his food.
February 2, 5 a.m. I went to the stables and the dog,
which slept in the barn, followed me into the stables.
He became noisy and one of the calves seemed to get
frightened, so I said to the dog, "Go outside at once!”
As I am turning around to open the door back into the
bam for him to let him out, I see him already outside
the barn. Who opened the door for him? I didn’t.
The children also got their attention from the obnox-
ious spirit. That same day, February 2, Leuthold reported
in his diary:
February 2, 6:15 p.m. The three sleds, which nor-
mally are stacked in the corner of the barn, are found
across the manure trough.
The Leutholds took their unseen “visitor” in stride,
always hoping it would go away as it had come. Their spiri-
tualist neighbor insisted that "Leo the Ghost," as they had
dubbed it, was somehow connected with Elfi, a notion the
Leutholds rejected instantly, since they were in an excellent
position to vouch for the maid’s honesty and non-involve-
ment. The phenomena continued unabated.
March 14, 6 a.m. The window in the dining room is
taken from its hinges and found in a flower pot in front
of the house. 7:30 A.M. My slipper disappears from the
barn and reappears in another part of the stables
beneath a shoe shelf.
March 29, 7:30 a.m. The dog lies in the yard. A few
minutes later he is locked into the old stables. Every-
body in the house is questioned and accounted for.
Nobody could have done it. 7 P.M. Elfi and I empty the
skimmed milk into four pails which we then place next
to the door to the pigsty. At 9 P.M. we find the four
pails directly in front of the door.
Elfi got married in April and presumably her
“uncommitted” vital energies were no longer free to be
used in poltergeist activities. But the Maschwanden ghost
did not obey the standard rules laid down by psychic
researchers. The disturbances went on, Elfi or no Elfi.
August 9, morning. As I clean my boots, I find below
the inner sole a small tie pin which I had missed for
three months.
August 10, 5:30 p.m. A pitchfork is left stuck in a bag
of mineral salt. It took two men to pull it out. Half an
hour before the same fork was still in the barn.
August 19, 4:4 5 a.m. Angelo, the Italian working for
us, misses one of his boots. He finds it 3 yards distant
inside the barn and a heavy pitchfork on top of it.
Similar events took place for another few weeks, then
it gradually became quiet again around the Leuthold farm.
I looked around the house, the stables, the barn. I
talked to all members of the family, except the Italian, who
had only shared their lives briefly, and Elfi, who had left
long ago for wedded bliss.
I asked, “Did anyone die violently in the house?”
Paul Leuthold Sr., thought for a moment. “About ten
years ago we had an Italian working for us. His pride was a
motorcycle, but he could not afford insurance. One day he
decided to return to Italy with some friends for a vacation.
To get an early start, they would leave around three in the
morning. The night before my mother warned him, ‘Be
careful, and don’t get home with your head under your
arm.’ He replied, shrugging, ‘If I am dead, it doesn’t mat-
ter either.'
“He started an hour late the next morning. When he
got to the St. Gotthard, his motorcycle started to kick up.
The other fellows went on ahead and promised to wait for
him at the height of the mountain. He went to a garage
and had his machine fixed, determined not to miss his col-
leagues. He would have been better off had he stayed
behind, for a short time later a piece of rock fell down onto
the road and killed him instantly."
“And you think it may be his ghost that is causing
all this?” I asked.
“No, I don’t,” Leuthold assured me. “I’m only won-
dering who is doing it.”
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
694
I gathered that Leuthold had some suspicions about
his neighbors. Could an active spiritualist "cause” such
phenomena to happen? Not a spiritualist, I assured him,
but maybe a black magician.
Nobody had died violently in the house or farm. But
then, an older house of which we know nothing may have
stood on the spot. The Leuthold children are now beyond
the age of puberty where their untapped energies might
have contributed the power to make the phenomena occur.
My guess is that both Elfi and the children supplied
that energy. When Elfi left, and only the children were
available, the phenomena gradually faded away. They have
not returned since. They are not likely to, unless, of
course, another unwitting supplier of such energy moves
into the house. The discarnate personality behind the dis-
turbances may still be lurking about, untamed, waiting for
another chance. If this happens, Mr. Leuthold can bet that
the Ghost Hunter will be on hand, too!
» 156
The Millbrae Poltergeist Case
One wouldn’t think a spanking, modern home perched on
a hill at Millbrae, a sunny little town outside San Fran-
cisco, could harbor a poltergeist case, one of those sinister
disturbances, usually Germanic, involving a teenager or
otherwise emotionally unabsorbed person in the household
of the living. The youngster is not playing any pranks; the
youngster is being used to play them with, by a disturbed
person no longer in possession of a physical body.
I heard of the Millbrae case from a young girl who
used to live in that house before she decided she was old
enough to have a place of her own and consequently
moved out to a nearby town called Burlingame. Now
twenty, Jean Grasso has a high school education and a big
curiosity about things she cannot explain. Such as ESP.
In 1964, she had an experience that particularly upset
her because it did not fit in with the usual experiences of
life she had been taught in school.
She was in bed at the time, just before falling asleep,
or, as she puts it so poetically, “just before the void of
sleep engulfs you.” Miss Grasso is not at a loss for words.
Her world is very real to her and has little or no room for
fantasies.
Still, there it was. Something prevented her from giv-
ing in to sleep. Before she knew what she was doing, she
saw her own bare feet moving across the floor of her bed-
room; she grabbed the telephone receiver and blurted into
it — ’’Jeannie, what's wrong? Did you get hurt?” The tele-
phone had not rung. Yet her best friend, who was almost
like a sister to her, was on the line. She had been in an
automobile accident in which she had been run off the road
and collided with a steel pole, but except for being shook
up, she was all right.
What made Jean Grasso jump out of a warm bed to
answer a phone that had not yet rung, to speak by name to
someone who had not yet said “hello,” and to inquire
about an accident that no one had told her about as yet?
The dark-haired woman is of Italian and Greek back-
ground and works as the local representative of a milk
company. She is neither brooding nor particularly emo-
tional, it seemed to me, and far from hysterical. The
uncanny things that happened in her life intrigued her
more in an intellectual way than in an emotional, fearful
way.
When she was sixteen, she and five other girls were
playing the popular parlor game of the Ouija board in one
of the bedrooms. Jean and Michele di Giovanni, one of the
girls, were working the board when it started to move as if
pushed by some force stronger than themselves.
Still very skeptical about Ouija boards, Jean
demanded some sign or proof of a spiritual presence. She
got a quick reply: four loud knocks on the wall. There was
nobody in back of the walls who could have caused them.
Suddenly, the room got very cold, and they panicked and
called the “seance” off then and there.
Ever since, she has heard uncanny noises in her par-
ents’ house. These have ranged from footsteps to crashing
sounds as if someone or something were thrown against a
wall or onto the floor. There never was a rational explana-
tion for these sounds.
After Jean moved out to her own place in Burling-
ame, she returned home for occasional weekends to be with
her mother. Her mother sleeps in the living-dining room
area upstairs, to save her the trouble of walking up and
down the stairs to the bedroom level, since she has a heart
condition.
On the occasions when Jean spent a weekend at
home, she would sleep in her mother’s former bedroom,
situated directly underneath the one fixed for her on the
upper level.
One night, as Jean lay awake in bed, she heard foot-
steps overhead. They walked across the ceiling, “as if they
had no place to go.”
Thinking that her mother had breathing difficulties,
she raced upstairs, but found her mother fast asleep in bed.
Moreover, when questioned about the footsteps the next
morning, she assured her daughter she had heard nothing.
The Millbrae Poltergeist Case
695
The Millbrae Poltergeist Case — The owner’s
daughter surrounded by psychic mist
“Were they a man’s footsteps or a woman’s?” I asked
Jean Grasso when we discussed this after the investigation
was over.
"A man’s," she replied without hesitation.
Once in a while when she is in the dining area
upstairs, she will see something out of the corner of an eye
— a flash — something or somebody moving about — and as
soon as she concentrates on it, it is not there. She has
chalked all that up to her imagination, of course.
“When I’m coming down the steps, in the hall, I get
a chill up my spine,” the girl said, “as if I didn’t want to
continue on. My mother gets the same feelings there, too, I
recently discovered.”
That was the spot where my psychic photograph was
taken, I later realized. Did these two psychic people,
mother and daughter, act like living cameras?
“Do you ever have a feeling of a presence with you
when you are all alone?”
“Yes, in my mother’s bedroom, I feel someone is
watching me and I turn but there’s no one there.”
I questioned her about the garden and the area
around the basement. Jean confessed she did not go there
often since the garden gave her an uneasy feeling. She
avoided it whenever she could for no reason she could logi-
cally explain.
One night when she spent the weekend at her par-
ents’ house and was just falling asleep a little after mid-
night, she was awakened by the sound of distant voices.
The murmur of the voices was clear enough but when she
sat up to listen further, they went away. She went back to
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
sleep, blaming her imagination for the incident. But a week
later, to the day, her incipient sleep was again interrupted
by the sound of a human voice. This time it was a little
girl’s or a woman’s voice crying out, “ Help .. .help me!”
She jumped up so fast she could hear her heartbeat
in her ears. Surely, her mother had called her. Then she
remembered that her mother had gone to Santa Cruz.
There was nobody in the house who could have called for
help. She looked outside. It was way after midnight and the
surrounding houses were all dark. But the voice she had
just heard had not come from the outside. It was there,
right in the haunted room with her!
I decided to interview Jean’s mother, Mrs. Adriana
Grasso, a calm pleasant woman whose skepticism in psy-
chic matters has always been pretty strong.
“We’ve had this house since 1957,” she explained,
“but it was already five years old when we bought it. The
previous owners were named Stovell and they were about
to lose it when we bought it. I know nothing about them
beyond that.”
The very first night she went to bed in the house,
something tried to prevent her from doing so. Something
kept pushing her back up. On the first landing of the stairs
leading down to the bedroom level, something kept her
from continuing on down. She decided to fight it out.
Every time after that first experience she had the same
impression — that she really shouldn’t be coming downstairs!
“I hear footsteps upstairs when I’m upstairs, and I
hear footsteps downstairs when I’m upstairs, and there
never is anyone there causing them,” she complained.
On several occasions, she awoke screaming, which
brought her daughter running in anxiously. To calm her,
she assured her she had had a nightmare. But it was not
true. On several different occasions, she felt something
grabbing her and trying to crush her bones. Something
held her arms pinned down. Finally, she had to sleep with
the lights on, and it seemed to help.
A big crash also made the family wonder what was
wrong with their house. Mrs. Grasso heard it upstairs and
her son Allen, upstairs at the same time, thought it was
downstairs — only to discover that it was neither here nor
there!
“Many times the doorbell would ring and there was
no one outside,” Mrs. Grasso added, “but I always
assumed it was the children of the neighborhood, playing
tricks on us.”
Loud noises as if a heavy object had fallen brought
her into the garage to investigate, but nothing had fallen,
nothing was out of place. The garage was locked and so
was the front door. Nobody had gotten in. And yet the
noises continued; only three days before our arrival, Mrs.
Grasso awoke around one in the morning to the sound of
“someone opening a can in the bathroom,” a metal con-
tainer. In addition, there was thumping. She thought, why
is my son working on his movies at this hour of the night?
She assumed the can-opening noises referred to motion pic-
696
ture film cans, of which her son has many. But he had
done nothing of the sort.
Soon even Allen and Mr. Grasso heard the loud
crashes, although they were unwilling to concede that it
represented anything uncanny. But the family that hears
ghosts together, also finds solutions together — and the
Grassos were not particularly panicky about the whole
thing. Just curious.
It was at this point that I decided to investigate the
case and I so advised Jean Grasso, who greeted us at the
door of her parents’ house on a very warm day in October
1966. In addition to Sybil and my wife Catherine, two
friends, Lori Clerf and Bill Wynn, were with us. We had
Lori’s car and Bill was doing the driving.
We entered the house and immediately I asked Sybil
for her psychic impressions. She had not had a chance to
orient herself nor did I allow her to meet the Grassos offi-
cially. Whatever she might “get” now would therefore not
be colored by any rational impressions of the people she
met or the house she was in.
"There is something peculiar about the lower portion
of the house.” Sybil began, referring to the bedroom floor.
The house was built in a most peculiar manner. Because
the lot was sloping toward a ravine, the top floor reached to
street level on the front side of the house only. It was here
that the house had its living room and entrance hall. On
the floor below were the bedrooms, and finally, a garage
and adjoining work room. Underneath was a basement,
which, however, led to ground level in the rear, where it
touched the bottom of the ravine.
At this point, however, Sybil and I did not even
know if there was a lower portion to the house, but Jean
Grasso assured us there was. We immediately descended
the stairs into the section Sybil had felt invaded by psychic
influences.
We stopped at the northeast corner of the bedroom
floor where a rear entrance to the house was also situated,
leading to a closed-in porch whence one could descend to
the ground level outside by wooden stairs.
“What do you feel here, Sybil?” I asked, for I noticed
she was getting on to something.
"Whatever I feel is below this spot,” she commented.
“It must have come from the old foundations, from the
land.”
Never let it be said that a ghost hunter shies away
from dusty basements. Down we went, with Catherine car-
rying the tape recorder and one of the cameras. In the
basement we could not stand entirely upright — at least I
couldn't.
“That goes underneath the corridor, doesn’t it?” Sybil
said as if she knew.
“That’s right," Jean Grasso confirmed.
"Somebody was chased here,” Sybil commented now,
“two men. . .an accident that should never have hap-
pened. . .someone died here. ..a case of mistaken identity.”
“Can you get more?” I urged her.
The staircase and psychic mist
“There is a lingering feeling of a man,” Sybil
intoned. “He is the victim. He was not the person con-
cerned. He was running from the water’s edge to a higher
part of land. He was a fugitive.”
Anyone coming from the San Francisco waterfront
would be coming up here to higher ground.
“Whom was he running from?”
“The Law. . . I feel uniforms. There is an element of
supposed justice in it, but....”
“How long ago was he killed?”
“1884.”
“His name?”
“Wasserman. . .that’s how I get it. I feel the influence
of his last moments here, but not his body. He wants us to
know he was Wasserman but not the Wasserman wanted
by the man.”
“What does he look like to you?”
“Ruddy face, peculiarly deep eyes. . .he’s here but
not particularly cooperative.”
“Does he know he is dead?” I asked.
“I don’t think he knows that. But he notices me.”
I asked Sybil to convey the message that we knew he
was innocent.
"Two names I have to get,” Sybil insisted and started
to spell, “Pottrene. . .P-o-t-t-r-e-n-e. . .Wasserman tells me
these names. . .P-o-v-e-y. . .Povey. . .he says to find them
. . .these people are the men who killed him.”
“How was he killed?”
"They had to kill him. They thought that he was
someone else.”
"What was the other one wanted for?”
The Millbrae Poltergeist Case
697
“He doesn’t know. He was unfortunate to have been
here.”
“What is his first name?”
"Jan. J-a-n.”
Upon my prodding, Sybil elicited also the informa-
tion that this Jan Wasserman was a native of San Fran-
cisco, that his father’s name was Johan or John, and he
lived at 324 Emil Street.
I proceeded then to exorcise the ghost in my usual
manner, speaking gently of the “other side” and what
awaited him there.
Sybil conveyed my wishes to the restless one and
reported that he understood his situation now.
“He’s no trouble,” Sybil murmured. She’s very sym-
pathetic to ghosts.
With that we left the basement and went back up the
stairs into the haunted bedroom, where I took some pho-
tographs; then I moved into the living room area upstairs
and took some more — all in all about a dozen black-and-
white photographs, including some of the garage and stairs.
Imagine my pleased reaction when I discovered a
week later, when the film came back from the laboratory,
that two of the photographs had psychic material on them.
One, taken of the stairs leading from the bedroom floor to
the top floor, shows a whitish substance like a dense fog
filling the front right half of my picture. The other remark-
able photograph taken of Mrs. Grasso leaning against the
wall in the adjoining room shows a similar substance with
mirror effect, covering the front third of the area of the
picture.
There is a reflection of a head and shoulders of a fig-
ure which at first glance I took to be Mrs. Grasso ’s. On
close inspection, however, it is quite dissimilar and shows
rather a heavy head of hair whereas Mrs. Grasso ’s hairdo is
close to the head. Mrs. Grasso wears a dark housecoat over
a light dress but the image shows a woman or girl wearing
a dark dress or sweater over a white blouse.
I asked Jean Grasso to report to me any changes in
the house after our visit.
On November 21, 1966, 1 heard from her again. The
footsteps were gone all right, but there was still something
strange going on in the house. Could there have been two
ghosts?
Loud crashing noises, the slamming of doors, noises
similar to the thumping of ash cans when no sensible rea-
son exists for the noises have been observed not only by
Jean Grasso and her mother since we were there, but also
by her brother and his fiancee and even the non -believing
father. No part of the house seems to be immune from the
disturbance.
To test things, Jean Grasso slept at her mother’s
house soon after we left. At 1 1 P.M., the thumping started.
About the same time Mrs. Grasso was awakened by three
knocks under her pillow. These were followed almost
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
698
immediately by the sound of thumping downstairs and
movements of a heavy metallic can.
Before I could answer Jean, I had another report from
her. Things were far from quiet at the house in Millbrae.
Her brother’s fiancee, Ellen, was washing clothes in the
washing machine. She had closed and secured the door so
that the noise would not disturb her intended, who was
asleep in the bedroom situated next to the laundry room.
Suddenly she distinctly heard someone trying to get
into the room by force, and then she felt a “presence” with
her which caused her to run upstairs in panic.
About the same time, Jean and her mother had heard
a strange noise from the bathroom below the floor they
were then on. Jean went downstairs and found a brush on
the tile floor of the bathroom. Nobody had been downstairs
at the time. The brush had fallen by itself. . .into the mid-
dle of the floor.
When a picture in brother Allen’s room lost its cus-
tomary place on the wall, the thumb tack holding it up dis-
appeared, and the picture itself somehow got to the other
side of his bookcase. The frame is pretty heavy, and had
the picture just fallen off it would have landed on the floor
behind the bookcase; instead it was neatly leaning against
the wall on top of it. This unnerved the young man some-
what, as he had not really accepted the possibility of the
uncanny up to this point, even though he had witnessed
some pretty unusual things himself.
Meanwhile, Jean Grasso managed to plow through
the microfilm files at the San Mateo county library in Bel-
mont. There was nothing of interest in the newspapers for
1884, but the files were far from complete.
However, in another newspaper of the area, the Red-
wood City Gazette, there was an entry that Jean Grasso
thought worth passing on for my opinion. A captain Wat-
terman is mentioned in a brief piece, and the fact the
townspeople are glad that his bill had died and they could
be well rid of it.
The possibility that Sybil heard Wasserman when the
name was actually Watterman was not to be dismissed — at
least not until a Jan Wasserman could be identified from
the records somewhere.
Since the year 1884 had been mentioned by the
ghost, I looked up that year in H.H. Bancroft’s History of
California, an imposing record of that state’s history pub-
lished in 1890 in San Francisco.
In Volume VII, on pages 434 and 435, 1 learned that
there had been great irregularities during the election of
1884 and political conditions bordered on anarchy. The
man who had been first Lieutenant Governor and later
Governor of the state was named R. W. Waterman!
This, of course, may only be conjecture and not cor-
rect. Perhaps she really did mean Wasserman with two
“S’s.” But my search in the San Francisco Directory (Lang-
ley’s) for 1882 and 1884 did not yield any Jan Wasserman.
The 1881 Langley did, however, list an Ernst Wasser-
mann, a partner in Wassermann brothers. He was located
at 24th Street and Potrero Avenue.
Sybil reported that Wasserman had been killed by a
certain Pottrene and a certain Povey. Pottrene as a name
does not appear anywhere. Could she have meant Potrero?
The name Povey, equally unusual, does, however, appear
in the 1902 Langley on page 1416.
A Francis J. Povey was a foreman at Kast & Com-
pany and lived at 1 Beideman Street. It seems rather amaz-
ing that Sybil Leek would come up with such an unusual
name as Povey, even if this is not the right Povey in our
case. Wasserman claimed to have lived on Emil Street.
There was no such street in San Francisco. There was,
however, an Emma Street, listed by Langley in 1884 (page
118).
The city directories available to me are in shambles
and plowing through them is a costly and difficult task.
There are other works that might yield clues to the identity
of our man. It is perhaps unfortunate that my setup does
not allow for capable research assistants to help with so
monumental a task, and that the occasional exact corrobo-
ration of ghostly statements is due more to good luck than
to complete coverage of all cases brought to me.
Fortunately, the liberated ghosts do not really care.
They know the truth already.
But I was destined to hear further from the Grasso
residence.
On January 24, 1967, all was well. Except for one
thing, and that really happened back on Christmas Eve.
Jean’s sister-in-law was sleeping on the couch
upstairs in the living room. It was around two in the morn-
ing, and she could not drop off to sleep, because she had
taken too much coffee. While she was lying there, wide
awake, she suddenly noticed the tall, muscular figure of a
man, somewhat shadowy, coming over from the top of the
stairs to the Christmas tree as if to inspect the gifts placed
near it. At first she thought it was Jean’s brother, but as
she focused on the figure, she began to realize it was
nobody of flesh-and-blood. She noticed his face now, and
that it was bearded. When it dawned on her what she was
seeing, and she began to react, the stranger just vanished
from the spot where he had been standing a moment
before. Had he come to say good-bye and had the Christ-
mas tree evoked a long-ago Christmas holiday of his own?
Before the sister-in-law, Ellen, could tell Jean Grasso
about her uncanny experience, Jean herself asked if she had
heard the footsteps that kept her awake overhead that
night. They compared the time, and it appeared that the
footsteps and the apparition occurred in about the same
time period.
For a few days all was quiet, as if the ghost were
thinking it over. But then the pacing resumed, more furi-
ously now, perhaps because something within him had
been aroused and he was beginning to understand his
position.
At this point everybody in the family heard the
attention-getting noises. Mrs. Grasso decided to address
the intruder and to tell him that I would correct the record
of his death — that I would tell the world that he was not,
after all, a bad fellow, but a case of mistaken identity.
It must have pleased the unseen visitor, for things
began to quiet down again, and as of February 6, at least,
the house had settled down to an ordinary suburban exis-
tence on the outskirts of bustling San Francisco.
But until this book is in print, the Grassos won’t
breathe with complete ease. There is always that chance
that the ghost decides I am not telling the world fast
enough. But that would seem patently unreasonable. After
all, he had to wait an awfully long time before we took
notice of him. And I've jumped several ghosts to get him
into print as an emergency case. So be it: Mr. Wasserman
of Millbrae is not the Mr. Wasserman they were looking
for, whoever they were. They just had themselves a wild
ghost chase for nothing.
» 157
The Ghosts of Barbery Lane
‘‘I KNOW A HOUSE IN Rye, New York, with a ghost,”
painter Mary Melikian said to me, and there was pleasure
in her voice at being the harbinger of good news. Mary
knew how eager I was to find a haunted house, preferably
one that was still haunted.
“A ghost,” Mary repeated and added, tantalizingly,
“a ghost that likes to slam doors."
I pumped Mary for details. One of her friends was
the celebrated portrait painter Molly Guion, known in Rye
as Mrs. John Smythe. Molly and her husband, an architect,
lived in a sprawling mid -nineteenth -century house atop a
bluff overlooking the old New Haven Railroad bed, sur-
rounded by houses built in later years. The Smythes house
was the first one on the tract, the original Manor House,
built there around 1860 by one Jared B. Peck.
I arranged with Mrs. Smythe to visit the house the
following week, in August 1963. My wife Catherine and I
were met at the train by Mrs. Smythe, whose husband also
came along to welcome us. The drive to the house (origi-
nally called "The Cedars” but now only known as a num-
ber on Barbery Lane) took less than five minutes, yet you
might well have entered another world — so serene and
The Ghosts of Barbery Lane
699
rural was the atmosphere that greeted us that moonlit
evening, when the station wagon pulled up to the
gleaming -white 100-year-old house the Smythes had called
home since the summer of 1957.
Rising to four floors, the structure reminded me of
the stylized paintings of Victorian houses associated with
another world. A wide porch went around it at the ground
level, and shady trees protected it from view and intrusion.
The huge living room was tastefully furnished with
fine antiques and all over the house we encountered the
marvelously alive portraits painted by Molly Guion, which
blended naturally into the decor of the house. This was a
stately mansion, only an hour from New York but as quiet
and removed from the city of subways as if it stood in the
Deep South or Down East. We seated ourselves comfort-
ably. Then I came right to the point.
“This ghost,” I began. “What exactly does it do and
when did you first notice anything unusual in the house?”
This is my standard opener. Molly Guion was more
than happy to tell us everything. Her husband left for a
while to tend to some chores.
"We arrived in this house on a hot summer day in
1957 — in July,” she recalled. “About a week later — I
remember it was a particularly hot night — we heard a door
slam. Both my husband and I heard it.”
“Well?”
“But there was absolutely nobody in the house at the
time except us,” Molly said, significantly. “We heard it
many times after that. Maybe six or seven separate
instances. Once around 10 o’clock at night I heard the
front door open and close again with a characteristic
squeak. Mother was living with us then and I was not feel-
ing well, so that a nurse was staying with me. I called out
‘Mother,’ thinking she had come home a bit early, but
there was no reply. Since then I’ve heard the front door
open many times, but there is never anyone there.”
“Is it the front door then?”
“No, not always. Sometimes it is the front door and
sometimes it is this door on the second floor. Come, I’ll
show you.”
Molly led us up the winding stairs to a second floor
containing many small rooms, all exquisitely furnished with
the solid furniture of the Victorian period. There was a
tiny room on one side of the corridor leading to the rear of
the house, and across from it, the door that was heard to
slam. It was a heavy wooden door, leading to a narrow
winding staircase which in turn led up another flight of
stairs to the third floor. Here Molly Guion had built her-
self a magnificent studio, taking up most of the floor space.
“One day in January of 1962,” she volunteered, “I
was downstairs in the kitchen talking to an exterminator,
when I heard a door slam hard — it seemed to me. Yet,
there was no one in the house at the time, only we two
downstairs.”
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
“Outside of yourself and your husband, has anyone
else heard these uncanny noises?”
Molly nodded quickly.
“There was this man that worked for me. He said,
‘Mrs. Smythe, ever time I’m alone in the house, I hear a
door slam!”'
"Anyone else?”
“A Scottish cleaning woman, name of Roberta Gillan.
She lives in Harrison, New York. She once came to me and
said, ‘Did you just slam a door?’ Of course, I hadn’t.”
We were now seated in a small room off the second-
floor corridor. The light was moody and the air dank.
There was a quietness around the house so heavy I almost
wished I could hear a door slam. Molly had more to reveal.
"Once, a little girl named Andree, age eleven, came
to visit us and within seconds exclaimed — ‘Mamma, there
is a ghost in this house!’ ”
Our hostess admitted to being somewhat psychic,
with sometimes comical results. Years ago, when a
boyfriend had failed to keep their date, she saw him clearly
in a dream-vision with a certain blonde girl. He later
explained his absence in a casual way, but she nailed him
with a description of his blonde — and he confessed the
truth.
Two years after she moved into the house, Molly
developed a case of asthma, the kind very old people some-
times suffer from. Strangely, it bothered her only in certain
rooms and not at all in others. It started like a kind of
allergy, and gradually worsened until it became a fully
grown asthmatic condition. Although two rooms were side
by side, sleeping in one would aggravate the condition, but
sleeping in the other made her completely free of it!
“Did you hear any other noises — I mean, outside of
the door slamming?” 1 asked.
“Yes. Not so long ago we had a dinner party here,
and among the guests was a John Gardner, a vice president
of the Bankers Trust Company.”
Suddenly she had heard someone rap at the window
of the big room downstairs. They tried to ignore the noise,
but Gardner heard it too.
“Is someone rapping at your window?” he inquired.
He was assured it was nothing. Later he took Molly
aside and remonstrated with her. “I distinctly heard the
raps,” he said. Molly just smiled.
Finally the Smythes called on the American Society
for Psychic Research to find an explanation for all these
goings-on. But the Society was in no hurry to do anything
about the case. They suggested Molly write them a letter,
which she did, but they still took no action.
I thoroughly inspected the premises — walked up the
narrow staircase into Molly Guion ’s studio where some of
the best portrait oils hung. Her paintings of famous Britons
had just toured as an exhibition and the house was full of
those she owned (the greater part of her work was commis-
sioned and scattered in collections, museums, and private
homes).
700
There was a tiny bedroom next to the landing in
back of the studio, evidently a servant’s room, since the
entire floor had originally been servants' quarters. The
house had sixteen rooms in all.
By now Mr. Smythe had joined us and I explained
my mission. Had he ever noticed anything unusual about
the house?
“Oh yes," he volunteered, speaking slowly and delib-
erately. “There are all sorts of noises in this house and
they’re not ordinary noises — I mean, the kind you can
explain."
"For instance?”
“I was sleeping up here one night in the little bed-
room here,” he said, pointing to the servant’s room in back
of the landing, “when I heard footsteps. They were the
steps of an older person.”
But there was no one about, he asserted.
Jared Peck, who built the house in 1860, died in
1895, and the house passed into the hands of his estate to
be rented to various tenants. In 1910, Stuyvesant Wain-
wright bought the property. In the following year, his ex-
wife, now Mrs. Catlin, bought it from him and lived in it
until her death in the 1920s.
The former Mrs. Wainwright turned out to be a col-
orful person. Born wealthy, she had a very short temper
and the servants never stayed long in her house.
“She certainly liked to slam doors,” Mr. Smythe
observed. “I mean she was the kind of person who would
do that sort of thing.”
“One day she became very ill and everybody thought
she would die,” Molly related. “There she was stretched
out on this very couch and the doctor felt free to talk about
her condition. ‘She won’t last much longer,’ he said, and
shrugged. Mrs. Wainwright sat up with a angry jolt and
barked, ‘I intend to!’ And she did, for many more years of
hot-tempered shenanigans.”
In her later years Mrs. Wainwright moved to the for-
mer servants’ quarters on the second floor — whether out of
economy or for reasons of privacy no one knows for sure.
The slamming door was right in the heart of her rooms and
no doubt she traveled up those narrow stairs to the floor
above many times.
The plumber, painter, and carpenter who worked for
Mrs. Wainwright were still living in Rye and they all
remembered her as a willful and headstrong woman who
liked to have her own way. Her granddaughter, Mrs. Con-
dit, recalled her vividly. The Smythes were pretty sure that
Mrs. Wainwright slept up there on the second floor — they
found a screen marked “My bedroom window” that fit no
other window in any of the rooms.
The Smythes acquired the handsome house from the
next owner, one Arthur Flemming, who used Mrs. Wain-
wright’s old room. But he didn’t experience anything
unusual, or at any rate said nothing about it.
There was a big theft once in the house and Mrs.
Wainwright may have been worried about it. Strongly
attached to worldly possessions, she kept valuables in vari-
ous trunks on the third floor, and ran up to look at them
from time to time to make sure everything was still there.
Could the slamming of the door be a re-enactment of
these frequent nervous expeditions up the stairs? Could the
opening and closing of the entrance door be a fearful exam-
ination of the door to see if the lock was secure, or if there
was anyone strange lurking about outside?
The very day after our visit to this haunted house, a
young painter friend of Molly’s named Helen Charleton, of
Bronxville, New York, was alone in the studio that Molly
let her use occasionally to do some painting of her own.
She was quite alone in the big house when she clearly
heard the front door open. Calling out, she received no
answer. Thinking that the gardener might have a key, and
that she might be in danger, she took hold of what heavy
objects she could put her hands on and waited anxiously
for the steps that were sure to resound any moment. No
steps came. An hour later, the doorbell rang and she finally
dashed down to the entrance door. The door was tightly
shut, and no one was about. Yet she had heard the charac-
teristic noise of the opening of the old-fashioned door!
The mailman’s truck was just pulling away, so she
assumed it was he who had rung the bell. Just then Molly
returned.
“I’ve heard the door slam many times,” Helen
Charleton said to me, “and it always sounds so far away. I
think it's on the first floor, but I can’t be sure.”
Was Mrs. Wainwright still walking the Victorian
corridors of “The Cedars,” guarding her treasures upstairs?
When Catherine and I returned from Europe in the
fall of 1964, Molly Guion had news for us. All was far
from quiet in Rye. In the upstairs room where Molly’s
physically challenged mother was bedridden, a knob had
flown off a table while Mrs. Guion stood next to it. In the
presence of a nurse, the bathroom lights had gone on and
off by themselves. More sinister, a heavy ashtray had taken
off on its own to sail clear across the room. A door had
opened by itself, and footsteps had been heard again.
A new nurse had come, and the number of witnesses
who had heard or seen uncanny goings-on was now eight.
I decided it was time for a seance, and on January 6,
1965, medium Ethel Meyers, Mary Melikian, Catherine
and I took a New Haven train for Rye, where John Smythe
picked us up in his station wagon.
While Ethel Meyers waited in the large sitting room
downstairs, I checked on the house and got the latest word
on the hauntings. Molly Guion took me to the kitchen to
show me the spot where one of the most frightening inci-
dents had taken place.
“Last Christmas, my mother, my husband, and I
were here in the kitchen having lunch, and right near us on
a small table next to the wall was a great big bread knife.
Suddenly, to our amazement, the knife took off into the air,
The Ghosts of Barbery Lane
701
performed an arc in the air and landed about a yard away
from the table. This was about noon, in good light.”
"Was that the only time something like this
happened?”
“The other day the same thing happened. We were
down in the kitchen again at nighttime. My husband and I
heard a terrific crash upstairs. It was in the area of the ser-
vants’ quarters on the second floor, which is in the area
where that door keeps slamming. I went up to investigate
and found a heavy ashtray lying on the floor about a yard
away from the table in my husband’s den.”
"And there was no one upstairs — flesh-and-blood,
that is?”
"No. The object could not have just slipped off the
table. It landed some distance away.”
“Amazing,” I conceded. "Was there more?”
“Last week I was standing in the upstairs sitting
room with one of the nurses, when a piece of a chair that
was lying in the center of a table took off and landed in the
middle of the floor.”
“Before your eyes?"
“Before our eyes.”
“What would you say is the most frequent phenome-
non here?” I asked.
“The opening of the front door downstairs. We and
others have heard this characteristic noise any number of
times, and there is never anyone there.”
I turned to Mrs. Witty, the nurse currently on duty
with Molly Guion’s mother.
“How long have you been in this house?”
“Since October, 1964.”
“Have you noticed anything unusual in these four
months?”
“Well, Mrs. Smythe and I were in the patient’s bed-
room upstairs, when we heard the front door downstairs
open. I remarked to Mrs. Smythe that she had a visitor,
and went down to the front door, and looked. The heavy
chain was swinging loose, and the front door was slightly
ajar!"
“Did you see any visitor?”
“No. I opened the door, looked all around, but there
was no one there.”
“Anything else?”
“A couple of weeks later, the same thing happened. I
was alone in the house with the patient, and the door was
locked securely. An hour after I had myself locked it, I
heard the door shut tightly, but the chain was again swing-
ing by itself.”
I next turned to Mr. Smythe to check up on his own
experiences since we had last talked. Mr. Smythe was a
naval architect and very cautious in his appraisal of the
uncanny. He was still hearing the “measured steps” in the
attic room where he sometimes slept, even when he was all
alone in the house.
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
I returned to Ethel Meyers, the medium, who had
seated herself in a large chair in the front sitting room
downstairs.
“Anything happening?” I asked, for I noticed a pecu-
liar expression on Ethel’s face, as if she were observing
something or someone.
“I picture a woman clairvoyantly,” Ethel said. “She
looks at me with a great deal of defiance.”
“Why are you pointing across the room at that sofa?”
I asked my wife.
“I saw a light from the corner of my eye and I
thought it was a car, but no car has passed by,” Catherine
said.
If a car had passed by, no reflection could have been
seen at that spot, since no window faced in that direction.
While Ethel prepared for the trance sitting, I went
outside the room to talk to Georgia Anne Warren, a young
dancer who had modeled for some of Molly Guion’s paint-
ings. Her full-length nude study graced the studio upstairs,
and there amid the Churchill portraits and faces of the
famous or near-famous, it was like a shining beacon of
beauty. But Miss Warren wasn’t only posing for a painter,
we discovered — she was also modeling for a ghost.
"I heard a thumping noise, as if someone were going
upstairs. I was in the kitchen. The steps sounded as if they
were coming from the dining room. There was no one
coming in. The only people in the house at the time were
Molly Guion and myself. No doubt about it.”
I thanked the redheaded model and followed Ethel
Meyers up the stairs, to which she seemed propelled by a
sudden impulse. There, on the winding Victorian steps,
Ethel made her first contact with the ghost.
“Make the body very cold. Don’t put it in the
ground when it’s warm. Let it get very cold!” she mum-
bled, as if not quite herself.
“Let her speak through you,” I suggested.
“She is," Ethel replied, and continued in a somewhat
strange voice. “Ring around the rosies, a pocketful of
posies....”
I turned toward the stairwell and asked the ghost to
communicate with us, tell her tale, and find help through
us. There was no further answer.
I led Mrs. Meyers back to her chair, and asked Molly
Guion to dim the lights a little so we could all relax.
Meanwhile, other witnesses had arrived. They included
New York Times reporter N. Berkowitz, Benton & Bowles
vice-president Gordon Webber, publicist Bill Ryan, and
book critic John K. Hutchins. We formed a long oval
around Ethel Meyers and waited for the ghost to make her
appearance.
We did not have to wait long. With a sudden shriek,
Ethel, deep in trance, leapt to her feet, and in the awkward
posture of an old crone, walked toward the front door.
Nothing I could do would hold her back. I followed her
quickly, as the medium, now possessed by the ghost, made
her way through the long room to the door.
702
As if a strong wind had swept into the sitting room,
the rest of the guests were thrown back by the sheer drive
of Ethel’s advance. She flung herself against the heavy
wooden door and started to alternately gnaw at it and
pound against it in an unmistakable desire to open it and
go through. Then she seized the brass chain — the one Mrs.
Witty had twice seen swinging by itself — and pulled it
with astonishing force. I had all I could do to keep the
medium from falling as she threw her body against the
door.
In one hand I held a microphone, which I pressed
close to her lips to catch as much of the dialogue as possi-
ble. I kept the other hand ready to prevent Ethel’s fall to
the floor.
“Rotten,” the entranced medium now mumbled, still
clutching the chain.
I tried to coax her back to the chair, but the ghost
evidently would have none of it.
“It stinks. . .Where is it?”
“Is this your house?” I asked.
Heavy breathing.
“Yes. Get out!”
“I’ve come to help you. What is your name?”
“Get out!” the microphone picked up.
"What is it that you want?” I asked.
“My body.”
“You’ve passed on, don’t you understand?”
“No. . .1 want my body. Where is it?”
I explained again that this was no longer her house,
but she kept calling for the return of “her body” in such
anger and despair that I began to wonder if it had not been
buried on the premises.
“They took it, my body. I saw them, I saw them!”
“You must let go of this house. It is no longer
yours,” I said.
“No, my house, my house. They took it. My body. I
have nothing. Get it. I feel I have one.”
I explained that we had lent her a body to speak
through for the moment.
“Who are you?” It sounded quieter.
“A friend,” I replied, “come to help you.”
Instead of replying, the entranced medium grabbed
the door again.
“Why do you want to open the door?” I asked. It
took a moment for the answer to come through trembling
lips.
“Go out,” she finally said. “I don’t know you. Let
me go, let me go.”
I continued to question the ghost.
“Who are you? Did you live in this house?”
“My house. They took it out. My body is out there!”
I explained about the passage of time.
“You were not well. You’ve died.”
“No, no. . I wasn't cold.”
“You are free to go from this door. Your loved ones,
your family, await you outside.”
“They hate me.”
"No, they have made up with you. Why should they
hate you?”
“They took me out the door.”
Then, suddenly the medium’s expression changed.
Had someone come to fetch her?
“Oh, Baba, darling... Oh, he loved me.”
There was hysterical crying now.
“He’s gone . . . My beloved
“What is his name?”
“Wain. ..Where is he. ..Let me go!”
The crying was now almost uncontrollable, so I sent
the ghost on her way. At the same time I asked that
Albert, Ethel’s control on the etheric side of the veil, take
over her physical body for the moment to speak to us.
It took a moment or two until Albert was in com-
mand. The medium’s body visibly straightened out and all
traces of a bent old crone vanished. Albert’s crisp voice
was heard.
“She’s a former tenant here, who has not been too
well beloved. She also seems to have been carried out
before complete death. This has brought her back to try
and rectify it and make contact with the physical body. But
here is always unhappiness. I believe there was no love
toward her as she was older.”
“Can you get a name?” I asked.
"If she refused, I cannot.”
"How long ago was this?”
“During the Nineties. Between 1890 and 1900.”
“Is this a woman?”
“Yes.”
“Anything peculiar about her appearance?”
"Large eyes, and almost a harelip.”
“Why is she concerned about her body?”
“There was no great funeral for her. She was put in a
box and a few words were said over her grave. That is part
of her problem, that she was thus rejected and neglected.”
“Why does she run up to the attic?”
"This was her house, and it was denied to her later
in life.”
“By whom?”
“By those living here. Relatives to her.”
"Her heirs?”
“Those who took it over when she could no longer
function. She was still alive.”
“Anything else we should know?”
“There is a great deal of hate for anyone in this
house. Her last days were full of hate. Should she return, if
she is spoken to kindly, she will leave. We will help her.”
"Why is she so full of hate?”
"Her grief, her oppressions. She never left her tongue
quiet when she was disrupted in her desire to go from her
quarters to the rest of the house.”
“What was her character?”
The Ghosts of Barbery Lane
703
"As a young person she was indeed a lady. Later in
life, a strong personality, going slightly toward dual per-
sonality. She was an autocrat. At the very end, not
beloved.”
“And her relationship with the servants?”
“Not too friendly. Tyrannical.”
“What troubled her about her servants?”
“They knew too much.”
“Of what?”
“Her downfall. Her pride was hurt.”
“Before that, how was she?”
"A suspicious woman. She could not help but take
things from others which she believed were hers by right.”
“What did she think her servants were doing?”
“They pried on her secret life. She trusted no one
toward the end of life.”
“Before she was prevented, as you say, from freely
going about the house — did she have any belongings in the
attic?”
“Yes, hidden. She trusted no one.”
I then suggested that the "instrument” be brought
back to herself. A very surprised Ethel Meyers awakened
to find herself leaning against the entrance door.
“What’s the matter with my lip?” she asked when
she was able to speak. After a moment, Ethel Meyers was
her old self, and the excursion into Mrs. Wainwright’s
world had come to an end.
The following morning Molly Smythe called me on
the phone. “Remember about Albert’s remarks that Mrs.
Wainwright was restrained within her own rooms?"
Of course I remembered.
“Well,” Molly continued, “we’ve just made a thor-
ough investigation of all the doors upstairs in the servants’
quarters where she spent her last years. They all show evi-
dence of locks having been on them, later removed. Some-
one was locked up therefor sure."
Ironically, death had not released Mrs. Wainwright
from confinement. To her, freedom still lay beyond the
heavy wooden door with its brass chain.
Now that her spirit self had been taken in hand, per-
haps she would find her way out of the maze of her delu-
sions to rejoin her first husband, for whom she had called.
The next time Molly Smythe hears the front door
opening, it’ll be just her husband coming home from the
office. Or so I thought.
But the last week of April 1965, Molly called me
again. Footsteps had been heard upstairs this time, and the
sound of a door somewhere being opened and closed, and
of course, on inspection, there was no one visible about.
Before I could make arrangements to come out to
Rye once again, something else happened. Mr. Smythe was
in the bathtub, when a large tube of toothpaste, safely rest-
ing well back on a shelf, flew off the shelf by its own voli-
tion. No vibration or other natural cause could account for
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
704
it. Also, a hypodermic needle belonging to one of the
nurses attending Molly’s mother had somehow
disappeared.
I promised to bring Sybil Leek to the house. The
British medium knew nothing whatever of the earlier his-
tory of the case, and I was curious to see if she would
make contact with the same or different conditions, as
sometimes happens when two mediums are used in the
same house. It’s like tuning in on different radio
wavelengths.
It was a cool, wet day in May when we seated our-
selves in a circle upstairs in the "haunted room.” Present in
addition to the hosts, Sybil Leek, and myself, were Mrs.
Betty Salter (Molly’s sister); David Ellingson, a reporter
from the Port Chester, N.Y., Item; Mr. And Mrs. Robert
Bendick, neighbors and friends of the Smythes; and Mary
Melikian. Mr. Bendick was a television producer specializ-
ing in news programs.
Sybil went into hypnotic trance. It took several min-
utes before anything audible could be recorded.
"Who are you?” I asked.
A feeble voice answered:
“Marion. . .Marion Gernt. . ..”
Before going into trance, Sybil had volunteered the
information that the name “Grant,” or something like it,
had been on her mind ever since she set foot into the
house.
“What year is this?” I asked.
"1706.”
“Who built the house?”
“My father. . .Walden.”
She then complained that people in the house were
disturbing her, and that therefore she was pulling it down.
"My face is swollen,” she added. “I’m sick. . .Blood.”
Suddenly, something went wrong with my reliable
tape recorder. In all my previous investigations it had
worked perfectly. Now it wouldn’t, and some parts of the
conversation were not recorded. The wheels would turn
and then stop, and then start again, as if someone were
sticking their fingers into them at will!
I tried my camera, and to my amazement, I couldn’t
take any pictures. All of a sudden, the mechanism wouldn’t
function properly, and the shutter could not be uncocked.
I did not get any photographs. Bob Bendick, after the
seance, took a good look at the camera. In a moment it was
working fine again. After the seance, too, we tried to make
the tape recorder work. It started and then stopped
completely.
"The batteries have run out,” I explained, confident
that there was nothing more than that to it. So we put the
machine on house current. Nothing happened. It wasn’t
the batteries. It was something else.
After we left the "haunted room” and went down-
stairs, I put the tape recorder into my traveling case. About
ten minutes later, I heard a ghostly voice coming from my
case. My voice. The tape recorder that I had left in a secure
turn-off position had started up by itself. . .or. . .so it
seemed.
But one can’t be sure in haunted houses. Item
reporter David Ellingson and Mary Melikian were standing
next to me when it happened. John Smythe was wondering
if someone had turned on the radio or TV. So much for the
instruments that didn’t work — temporarily.
But, let us get back to Sybil and the ghost speaking
through her. She claimed to have been burned all over in a
fire. John Smythe confirmed later that there were traces of
a fire in the house that have never been satisfactorily
explained.
The ghost seemed confused about it. She was burned,
on this spot, in what was then a little house. The place was
called Rocher. Her named was spelled M-a-r-i-o-n G-e-r-
n-t. She was born at Rodey, eight miles distant. She was
not sure about her age. At first she said 29, then it was 57.
The house was built by one Dion, of Rocher.
I then tried to explain, as I always do, that the house
belonged to someone else and that she must not stay.
"Go away,” the ghost mumbled, not at all pleased
with the idea of moving. But I insisted. I told her of her
husband who wanted her to join him “over there.”
“I hate him!” she volunteered, then added — "I start
moving things. . .1 break things up. . .1 want my chair.”
“You must not stay here," 1 pleaded. "You’re not
wanted here.”
“He said that,” she replied in a sullen voice. “Alfred
did. My husband.”
“You must join him and your children.”
"I’ll stay.”
I repeated the incantation for her to leave.
“I can’t go. I’m burned. I can’t move,” she
countered.
I explained that these were only memories.
Finally she relented, and said- “I’ll need a lot of
rags. . .to cover myself.”
Gently now, she started to fade.
"I need my chair,” she pleaded, and I told her she
could have it.
Then she was gone.
Sybil came back now. Still in trance, she responded
quickly to my questions about what she saw and felt on the
other side of the veil. This is a technique I find particularly
effective when used prior to bringing the medium out of
trance or from under hypnosis.
“An old lady,” Sybil said. “She is quite small. I think
she is Dutch. Shriveled. She is very difficult. Can’t move.
Very unpleasant. Throws things because she can’t walk.
This is her house. She lived here about three hundred years
ago. She wants everything as it was. She has marks on her
face. She was in a fire.”
"Did she die in it?” I asked.
“No. She died near here. Doesn’t communicate well.”
"There is a box with two hearts, two shields,” Sybil
said. "It means something to this woman.”
“Were there any others around?” I asked.
“Lots, like shadows,” Sybil explained, “but this little
woman was the one causing the commotion.”
“She likes to throw things,” Sybil added, and I
couldn’t help thinking that she had never been briefed on
all the objects the ghost had been throwing.
“She doesn’t know where any doors are, so she just
goes on. The door worries her a lot, because she doesn’t
know where it is. The front and rear have been changed
around.”
Sybil, of course, knew nothing of the noises centering
around the main door, nor the fact that the rear of the
house was once the front.
I told Sybil to send her away, and in a quiet voice,
Sybil did so.
The seance was over, at least for the time being.
A little later, we went up to the top floor, where both
Molly and Sybil suddenly senses a strong odor of perfume.
I joined them, and I smelled it, too. It was as if someone
were following us about the house!
But it was time to return to New York. Our hosts
offered to drive us to the city.
“Too bad,” I said in parting, “that nobody has seen
an apparition here. Only sounds seem to have been
noticed.”
Betty Salter, Mrs. Smythe ’s perky sister, shook her
head.
"Not true,” she said. “I was here not so long ago
when I saw a black figure downstairs in the dining room. I
thought it was Molly, but on checking found that I was
quite alone downstairs. . .That is, except for her."
Mrs. Wainwright, of course, was of Dutch ancestry,
and the description of the character, appearance, and gen-
eral impression of the ghost Sybil gave did rather fit Mrs.
Wainwright.
Was the 1706 lady an ancestor or just someone who
happened to be on the spot when only a small farm house
occupied the site?
The Smythes really didn’t care whether they have
two ghosts or one ghost. They preferred to have none.
The Ghosts of Barbery Lane
705
# 158
The Garrick’s Head Inn, Bath
Three HOURS BY car from London is the elegant resort
city of Bath. Here, in a Regency architectural wonderland,
there is an eighteenth century inn called Garrick’s Head
Inn. At one time there was a connection between the inn
and the theater next door, but the theater no longer exists.
In the eighteenth century, the famous gambler Beau Nash
owned this inn which was then a gambling casino as well.
The downstairs bar looks like any other bar, divided
as it is between a large, rather dark room where the cus-
tomers sip their drinks, and a heavy wooden bar behind
which the owner dispenses liquor and small talk. There is
an upstairs, however, with a window that, tradition says, is
impossible to keep closed for some reason. The rooms
upstairs are no longer used for guests, but are mainly stor-
age rooms or private rooms of the owners. At the time of
my first visit to the Garrick’s Head Inn it was owned by
Bill Loud, who was a firm skeptic when he had arrived in
Bath. Within two months, however, his skepticism was
shattered by the phenomena he was able to witness. The
heavy till once took off by itself and smashed a chair. The
noises of people walking were heard at night at a time
when the place was entirely empty. He once walked into
what he described as “cobwebs” and felt his head stroked
by a gentle hand. He also smelled perfume when he was
entirely alone in the cellar.
A reporter from a Bristol newspaper, who spent the
night at the inn, also vouched for the authenticity of the
footsteps and strange noises.
Finally, the owner decided to dig into the past of the
building, and he discovered that there have been incidents
which could very well be the basis for the haunting. Dur-
ing the ownership of gambling king Beau Nash, there had
been an argument one night, and two men had words over
a woman. A duel followed. The winner was to take posses-
sion of the woman. One man was killed and the survivor
rushed up the stairs to claim his prize. The woman, who
had started to flee when she saw him win, was not agree-
able, and when she heard him coming barricaded herself in
the upstairs room and hanged herself.
Whether you will see or hear the lady ghost at the
Garrick’s Head Inn in Bath is a matter of individual ability
to communicate with the psychic world. It also depends
upon the hours of the night you are there, for the Garrick’s
Head Inn is pretty noisy in the early part of the evening
when it is filled with people looking for spirits in the bottle
rather than the more ethereal kind.
Garrick’s Head Inn — Bath, England:
Extremely haunted
Bill Loud, who saw the till fly through the air
CHAPTER TEN: Poltergeists
706
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ghosts That Aren’t
WHEN YOU SEE SOMEONE who has passed on, you are not necessarily seeing a ghost. Espe-
cially if the person is a relative or friend and the communication — either verbal or tele-
pathic— is clearly reasonable. In these cases, you are dealing with a spirit visit.
These visits occur, whenever there is a need for them, because of two kinds of situations. Either
the departed loved one wants you to know she or he is well and is now living in another world, or the
spirit has come because you need help in your own life here. This help can have to do with your job,
your family, or your personal life, or it may be a warning of things to come, some of which you can
avert, and some of which are inevitable. The spirit person has gotten permission from the folks “over
there” who run the contact very much according to their laws, and the visits are never haphazard or
without meaning.
I have often said that of all ghostly manifestations only perhaps ten percent are true ghosts —
human beings trapped by their unfinished business on earth in the spot where their traumatic death
occurred. The rest may be simply impressions left behind by an emotional event in the past, and a
sensitive person will feel and relive it.
Finally, rare cases do exist of “ghosts of the living,” in which a perfectly fine person is seen at a
distance by someone with a psychic gift. The Germans used to call this the "doppelganger,” or the
etheric double, but it is really only a projection of the inner body. This occurs sometimes when the
person at a distance is in a state of great relaxation or, conversely, great anxiety, and it is rare. Usually,
if not always, the traveler returns quickly to the physical body.
If anything, these cases prove that we do have an inner body, because the physical outer body
keeps right on going. Some astral travel (or out-of-body experiences) happen during sleep, but some
occur while the person is simply deep in thought or emotionally detached. None of them are harmful
or dangerous, despite a warning issued by Madame Helen Blavatzky, the founder of theosophy, many
years ago, that “strangers” can get into your body
while the real you is out there traveling.
Ghosts That Aren’t
707
Here are some true examples from my files of these
kinds of “non-ghosts,” which are often confused with real
ghosts.
CONTACTS AND VISITS BY SPIRITS
When the Dead Reach Out to the Living
The annals of psychic research are full of verified cases in
which the dead come to bid the living a last good-bye. But
the thought of separation is often overshadowed by the
desire to announce the continuance of life. This, of course,
is implied in the very fact of an appearance after death:
only a person who survives can come to say good-bye.
Orthodox psychiatry has labored hard and long to explain
most of these appearances as “hallucinations,” but the fact
is that the majority of cases show total ignorance on the
part of the recipient that the person who communicates
after death is no longer alive. You cannot hallucinate some-
thing you don’t know.
This type of communication occurs frequently with
professional psychics. Eileen Garrett once reported to me
that she was riding in a taxi down New York's Fifth
Avenue when a long-dead friend spoke to her clairvoyantly
and advised her that Marie H., whom both knew, had just
passed on and was over there with him. Mrs. Garrett
looked at her watch and registered the time. Shortly after,
when she reached her offices, she put in a call to Califor-
nia, where Miss H. lived. The message was correct, and
when she compared the time of passing as recorded in Cal-
ifornia with the time she had received her message, she
found that, allowing for the time differential, it had been
given her a moment after Miss H.’s death! But laypeople,
that is, people not at all concerned with the psychic or even
interested in it, who are often skeptics and firm nonbeliev-
ers in an afterlife — are frequently the recipients of such
messages and experience communications from the dead.
Once, when I lecturing at Waynesburg College in
Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, I was approached by a young
lady who had had a most interesting experience along such
lines in April 1963.
Sandra R. lived with her family in a house in a small
town south of Pittsburgh. Her brother Neal R., then aged
twenty-two, had been working as a bank teller for the past
three years. Young Neal had often expressed a dislike of
going into the Army; he had a feeling he would be killed.
As a consequence, his mother and sister, to whom the
young man was quite close, persuaded him to join the
National Guard for a six-month tour of duty. Since he
would be drafted anyway, he might thus shorten the period
of his service.
Neal finally agreed that this was the best thing to do
under the circumstances, and he joined the National
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
Guard. He resigned his position at the bank and seemed
reconciled to making the best of the situation.
In April he got his orders and tickets and was to
report for basic training a week from the following Mon-
day. Several times during those final days at home, he
mentioned the fact that he was to leave at 5 A.M. Sunday,
as if this were indeed something important and final. On
the Monday preceding his departure, he visited friends to
say good-bye. Leaving home as usual with a kiss on the
cheek for his mother, he gaily said, "I’ll see you,” and went
out.
He never returned. The following morning the family
was notified that he had been found dead in his car parked
along a lonely country road about two miles from his
home. He had committed suicide by inhaling carbon
monoxide.
The news created a state of shock in his family. At
first they would not believe the news, for they were sure he
would have left some sort of note for his family. But noth-
ing was ever found, even though the family searched the
house from top to bottom. He had put all his things in
order, leaving no debts or commitments, but there was no
message of any kind for anyone.
He was buried in his hometown, and the family tried
to adjust to their great loss. Sandra, his sister, was three
years his junior, but the two had been close enough to have
many telepathic experiences in which they would read each
other’s thoughts. She could not understand why her
brother had not confided in her before taking this drastic
step.
In the house, both Sandra’s room and Neal’s had
been upstairs. After Neal’s death, Sandra could not bear
the thought of sleeping so near to her late brother's room,
so she slept on a rollout divan placed in the living room
downstairs. The day of the funeral was a Friday, and it
seemed to Sandra that it would never pass. Finally, after a
restless, almost sleepless night, Saturday dawned. All day
long she felt uneasy, and there was an atmosphere of ten-
sion in the air that she found almost unbearable. When
night came, Sandra asked that her mother share the couch
with her. Neither woman had taken any tranquilizers or
sleeping pills. They discussed the suicide again from all
angles but failed to arrive at any clues. Finally they fell
asleep from exhaustion.
Suddenly Sandra was awakened from deep slumber
by a clicking sound. It sounded exactly as if someone had
snapped his fingers just above her head. As Sandra became
fully awake, she heard her mother stir next to her.
“Did you hear that?” her mother asked. She too had
heard the strange snapping sound. Both women were now
fully awake.
They felt a tingling sensation pervading them from
head to toe, as if they were plugged into an electric socket!
Some sort of current was running through them, and they
were quite unable to move a limb.
708
The living room is situated in the front part of the
house. The blinds were all closed, and no light whatever
shone through them. The only light coming into the room
came from a doorway behind them, a doorway that led into
the hall. All of a sudden, they noticed a bright light to
their left, moving toward them. It had the brightness of an
electric bulb when they first saw it approach. It appeared
about two feet from the couch on the mother’s side and
was getting brighter and brighter. “What is it, what is it?”
they cried to each other, and then Sandra noticed that the
light had a form. There was a head and shoulders encased
in light!
Frightened, her heart pounding, Sandra heard herself
cry out: "It’s Neal!” At the moment she called out her late
brother’s name, the light blew up to its brightest glare.
With that, a feeling of great peace and relief came over the
two women.
Mrs. R., still unable to move her body, asked: “What
do you want? Why did you do it?”
With that, she started to cry. At that moment waves
of light in the form of fingers appeared inside the bright
light as if someone were waving good-bye. Then the light
gradually dimmed until it vanished completely.
At that instant a rush of cold air moved across the
room. A moment later they clearly heard someone walking
up the stairs. They were alone in the house, so they knew
it could not be a flesh-and-blood person. Now the steps
approached Neal’s room upstairs. When they reached the
top step, the step squeaked as it had always done when
Sandra’s brother had walked up the stairs. Over the years,
Sandra had heard this particular noise time and again.
Neal’s room was directly over their heads, and there wasn’t
a sound in the house. Except those footsteps overhead. The
two women were lying quite still on the couch, unable to
move even if they had wanted to. The steps continued
through the hallway and then went into Neal’s room. Next
they heard the sound of someone sitting down on his bed,
and they clearly heard the bed springs give from the weight
of a person! Since the bed stood almost directly over their
heads down in the living room, there was no mistaking
these sounds. At this moment, their bodies suddenly
returned to normal. The tension was broken, and Sandra
jumped up, turned on the lights, and looked at the clock
next to the couch. The time was 5 o’clock Sunday morning
— the exact moment Neal had been scheduled to leave, had
he not committed suicide!
With this, all was quiet again in the house. But San-
dra and her mother no longer grieved for Neal. They
accepted the inevitable and began to realize that life did
continue in another dimension. The bond between their
Neal and themselves was reestablished, and they felt a cer-
tain relief to know he was all right wherever he now was.
At different times after that initial good-bye visit,
they experienced the strong smell of Neal’s favorite after-
shave lotion in the house. At the time of his death, he had
a bottle of it in the glove compartment of his car. As no
one else in the house was using any aftershave lotion, an
alternative explanation would be hard to come by.
Neither Mrs. R. nor her daughter is given to hyster-
ics. They accepted these events as perfectly natural, always
carefully making sure no ordinary explanation would fit.
But when all was said and done, they knew that their Neal
had not let them down, after all. The bond was still
unbroken.
Mrs. G. B., a housewife living in a Pittsburgh sub-
urb, and her brother, Frank G., had been close in their
childhood, which may be of some importance in the event
I am about to relate. Whenever there exists an emotional
bond between people, the communication between the
world of the dead and that of the living seems to be easier.
But this is by no means always the case, as even strangers
have communicated in this way with each other.
Frank G. and forty -one others were aboard a Navy
transport flying over the ocean. On the nights of October
26, 27, and 28, 1954, Mrs. B. had a vivid dream in which
she felt someone was drowning. This recurrent dream puz-
zled her, but she did not connect it with her brother as she
had no idea where he was or what he was doing at the
time. On October 30, 1954, she was awakened from sleep
by the feeling of a presence in her room. This was not at
her own home but at the house of her in-laws. Her hus-
band was sleeping in an adjoining room. As she looked up,
fully awake now, she saw at the foot of her bed a figure all
in white. A feeling of great sorrow came over her at this
moment. Frightened, she jumped out of bed and ran to her
husband.
The following evening, the telephone rang. Her
brother, Frank, crewman on an ill-fated air transport, had
been lost at sea.
Mrs. William F. of Salem, Massachusetts, no witch
but rather a well-adjusted housewife, had what she calls a
“spiritual experience,” which was enough to assure her that
life did indeed exist beyond the grave.
In 1957, her aged grandmother had passed on, leav-
ing the care of her grandfather to her parents. The old man
was lost without his companion of so many years, and
eventually he deteriorated to the point where he had to be
placed in a hospital. He died in 1961, and the family went
jointly to the local funeral parlor for a last good-bye.
Mrs. F. and her older sister were sitting in the room
where the body lay, when suddenly both of them — as they
later realized — had the same strange feeling of a presence
with them.
The feeling became so strong that Mrs. F. eventually
lifted her head, which had been lowered in mourning. It
may be mentioned that she did not like funeral parlors and
had never been inside one before.
As she looked up beyond the coffin, she saw her
grandfather and her grandmother with smiles on their
faces. Although their lips did not move, the woman got
Ghosts That Aren’t
709
When the dead reach out to the living— A portrait of Mrs. Martha Holzer, Hans Holzer’s mother. This
was obtained through photographic mediumship of the late Dr. John Myers, with Mike Wallace as the
monitor. (Lifetime photo on the right.)
the impression her "Nana” was saying to her: “It’s all right
now. I am taking care of him now. Don’t be sad. We’re
together again.”
The parents did not see this vision, but the older sis-
ter did.
The apparitions of the dead wish to be recognized as
the people they were and are. Thus the majority of them
appear looking as they did in physical life — that is, wearing
the clothes they had on when they died or clothes they
liked to wear ordinarily. But there are also cases where the
dead have appeared dressed in a simple white robe instead
of their customary clothing. I myself saw my mother sev-
eral years after her passing, wearing what I then called “a
long nightshirt.” The moment was brief but long enough
for me to realize I was fully awake and that she cast a
shadow on the opposite wall.
I think that this white robe is perhaps the “ordinary”
dress over there, with the earth-type clothing optional
when and if needed. No doubt the white robe is behind
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
710
many legends of white-robed angels appearing to mortals
and the generally accepted description of ghost being
“white.” It is also true that ectoplasm, the material of
which materializations of the dead are created, is white. It
is an albumen substance that has been analyzed in labora-
tories and that is drawn from the living during physical
seances.
The white color has some bearing on the need for
darkness whenever such manifestations are induced in the
seance room. Evidently strong white light destroys the
material, perhaps because light and psychic energies are
traveling on collision courses and might cancel each other
out. But the ectoplastic substance is tangible and real and
is by no means a figment of the imagination.
Mrs. C. M. R., a widow living in eastern New Eng-
land, was married more than forty years to her husband,
John, who passed away in 1966. John R. had worked as a
machinist for a leather factory. When he complained of
pain in his chest, his ailment was diagnosed as pleurisy,
and he was told to stay in bed. There was no indication of
imminent death on that March day in 1966. The doctor
left after a routine inspection, and John R. went back to
bed.
Between 2 and 3 A.M., he suddenly complained of
pain. He was sitting on the bed when his wife rushed to
his side. She made him comfortable, and he went back to
sleep — never to wake up again. Because of the complaint,
Mrs. R. kept a vigil close to the bed. Suddenly she saw a
white-robed figure rise up from the bed and sit on it for a
moment, as if to get its bearings. There was a rustling
sound of sheets moving. Since the figure’s back was turned
toward her, Mrs. R. could not make out its features. But it
was a large person, and so was her husband. At the same
time, she had a peculiar sensation inside her head. Sud-
denly, as if a balloon inside had burst, the sensation
stopped and all was silent. The white-robed figure had dis-
appeared. She stepped to the bed and realized that her hus-
band was gone.
Mrs. R.’s brother, Robert C., was a lieutenant in the
army during the Second World War and later worked for
the C.N.R. railroad in Canada. Mrs. R. had not been in
constant touch with him, since she lived a thousand miles
away. But on April 1 1 , 1948, she and her daughter were in
their bedroom when both women saw the figure of Robert
C., dressed in black, looking into the room, his hand on
the doorknob. He smiled at them and Mrs. R. spoke to her
brother, but he vanished into thin air. That was between
midnight and 1 A.M. Hospital records at the Halifax Victo-
ria General Hospital show that Lieutenant C. passed away
officially at 7 A.M., April 12, 1948. Evidently he had
already been out of the body and on his last journey sev-
eral hours before. Stopping in at his sister’s house on the
way, he had come to say good-bye.
Diane S., a high school graduate and as level-headed
as you would want to meet, did not show the slightest
interest in psychic matters until age seventeen. She lived
with her parents in a medium-sized town in Michigan. Her
friend Kerm was the apple of her eye, and vice versa. No
doubt, if things had preceded normally, they would have
married.
But one night, after he had driven her home, Kerm
was killed in a car accident on the way to his own place.
The shock hit Diane very strongly, and she missed him.
She wondered whether there was anything in the belief that
one survived death.
One week after the funeral of her friend, she smelled
the scent of funeral flowers on arising. For five days this
phenomenon took place. There were no such flowers in the
house at that time. Then other things followed. Diane was
on her way home from a girlfriend’s house. It was around
midnight. As she drove home, she gradually felt another
presence with her in the car. She laughed it off as being
due to an overactive imagination, but the sensation per-
sisted. She looked around for a moment, but the back seat
was empty. Again she focused her eyes on the road. Sud-
denly she felt something touch first her left hand, then her
right. There was no mistaking it; the touch was very real.
At another time she awoke in the middle of a sound
sleep. She felt the presence of something or someone in the
room with her. Finally, she opened her eyes and looked in
all directions. She saw nothing unusual, but she was sure
there was another person sitting on the second bed, watch-
ing her. The feeling became so intense that she broke out
in a cold sweat. But she did not dare get up, and finally
she managed to get back to sleep. The next morning, when
she awoke, her first act was to have a look at the other bed.
There, at the foot of the bed, was an imprint on the bed-
spread, as if someone had been sitting on it!
After that there was a period of quiet, and Diane
thought with great relief that the psychic manifestations
had finally come to an end.
But in late July 1965, something happened that
caused her to reconsider that opinion. A young man named
Jerry had been a steady companion of hers since the unfor-
tunate accident in which Kerm had been killed. There was
a party at Diane’s house one evening. After the company
left, Jerry stayed on.
Together they sat and talked for several hours. It
grew late, and dawn began to show itself. The two young
people were sitting on the couch downstairs when suddenly
Jerry looked up and asked if her mother was standing at
the top of the stairs! Diane knew that her mother would be
asleep in her room, yet she followed Jerry’s eyes to the top
landing of the stairs.
There was a figure standing there, rather vaguely out-
lined and seemingly composed of a white filmy substance.
At its base there was a luminous sparkle. As the two young
people stared at the figure, without daring to move, it grad-
ually faded away.
Jerry then left for home, and Diane went to bed. As
he drove down the road, he was about to pass the spot
where Kerm had been killed a couple of months before. He
stopped for a moment and got out to stretch his legs.
When he walked back to his car, he noticed that it was
enveloped by a thick fog. He got into the car, which felt
strangely cold and clammy. He glanced to his right, and to
his horror he saw a white, cloudlike object cross the road
toward the car. As it approached the car, Jerry could make
it out clearly enough: it was a blurred image of a human
body, but the face was as plain as day. It was Kerm. He
got into the front seat with Jerry, who shook with terror.
Jerry’s eyes were watering, and he dared not move.
“Take care of Di,” a strangely broken voice said next
to him. It sounded as though it were coming from far
away, like an echo.
Then a hand reached out for his, and Jerry passed
out. When he came to, he found himself parked in front of
the local cemetery. How he had got there he did not know.
It is some distance from the spot of Kerm’s accident to the
cemetery. But there he was, barely able to start his car and
drive home.
Ghosts That Aren’t
711
When he told his story to his parents, they thought
he had dreamed it. Jerry was sure he had not. The events
that followed bore him out. It would seem that Kerm
wanted to make sure Jerry took good care of his former
girlfriend. At various times, Jerry would feel a hand at his
shoulder.
At this point Diane got in touch with me. As I could
not then rush out to Michigan, I sent her explicit instruc-
tions about what to do. On the next occasion when the
restless form was in evidence, she was to address him
calmly and ask that he cease worrying over her. Jerry
would indeed look out for her, and they would rather not
have him, Kerm, around also. Three does make a crowd,
even if one is a ghost.
Apparently Kerm took the hint and left for good. But
to Diane it was an indication that there is another world
where we all may meet again.
Although many visits of departing loved ones take
place while the recipients of the message are fully awake or
as they are being awakened to receive the news, there are
many more such incidents on record where the events
seemingly occur in the dream state. I devoted an entire
chapter to the many-sided nature of dreams in my book
ESP and You. Many dreams are physically caused or are
psychoanalytical material. But there are such things as true
dreams and psychic dreams, in which precise messages are
received that later come true.
Mrs. Madeline M. lives in a large Eastern city. She is
a “true dreamer” and has accepted her ESP abilities calmly
and without fears.
"True dreams I can’t forget on awakening, even if I
try,” she explained to me, "while the ordinary kind fade
away quickly and I couldn't recall them no matter how
hard I try to.”
When Madeline was fourteen, her mother was taken
to the hospital with a fatal illness. The girl was not aware
of its seriousness, however, and only later found out that
her mother knew she would soon die and was worried
about leaving her daughter at so tender an age.
At the time, Madeline had accepted the invitation of
a friend and former neighbor to stay overnight with her.
That night she had a vivid dream. She saw her mother
standing at the foot of the bed, stroking her feet and smil-
ing at her with a sweet yet sad smile. What puzzled Made-
line, however, was the way her mother looked in the vision.
To begin with, she wore a strange dress with tiny buttons.
Her hair was done in a way she had never worn it before.
Both dress and strange hairdo impressed themselves upon
the young woman, along with a feeling of emptiness at the
sight of her mother.
“I have to leave now, Madeline,” the mother said in
the dream.
"But where are you going?” Madeline heard herself
ask in the dream.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
"Never mind, Madeline, it's just that I must go!”
And with that remark, her mother eased herself
toward the door, gently closing it behind her and looking
back once more, saying: “Good-bye, Madeline.”
With that, the door was shut.
The next thing Madeline knew, she found herself sit-
ting on the bed, sobbing hysterically, “Mother, don't go,
please don’t go!” Her hostess was next to her trying to get
her out of the state she was in.
“It’s only a dream,” the friend explained, “and look,
it’s late — five minutes past two! We must both get some
sleep now!”
With that, Madeline and her friend went back to
sleep, but not until after Madeline had reported her vision
to her friend in every detail.
She was roused from deep sleep by her friend early
the next morning.
“Your brother is here to have breakfast with us,” her
friend explained. Hurriedly Madeline got dressed to meet
her brother.
“Tell him about your dream,” the friend nudged her.
There was a pause, then the brother remarked: “I’m
jealous, Madeline; why didn’t she come to me?"
He then informed her that their mother had passed
away at five minutes past two the previous night.
Too stunned to cry, Madeline realized that her
mother had come to say good-bye. In the dream state the
connection can be made a lot easier, because there is no
conscious thought wall to penetrate and that interferes with
the flow of communication.
They went to the viewing of the body. When Made-
line caught sight of her mother’s body, she grabbed her
brother's hand and dug her nails deeply into it.
“What is it?” he asked with surprise. She could only
point to her mother’s appearance: the dress with the tiny
buttons she had never worn before and the strange hairdo
— exactly as Madeline had seen it in her "dream.”
Evidently Madeline M. was and is a good recipient of
messages from the departing and departed. Many years
later, in 1957, she had another true dream. This time she
saw herself walk into a house, go straight to the back of the
house, and stop in a doorway that opened into a large din-
ing room. As she stood in this doorway, in the dream, she
noticed her dead father seated at the head of the table. Her
dead mother walked in just as Madeline arrived at her
observation point. Her mother now stood next to her
father, whose face was aglow with joy. Both father and
mother appeared very much younger than they were at the
time of their deaths, and both seemed very excited. But it
was not the dreamer’s presence that caused all this commo-
tion; in fact they paid no attention to her at all. In her
dream Madeline felt left out and wondered why she had
not been asked to sit down at the dinner table, since there
was an extra place set at the table.
“Isn’t it wonderful that we are all here together
again?” she heard herself ask. "Where is my brother?”
712
Finally her mother spoke up, pointing to the empty
chair. “Oh, he will be here; we’re expecting him — in fact,
he is on his way now!”
The next morning Mrs. M. recalled her dream vision
only too clearly. But it was not until nine months later that
the events alluded to in the dream became reality. Fler
brother had the same fatal illness that had taken her
mother, and after a brief hospital stay he too passed into
the world of the spirit, where a place had already been set
for him at Thanksgiving the year before.
There are instances when the dead wish to let some-
one living know that they are across the veil and not
merely somewhere on earth and out of touch. Especially in
the United States, where the movement of people is
unchecked by police registration, people can easily drop out
of one another’s sight and may be hard to trace or track
down. One case involved a young lady who had moved in
with a married sister in coastal Virginia.
Mrs. Doris S., the married sister, has a husband in
the Army, and consequently they move around a lot. But
at that time she had a house, and her sister was welcome in
it. The sister was engaged to a young man with whom she
had kept company for several years. Fler weakness was cig-
arettes, and even her young man frowned on her excessive
smoking.
"I’ll be back in one month to take you with me,” he
had promised before he left, “and if you’ve cut down on
cigarettes to ten a day, I’ll marry you!”
Soon after he had left, strange occurrences began to
puzzle the two women. The sister’s clothes would be
moved around in her closet without any reason. Cigarette
butts would be found all over the house like markers,
although neither sister had put them there. One of the
dresses disappeared completely, only to show up a week
later, neatly folded, in another drawer. There was walking
upstairs at times when there was no human being in that
part of the house. Then one day a shoe of the sister’s
walked down the steps by itself — as if someone were mov-
ing it!
Mrs. S.’s husband was impressed with the unaccount-
able events she wrote him about, and it was decided that
they would look for another house. Then, when he had
some leave coming to him, the family decided to go home
to Pennsylvania. There they found out something they had
not known before: the sister’s friend had been killed in a
car accident several weeks earlier. As he didn’t have any
family, nobody had let them know of his death.
“It must have been he,” Mrs. S. remarked, "trying to
keep his word. After all, he did promise to get sister in a
month.”
After that there were no unusual happenings in the
house.
Mrs. Darlene V., a housewife in suburban New York
City, has had numerous premonitory experiences. But the
incident that convinced her that she had a special gift hap-
pened when she was sixteen years old and a junior in high
school in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. Mrs. V., a Catholic,
attended a religious study course at the time. It was held at
the local church, and the group consisted of youngsters of
both sexes. During her study sessions she noticed a certain
young man who sat all by himself on the side; his sad and
lonely expression attracted her interest. She inquired about
him and learned that his name was Roger but that his
friends called him Rocky. He had been studying for the
priesthood but had had to stop recently because of illness.
He was then in his early twenties. A bond of friendship
grew between Darlene and this unhappy young man,
although her mother did not approve of it.
Around the end of October, he failed to show up at
the study evenings, and it wasn’t until the week before
Christmas that Darlene found out why. Her parish priest
informed her that Rocky was very ill and in the hospital.
She asked her mother for permission to visit her sick
friend, but her mother refused. The following day she had
the strongest feeling that Rocky needed her, so she went
anyway, after school. The young man was overjoyed and
confirmed that he had indeed wanted to see her very much.
During the next two months, she went to visit him as
often as she could. In February she had an accident in her
gym class that forced her to remain in bed for two weeks.
But she continued her interest in Rocky through telephone
calls to his mother, whom she had never met. The young
man had cancer and had been operated upon, and the
mother gave Darlene daily reports of his progress.
On a Friday in February she was able to return to
school, and it was her intention to visit her friend Rocky at
the hospital that Friday afternoon. But before she could do
so, her brother showed her the morning paper: Rocky had
died the night before. The shock sent Darlene back to bed.
Very late that night she awoke from deep sleep with
the feeling that she was not alone. She sat up in bed and
looked round. There, at the foot of her bed, stood her
friend Rocky. His features were plain, and he was sur-
rounded by a soft glow. As soon as he noticed that she saw
him, he held out his hands toward her and said: “Please
help my mother; she wants and needs you.” Then he was
gone.
Darlene called the man's mother the next morning.
Before she could relay her message, the mother broke into
tears, saying that she had been trying to locate Darlene,
whose family name she did not know.
Darlene was at Rocky’s mother’s side from then until
after the funeral. It was only then that she finally told the
man's mother what had happened the night after Rocky’s
passing. It was a great comfort to the mother, but the
parish priest, whom Darlene also told of her experience,
tried to convince her that it was all “a young girl’s emo-
tional imagination.”
Visual phenomena are not the only way by which the
dead seemingly assert themselves to the living. Sometimes
Ghosts That Aren’t
713
the phenomena are only auditory but no less evidential. It
is somewhat like playing an instrument: some people gravi-
tate toward the piano, others to the violin — but both make
music. So it is with psychic communication, which, more
than any ordinary communication, depends on the makeup
of both individuals, the receiver as well as the sender.
Mrs. William S. is a housewife in Pennsylvania. A
friend of her husband’s by the name of Paul F. , who was
employed by a large mail-order house, died in his early
fifties of a heart attack. A few weeks after his death Mrs. S.
was in her bedroom making the bed when she suddenly
heard him call out to her. There was no mistaking his
voice, for she knew it well. He had called her by name, as
if he wanted her attention. The voice sounded as if it came
from the adjoining room, so she entered that room and
responded by calling Paul’s name. There was no answer. A
religious person, Mrs. S. then knelt on the floor and prayed
for the man. She has not heard his voice since.
For many years, Elizabeth S. had been friendly with
a young woman named Dorothy B. This was in Pittsburgh,
and they were almost next-door neighbors. Dorothy had a
sister named Leona, who was a housewife also. She passed
away suddenly, only twenty-eight years of age. The shock
was very great for Dorothy, who could not reconcile herself
to this passing. Despite attempts by Mrs. S. and others to
bring her out of this state of grief, Dorothy refused to lis-
ten and even cried in her sleep at night.
One night Dorothy was awakened by something or
someone shaking her bed. She got up and looked but found
no explanation for this. Everybody in her house was fast
asleep. As she stood in front of her bed, puzzled about the
strange occurrence, she clearly heard footsteps on the stairs.
Frightened, she woke her husband, and together they
searched the whole house. They found no one who could
have caused the steps. The following night, the same phe-
nomena occurred. Again there was no natural explanation.
But during that second night, a strange thing also
happened to Mrs. S., five doors away. She was in bed,
reading a book, when all of a sudden the printed page
seemed to disappear in front of her eyes, and different
words appeared instead. Mrs. S. shook her head, assuming
her eyes were tired, but it happened again. At this point
she closed her eyes and lay back in bed, when she heard a
voice beside her pillow calling her name, “Betty!” It was a
very sharp voice, full of despair. Although Mrs. S. had
never met Dorothy’s sister Leona in life, she knew it was
she, calling out for recognition.
The two women got together the next day and com-
pared experiences. It was then that they decided Leona
wanted them to know that she continued to enjoy a kind of
life in another world, and to stop grieving for her. It was
the push that Dorothy had needed to get out of her grief,
and the two women became like sisters after this common
experience. Leona never called on either of them again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
I have often doubted the reliability of Ouija boards as
a means of communication between the two worlds, but
once in a while something genuine can come through them.
The proof must rest with the individuals operating the
board, of course, and depends upon the presence or
absence of the information in their unconscious minds. But
Mrs. S. had an experience that to me rings true.
At the time, she was nineteen, as yet unmarried, and
lived with her parents. She did not really believe there was
anything supernatural in a Ouija board. More to amuse
themselves than for any serious reason, she and a neighbor
sat down to try their luck with a board. Hardly had they
started to operate the indicator when it moved with great
rapidity to spell out a name. That name was Parker. It sur-
prised Elizabeth, for she had not thought of this person in
a long time. Now one might argue that his name would
always be present in her subconscious mind, but so would
many other names of people who had gone on before.
"Do you want anything?” Elizabeth cried out.
The board spelled "yes,” and at the very same
moment she clearly felt a kiss on her right cheek. It was
not her imagination. The sensation was quite physical.
Parker S. was a young man she had dated two years
before, and the two young people had been very much in
love. At the time he worked at a service station. One day,
on his way to see her, he was killed in a car accident. Mrs.
S. feels he had finally delivered his good-bye kiss to her,
albeit a little late.
Lastly, there are phenomena of letting the living
know that death has taken a loved one. The thought going
out from the dying person at the moment of separation is
not strong enough or not organized sufficiently to send a
full image to a loved one remaining behind. But there is
enough psychic or psychokinetic energy to move an object
or cause some other telltale sign so that the loved ones may
look up and wonder. In German these phenomena are
called gaenger, or goers, and they are quite common.
A typical case is the experience Mrs. Maria P. of
California shared with her husband a few days before
Christmas 1955. The couple were in bed asleep in their
Toronto home, when suddenly they were awakened by the
noise of a knickknack falling off a bookshelf. The object
could not possibly have fallen off accidentally or by itself.
At the same moment, the woman was impressed with the
idea that her father had just died. A few days later she
learned that her father had indeed passed on at that identi-
cal moment in his native Germany, across the ocean.
This was not the first time Maria had experienced
anything along these lines. When she was only five years
old and her mother left for the hospital, the little girl said,
"You will not come back, Mother.” It was nine days later
that the entire family heard a loud, snapping noise in the
main bedroom. All the clocks in the house stopped at that
instant. The time was 1 : 1 0 P.M. A few hours later, word
came that her mother had died at that hour.
714
There are other cases involving the falling of paint-
ings, or the moving of shutters at windows, or the closing
of doors in a gust of wind when no wind was blowing. All
of these supernormal phenomena are, in my estimation,
different ways of saying the same thing: I am going, folks,
but I’m not finished.
Sometimes the message needs no words: the very
presence of the “deceased” is enough to bring home the
facts of afterlife. Once, my friend Gail B., public relations
director for many leading hotels, called me to ask my help
for a friend who was extremely upset because of a visit
from the beyond. Would I please go and talk to her? I
would and I did.
Carina L., a onetime professional singer who later
went into business in New York City, was originally from
Romania and a firm “nonbeliever” in anything she could
not touch, smell, hear, or count. Thus it was with consid-
erable apprehension that she reported two seemingly
impossible experiences.
When she was a young girl in the old country,
Carina had a favorite grandmother by the name of Minta
M. Grandmother M. lived to be a hale and healthy eighty-
six; then she left this vale of tears as the result of a heart
attack. To be sure, the old lady was no longer so spry as
she had been in her youth. One could see her around the
neighborhood in her faded brown coat and her little bonnet
and special shoes made for her swollen feet, as she suffered
from foot trouble.
She had a shuffling walk, not too fast, not too slow;
her gait was well known in her neighborhood in Bucharest.
When Grandmother M. had called it a day on earth, her
daughters inherited her various belongings. The famed
brown coat went to Carina’s Aunt Rosa, who promptly cut
it apart in order to remodel it for herself.
Grandmother was gone, and the three daughters —
Carina’s mother and her two aunts, Rosa and Ita — lived
together at the house. Two months after Grandmother’s
death, Ita and her little son went to the grocer’s for some
shopping. On their way they had to pass a neighbor’s
house and stopped for a chat. As they were standing there
with the neighbor, who should come around the corner but
Grandmother, the way she had done so often in life. Ita
saw her first and stared, mouth wide open. Then the little
boy noticed Grandmother and said so.
Meanwhile the figure came closer, shuffling on her
bad feet as she had always done. But she didn’t pay any
attention to the little group staring at her. As she came
within an arm’s length, she merely kept going, looking
straight ahead. She wore the same faded brown coat that
had been her favorite in life. Ita was dumbfounded. By the
time she came to her senses, the figure had simply
disappeared.
“Did you see Mrs. M.?” the neighbor asked in awe.
Ita could only nod. What was there to say? It was some-
thing she never forgot. On getting home she rushed to her
sister’s room. There, cut apart as it had been for several
weeks, lay the brown coat!
Many things changed over the years, and finally
Carina found herself living in New York City. Her Aunt
Ita, now living in Toronto, decided to pay her a visit and
stayed with Carina at her apartment. About two weeks
after the aunt’s arrival, she accompanied her niece on a
routine shopping errand in the neighborhood. It was a
breezy March afternoon as the two ladies went along
Broadway, looking at the windows. Between West Eighty-
first and Eighty-second Streets, they suddenly saw a famil-
iar figure. There, coming toward them, was Grandmother
M. again, dressed exactly as she had been twenty-five years
before, with her faded brown coat, the little bonnet, and
the peculiar shoes.
The two ladies were flabbergasted. What does one do
under such conditions? They decided to wait and see. And
see they did, for they stopped and let Grandmother M.
pass them by. When she was only inches away from them,
they could clearly see her face. She was as solid as anyone
in the street, but she did not look at them. Instead, she
kept staring ahead as if she were not aware of them or any-
one else around. As she passed them, they could clearly
hear the sound of her shuffling feet. There was no mistak-
ing it: this was Grandmother M. dead twenty-five years
but looking as good as new.
When the figure reached the next corner and disap-
peared around it, Carina sprang to life again. Within a few
seconds she was at the corner. Before her, the side street
was almost empty. No Grandmother. Again she had disap-
peared into thin air. What had the old lady wanted? Why
did she appear to them? I could only guess that it was her
way of saying, “Don’t you forget your Granny. I’m still
going strong!”
Unfinished Business
The second category of “spirit returns,” as the spiritualists
like to call it, is unfinished business. While the first
thought of a newly dead person might be to let the griev-
ing family know there is no reason to cry and that life does
continue, the second thought might well be how to attend
to whatever was left unfinished on earth and should be
taken care of.
The evidence pointing to a continuance of personality
after dissolution of the body shows that mundane worries
and desires go right along with the newly liberated soul.
Just because one is now in another, finer dimension does
not mean one can entirely neglect one’s obligations in the
physical world. This will vary according to the individual
and his or her attitudes toward responsibilities in general
while in the body. A coward does not become a hero after
death, and a slob does not turn into a paragon of orderli-
ness. There is, it appears, really nothing ennobling in dying
Ghosts That Aren’t
715
per se. It would seem that there is an opportunity to grasp
the overall scheme of the universe a lot better from over
there, but this comprehension is by no means compulsory,
nor is the newly arrived soul brainwashed in any way.
Freedom to advance or stand still exists on both sides of
the veil.
However, if a person dies suddenly and manages to
move on without staying in the earth’s atmosphere and
becoming a so-called ghost, then that person may also take
along all unresolved problems. These problems may range
from such major matters as insurance and sustenance for
the family, guidance for the young, lack of a legal will,
unfinished works of one kind or another, incomplete manu-
scripts or compositions, disorderly states of affairs leaving
the heirs in a quandary as to where “everything” is, to
such minor matters as leaving the desk in disorder, not
having answered a couple of letters, or having spoken
rashly to a loved one. To various individuals such frustra-
tions may mean either a little or a lot, depending again on
the makeup of the person’s personality. There are no
objective standards as to what constitutes a major problem
and what is minor. What appears to one person a major
problem may seem quite unimportant when viewed
through another individual’s eyes.
Generally speaking, the need to communicate with
living people arises from a compulsion to set matters right.
Once the contact has been made and the problem under-
stood by the living, the deceased’s need to reappear is no
longer present, unless the living fail to act on the deceased
communicator’s request. Then that person will return again
and again until he gets his way.
All communications are by no means as crystal clear
as a Western Union message. Some come in symbolic lan-
guage or can only be understood if one knows the commu-
nicator’s habit patterns. But the grasping of the request is
generally enough to relieve the very real anxieties of the
deceased. There are cases where the request cannot possi-
bly be granted, because conditions have changed or much
time has gone on. Some of these communications stem
from very old grievances.
A communicator appearing in what was once her
home in the 1880s insisted that the papers confirming her
ownership of the house be found and the property be
turned back to her from the current owners. To her the
ancient wrong was a current problem, of course, but we
could not very well oblige her eighty-five years later and
throw out an owner who had bought the property in good
faith many years after her passing. We finally persuaded
the restless personality that we would try to do what she
wanted, at the same time assuring her that things had
changed. It calmed her anxiety, and because we had at least
listened to her with a sympathetic ear, she did not insist on
actual performance of the promise.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
An extreme case of this kind concerns a Mrs. Sally V.
of Chicago. This lady was married to a plasterer who gave
her ten children, but in 1943 she nevertheless divorced her
active spouse. She then married a distant relative of her
husband’s, also called V. But divorce did not stop the plas-
terer from molesting her. He allegedly threatened her over
the years until she could stand it no longer. It was then
that the woman, in her despair, decided to get rid of her
ex-husband in a most dramatic and, she thought, final way
by murdering him.
The opportunity came when a nineteen-year-old
cousin of hers stopped in on leave from his outfit, which
was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia.
“Would you kill my ex-husband for me? I’d give a
month’s pay for it.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” the cousin is quoted as
saying obligingly, according to the United Press, and when
she offered him $90 for the job, he thought $50 was quite
enough. To a soldier conditioned to war, human life is
sometimes cheap.
Soon afterward Mr. Charles V. was found dead in his
basement apartment, his head bashed in by a hammer.
The story might have remained a secret between the
willing widow and her obliging cousin had it not been for
the unwilling spirit of the late Mr. V.
The murder took place on a Tuesday night, right
after she made the deal. On Wednesday morning, August
5, 1953, Mrs. V. was startled to see her late husband
standing before her in a menacing attitude. She was terri-
fied and called the police. The detectives took a dim view
of her ghost story, but in the questioning her own guilt
was brought out and the soldier was arrested. One certainly
cannot blame the late Mr. V. for wanting the unfinished
business of his murder cleared up.
The psychic experience of Clarence T. of California
is particularly interesting, because Mr. T. has been blind
all his life. In 1946 he was married in San Francisco to a
lady who is still his wife. They went to New York shortly
afterward, and he did not know any of his wife’s friends or
family at the time.
Mr. T. remembers the day of his arrival in New
York: it was the day famed baseball player Babe Ruth was
to be buried. Mr. T. and his wife were to stay with his
new mother-in-law on the lower East Side.
The mother-in-law worked as a janitor and usually
came home around 1 A.M. The apartment itself was on the
ground floor, the last apartment on the floor, about seventy
feet from the front door of the house. It was a warm night,
and the newly married couple decided to sit up and await
the mother’s return. The radio was playing a rebroadcast of
the solemn mass given at Babe Ruth’s funeral, and the
time was just 1 1 o’clock.
At the moment when the music started, both Mr.
and Mrs. T. heard the front door open and someone walk
down the hall toward them. With Mr. T.’s extrasensitive
hearing — many blind people have this — he could distin-
716
guish the fact that the person coming toward them wore no
shoes. Then this person came through the door, and Mr.
T. felt a hand go over his eyes. He thought it was the
mother-in-law and said, ‘‘Mother?"
Mrs. T. assured him he was mistaken; there was no
one to be seen, although she, too, had heard footsteps.
Now the invisible person walked past T. and turned
around, facing him. All at once both T. and his wife
noticed the strong smell of garlic, and each asked the other
if he or she was cleaning garlic! But even stranger, T., who
is totally blind, could suddenly see a woman standing
before him — a short woman with long hair, wearing a loose
dress and no shoes. Over the dress she wore an apron, and
she had one hand in the apron pocket. There was a noise
coming from the pocket as if paper were being crumpled.
Her eyes were droopy almost to the point of being shut. T.
stared at the apparition for what seemed like a long time to
him. Finally the woman spoke: “Tell Julia to throw away
those stones!”
She repeated it twice. When the religious music on
the radio had ended, she turned and walked from the
room, although neither of them could hear any footsteps
this time. But T. saw her walk away. All the time the visi-
tor had been with them, they had felt very strange, as if
they were paralyzed. They could not move and just sat
there in a daze. The moment the figure disappeared, the
spell was broken, and they discovered to their surprise that
it had lasted a full hour.
Since Mrs. T. had not seen the figure, T. told her
what the woman had said. Mrs. T.’s first name is Julia, but
the message made no sense to her. While they were trying
to figure out what had happened to them, the mother-in-
law returned, and they reported the incident to her.
“My God,” the mother-in-law exclaimed, ‘‘what does
she want?” There was another Julia whom she knew, and
the message might apply to her. It seemed that this Julia
had been in the apartment the night before and was due
to return the next morning for another visit. Why not
question her about the apparition? Next morning, theT.s
met the other Julia and described their experience to her
in every detail. The young woman nodded with under-
standing.
“That was my mother,” she cried. “She’s been dead
for two years.”
Then she explained that her late mother had been in
the habit of carrying garlic on her person, in her apron
pocket to be exact. She had collected small stones wherever
she went and would put them into small containers to
keep. These containers with the stones her mother had col-
lected were still cluttering up her home. Under the circum-
stances, the young woman decided to take the stones and
scatter them over her mother’s grave. The apparition has
not returned since.
The N.s lived in a large brick house on Delaware
Avenue, Buffalo, in one of the better residential districts.
They shared the house with the actual owner, Mr. N.’s
uncle by marriage. After Mr. N’s aunt died, strange knock -
ings began to disturb the inhabitants of the house. There
never was any rational explanation for these raps. Then,
several months later, Mr. N. happened to be cleaning out a
closet in what had been the aunt’s storeroom. There she
had put away personal souvenirs and other belongings. In
the cleanup, he came across a wrapped package in a
drawer. He picked it up, and as he did so he distinctly
heard a voice — a human voice — talking to him, although
he knew he was quite alone in the room. It was not clear
enough for him to make out the words. It was late at night;
no one else was stirring in the house, and there was no
radio or TV playing.
Mr. N. took the package with him and walked down
a long hall to the bedroom where his wife was reading in
bed. For a distance of seventy-five feet, all along the way,
the voice kept talking to him!
As he entered the bedroom, Mrs. N. looked up from
her book and said: “Who was that talking to you?”
Mr. N. became very agitated and somehow found
himself taking the strange package to the basement. As if
he had been led there he then opened the furnace and
threw the package into it. He had the strong feeling that
his aunt did not wish to have that package opened or
found. As soon as the flames had destroyed the contents of
the package, Mr. N.’s mood returned to normal. There
were no further psychic occurrences in the house after that.
Evidently the aunt did not wish to have her private corre-
spondence or other papers made public, and once that pos-
sibility was obviated, her need to communicate ended.
Sometimes the "unfinished business” is monkey busi-
ness. A person who dies but is unable to accept the change
in status, unable to let go of earthly appetites, will be
drawn back to the people he or she was close to, and some-
times this return may express itself rather physically. Wild
as it sounds, it is entirely possible for a dead man to
express love to a living woman, and vice versa. It is not
proper, of course, not because of moral reasons but simply
because it is very impractical and truly “out of its ele-
ment.” But it does happen.
Mrs. Audrey L. of Baltimore, Maryland, has been a
widow for four years. As soon as her husband died, her
troubles started. She would hear him “still around.” He
would call her by name. He would move around in his
usual manner in what used to be his house. Mrs. L. did
not see this, but she heard it clearly. At night she would
hear him snore. Finally she decided to sell their house and
move to an apartment.
For a while Mr. L. was not in evidence. But not for
long. The nocturnal disturbances began again. This time
the phenomena were also visual. Her husband’s figure
appeared next to her bed, grabbed her by the wrists, and
tried to pull her out of bed. She looked at him closely,
despite her terror, and noticed that the familiar figure was
Ghosts That Aren’t
717
somewhat transparent. Nevertheless, he was real, and the
touch of his hands was the touch of two strong hands.
There is no easy solution for this type of ‘‘unfinished
business.” Exorcism will yield results only if the other part
is willing to accept it. But if the dead husband’s moral
level is not attuned to that approach, the service will not
work. Only the woman herself can reject him, if she is
strong enough in her determination to close this psychic
door. For it is true that there may be a deep-seated desire
present in the unconscious that permits the transgression to
take place.
Sometimes the business the departing person wishes
to complete cannot be finished until many years later. Yet
there are cases where the dead communicator somehow
knows this beforehand, indicating that the threshold of
death removes also the limitations of time.
An interesting case in point concerns a prominent
midwestern physician’s wife, herself an educator. A num-
ber of years ago Mrs. B. was married to a professional gen-
tleman. They had two children. Their marriage was happy,
there were no financial or professional problems, and yet
the husband was given to unaccountable depressions. One
evening the husband went out, never to return. Hours went
by. Mrs. B. anxiously awaited his return, although she had
no suspicion that anything drastic had happened. Her hus-
band had been in excellent spirits when he left. Finally she
became too tired to sit up and wait for his return. She went
to bed, assuming her husband would be coming in very
late.
Her sleep was interrupted in the middle of the night
by the feeling of a presence in the room. As she opened
her eyes and looked, she discerned at the foot of her bed
the form of her husband, and all at once she realized that
he had gone across to the hereafter.
“You are not to worry,” the husband spoke; “every-
thing will be all right. Wally will take care of you and the
children.” The apparition vanished.
Early the next morning she was notified that he had
fatally shot himself, evidently overcome by a fit of depres-
sion. In her great grief she tried to pass the visitation off as
a dream, although she knew in her heart that she had been
quite awake at the time she saw her husband standing at
the foot of her bed.
Two years passed, and the matter sank into the deep-
est recesses of her subconscious mind. At the time of the
message, she had not been able to make much of it. Wally
was a dear friend of her late husband and herself but noth-
ing more. Out of a clear blue sky the telephone rang one
day, and before she picked up the receiver Mrs. B. knew it
was Wally! The friendship was resumed and ultimately led
to marriage, and Wally has indeed taken care of her and
the children ever since!
Bernhard M., sixty-four, happily married, and a
largely self-taught scholar, makes his home in Southern
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
California. His literary criticism and philosophical essays
have appeared largely in such scholarly publications as
Books Abroad. A disability pension augments his income
from writing. His mother, Frances M., was a gifted musi-
cian who has always shown an interest in psychic research.
When Mr. M. Sr., who had been with the San Francisco
Symphony Orchestra, had passed on, the family went
through difficult times, and young Bernhard had to work
hard to keep the family in groceries. At the age of forty-
two, Mrs. M. died of a stroke at her place of work, the
Conservatory of Music and Drama in Point Loma,
California.
A few days after her passing, Bernhard attended the
funeral. At the time, he was told that the ashes would be
placed in a niche in Greenwood Cemetery. With that reas-
surance, he left town. Returning to Point Loma from his
business trip a month later, he had a strange dream. His
late mother appeared to him in what seemed to be a small
room, quite dark, and she seemed in great distress.
“Everything went wrong,” she complained. “Even my
ashes are mislaid!”
Her son remonstrated with her in his dream, assuring
her that this could not be the case. But in reply she showed
him a little table on which there was a wire basket contain-
ing a small copper box.
When he awoke the next morning, Bernhard M.
rejected what he thought was an absurd dream brought on,
no doubt, by his grief and recent upset over the death of
his beloved brother. But it so happened he had planned on
going into town to see if his mother’s name had been prop-
erly inscribed on the door to the niche at the cemetery.
On the way he ran into a friend, May L., a singer,
who informed him that she had just been to the cemetery
to pay her respects to Mrs. M. — and his mother’s ashes
were not there!
On hearing this, Mr. M. asked Mrs. L. to return to
the cemetery with him to make inquiry. Sure enough, his
father's ashes were there, but his mother’s were not. He
questioned the caretaker, who checked the entries in his
books.
“No record of a Mrs. M.,” the caretaker informed
him.
With mounting agony and anger, Bernhard M. went
to the funeral parlor.
After some embarrassing investigations, it developed
that the box of ashes had never left the building. Bernhard
then took them personally out to the cemetery, to make
sure everything would be as it should. By a strange quirk
of fate, he traveled the identical route he had often taken
with his mother when they had gone together to Point
Loma.
When Mr. M. related this experience to me, he sud-
denly felt his mother’s presence again, as if she were
pleased at his having told me, so that others might know
that the dead can return.
718
Florine McC.’s solid stone house, built on one of San
Francisco’s many hills in the year 1895, has withstood
earthquakes and the big fire and is likely to withstand the
next catastrophe, if one comes. Mrs. McC.’s brush with the
uncanny started in 1929, when she was a newlywed living
in Tampa, Florida. To everyone’s surprise — including her
own — she suffered an unexpected heart attack. A doctor
was summoned to the home and, after examining her, pro-
nounced her dead. A towel was then placed over her face
and the doctor started to console the young husband.
“I’ll have to pass the undertaker on the way, and I'll
leave the death certificate there,’’ the doctor said to her
husband.
"But she’s so young,” the husband sighed, for Mrs.
McC. was only nineteen at the time.
The strange part of it was that Mrs. McC. could hear
the conversation, although she could not move. Despite the
fact that her eyes were covered, she could see the entire
scene. Moreover, she had the strangest sensation that she
was about two inches high!
Then, it seemed to her, through her mouth came a
replica of her own body, very small and without clothing.
She went up to the corner of the ceiling and stayed there,
looking down. She had left her body down below. The
landlady had joined the mourners now, and young Mrs.
McC. thought what fun it would be to wiggle her hands
and frighten the woman. The thought of seeing the land-
lady scurry from the room in haste amused her. But then
she became serious and suddenly dived down and reentered
her own body through the nostrils, or so it seemed. Her
physical body then became warm again, and she broke into
an uncontrollable burst of laughter. Immediately the doctor
proceeded to give her an injection to revive her. As soon as
she was conscious she explained what had happened to her.
The doctor shook his head. But he listened with
widening eyes when Mrs. McC. repeated every word that
had been said during the time she had been "legally dead.”
She had noticed, during her temporary stay at the
ceiling, that the doctor had squeezed her arms, perhaps to
bring her back to life, and she wondered if she would feel
sore when she returned into her body. But the arms did
not feel painful. A curious thought, though, kept intruding:
“He forgot something. . . . Whoever was in charge forgot
some duty I had to do, . . .but I don’t understand it.”
Perhaps that was why she was still alive. Someone
forgot to pull a switch?
Throughout the years, Florine McC. displayed
extrasensory abilities. These ranged from such simple
things as foreknowledge of events or places where she had
not been, to the more disturbing forebodings of trouble
affecting her loved ones, and her subsequent ability to
come to the aid of her troubled family.
Her father, Olaus S., born in Norway and brought to
the United States at age two, was in the hotel business
until his retirement many years later. He passed away in
1946 at age seventy-nine, after a full and satisfactory life.
About a month after his death, Mrs. McC. was in
bed in her room on the fourth floor of the house on Grove
Street, which had been her father’s. She had not been
asleep long when she was awakened by a knock at the
door. She woke up, and to her amazement she saw her late
father stick his head into the opened door, calling out in a
cheery voice: “Hi there, Florence!”
Mrs. McC.’s baptismal name is Florence, but she has
never liked it, preferring the form “Florine” instead. How-
ever, her father liked to tease her about it, and on such
occasions he would call her Florence.
It was about 2 o’clock in the morning. Mr. S. entered
the room of his daughter and stood near the bed, looking
at her.
“You can’t find it,” he said.
Mrs. McC., fully awake now, observed her father’s
apparition. She noticed that he wore a tweed overcoat, his
customary shirt and tie, and his hat. He removed the hat
and put his hands into his pockets. The strange thing was
that she could see through him, and he was surrounded by
the most beautiful blue rays, lighting up the entire room.
“Dad, come over and sit down,” she said, and
pointed to the chaise longue. There was no fear, even
though she was aware that he was dead. It seemed some-
how perfectly natural to her now. Although she had heard
of psychic matters, she had been raised in a house where
such matters were neither discussed or believed.
The apparition walked over and sat on the chaise
longue, putting his feet on a stool, as he had often done in
life. This was his chair.
“You’re looking for a paper, Florine,” her father said.
"Yes, Dad,” she nodded, “and I can’t find it.”
“You go down to my bedroom and take the top
drawer out,” her father instructed her, “and underneath the
drawer you will find it pasted on. Also, honey, you will
find a letter!" The voice sounded as normal and steady as
her father’s voice had always sounded.
“Dad, I’m going to cover you up,” the daughter said,
and she took a robe to place over his feet, as she had often
done in his life.
The moment the robe touched her father’s legs, the
apparition disappeared — gone like a puff of smoke!
“Did I dream it?” she asked herself, wondering if it
had really happened. She felt awake, but she was still not
sure whether she was in the midst of a dream. She decided
then and there, with the curious logic of dreamers who see
themselves within the dream, not to touch anything and to
go straight back to bed. This she did and quickly went off
to sleep.
In the morning, she arose and inspected the room.
The door, which she had closed firmly on retiring, was still
ajar. Her robe was lying on the chaise longue. She looked
closer and discovered that the material was still folded in a
Ghosts That Aren’t
719
way that indicated that it had been supported by a pair of
legs! She then knew she had not dreamed the visitation.
She ran downstairs and looked for the drawer her
father had indicated. There, underneath, were the papers
that had been missing. These papers proved her father’s
birth and nationality and were of great importance in the
settling of the estate. There was also the letter he had men-
tioned, and it was a beautiful farewell letter from a father
to his daughter. Throughout his long life, Olaus S. had
never scoffed at the possibility of personal survival. The
family took a dim view of Florine’s experience, but the
close communion father and daughter had always enjoyed
during his lifetime was the reason she had been singled out
for the visit — plus the fact that there was a real need,
unfinished business, that only a visit from the deceased
could bring to a close.
When the Dead Help the Living
We have seen how the departed manifest to the living to
let them know that their lives continue in another world or
because they have some unfinished business in the mun-
dane sphere that needs completing. Having thus mani-
fested, they will not communicate again unless a crisis
comes up in the lives of their loved ones or friends and
their services are perhaps “required.” This is another cate-
gory of communication, and it is one that also occurs
frequently.
In many recorded instances, people who have died
will nevertheless retain an interest in the affairs of those
they have left behind. It is moot what drives them to do
this. Is there a law over there that rewards them for shep-
herding or watching over their people? Are they doing it
because virtue has its own rewards? Are they compelled to
continue the bond from a motivation of ego importance?
Do they want not to be left out of the continuing lives of
their families? Or is it because the living so strongly need
their help that they are drawn back to intercede by the
very need for their intercession? I am rather inclined to
think that there are set rules as to when there may be this
kind of communication and how far they may go in warn-
ing the living of impending dangers or other future devel-
opments.
What this law is in detail is not easy to fathom, and
even more difficult is the question of who originated the
law and who created the originator. Suffice it to establish
rationally and methodically that the law exists and that
there are bona fide instances of an interest taken in the
affairs of the living by their dead.
This interest can take many forms, but the common
denominator is always the fact that the communication
results in some benefit to the living from the knowledge
obtained through the communication. This may be a warn-
ing of disaster or a foretelling of events to come that cannot
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
be changed, but if one knows what is in store ahead of
time, the blow is softened for him.
The interest in the living may be less striking and
merely gently supervisory, a part of seeing how things are
going or of encouraging a depressed person. It is not at all
like a Big Brother feeling, with the invisibles watching you,
but it gives a warm, comfortable impression that one is not
alone and that forces greater than oneself care.
Thus this interest is an expression of love, and as
such it is certainly a positive force, far from frightening or
dangerous.
The living who are fortunate enough to have a
deceased relative take an interest in their lives should
accept this as natural and live with it. They should not
defer decisions to the spiritual watchdog, of course, but
make their own mundane decisions as they feel best. Nev-
ertheless, sometimes the greater knowledge of the ones
beyond the veil can help the living understand their own
problems better and thus provide them with ammunition
for a better judgment.
Mrs. Harry C. lives near a large city in Pennsylvania.
Of Irish-English ancestry, she was born in North Carolina
and came from an old family that was given a land grant
there by George III. The psychic gift was not unknown in
her family, mainly on her mother’s side. After a year in
college, Mrs. C. became a trained practical nurse. She mar-
ried a soldier from Pennsylvania in 1945 and over the years
bore five sons.
Although she had had clairvoyant experiences from
time to time, it was not until she was eleven years old that
she received a visit from the beyond. At that time an aunt
was living with her family to look after the children while
their mother worked. Thus it happened that in her child-
hood Mrs. C. spent many hours with her aunt; they read
and sewed together, and there was a strong bond between
them. Until the aunt died, Mrs. C. had shared a room with
her mother, but after the death of the aunt she was given
her aunt’s bedroom. A few weeks after the funeral, Mrs.
C., then eleven, was sitting on the porch of the house when
she heard her name being called. She glanced up and saw
her late aunt standing in the door, holding it ajar.
“Gretchen, will you please come in here for a
moment. I have something to tell you,” the aunt said in
the same tone of voice Mrs. C. had heard her use while
alive. Obediently and not at all frightened, the eleven-year-
old girl put down her sewing and followed her beckoning
aunt into the house. But as she started to go in, the appari-
tion slowly faded away! What did the aunt want to tell her
little companion? That life continued and that she still
cared how the family was?
A few weeks after this incident, a girlfriend of
Gretchen ’s by the name of Maxine F. stopped in so that
they might attend a movie together. Just as the two girls
were about to leave, Mrs. C. heard her name being called.
All set to go to the movie, she decided to ignore this. But
the voice called again: “Gretchen! Gretchen!”
720
“Your mother’s calling you,” Maxine said, and
waited.
So the two children went back to the kitchen, where
Gretchen’s mother was washing dishes. The mother had
not called her. Other than the three of them, the house was
empty at the time. But Gretchen knew her late aunt was
calling her.
As the days went on, the aunt continued to make her
presence felt in the house. She was not about to be aban-
doned at the cemetery but insisted on continuing with her
duties — and rights — in the household. At night, Gretchen
would hear someone drumming fingernails on the table.
This was a lifelong habit of her aunt’s. Often she would
awaken to see the aunt standing at the foot of her bed,
looking at her. Gretchen was by no means alone in observ-
ing these phenomena. A friend of her mother’s by the
name of Mary L. once occupied the same room. She too
heard the drumming of the invisible fingernails.
It also fell to Gretchen to go through her late aunt’s
effects. This was a very difficult task. On certain days she
felt her aunt’s overpowering presence hovering over her,
taking a keen interest in what she was doing. When the
pressure became too great, Gretchen threw her aunt’s old
letters down and ran out of the house for a breath of fresh
air. Somehow she knew her aunt would not follow her
there.
Many years later, when Gretchen had become Mrs.
Harry C., she and her husband occupied a house in Penn-
sylvania. At first Mrs. C. thought they had acquired a
"resident ghost,” something left over from the past of one
of the earlier owners of the house. The house itself had
been built in 1904 as part of a “company town” for the
Westinghouse Corporation. The houses then were occupied
by workers of that corporation, but in the 1920s the com-
pany decided to get out of the real estate business, and the
houses reverted to individual ownership. A number of ten-
ants then occupied the house in succession. Several ladies
had died on the third floor of the house, center of the psy-
chic manifestations during the time Mr. and Mrs. C. occu-
pied the dwelling. But none of these people had died
violently or were part of a tragic situation of the kind that
may sometimes create a ghostly phenomenon. Of course,
the early history of the house when it was company prop-
erty could not be checked out as there were no records kept
of the tenants during that time. Mrs. C. thought that per-
haps one of the early owners of the house had been the
victim of a tragedy and that it was the restless shade of
that person that was staying on. Her belief was reinforced
by the fact that since her childhood and the encounters
with her late aunt, she had not experienced anything so
strong in the other houses they had lived in. But her clair-
voyance had been active elsewhere, and she has never been
entirely without some form of ESP experience.
The phenomena were mainly footsteps on the third
floor of the house and someone walking down the stairs
when the occupants knew no one was up there. In 1961
Mrs. C. learned that their unseen guest was a woman. One
of her boys was in delicate health and had major surgery
when only seven weeks old. One night Mrs. C. woke up to
hear the baby crying. At the same time, however, she
became aware of another voice, someone singing softly as if
to quiet the baby. Wondering who it might be, Mrs. C.
rose and went into the baby’s room.
There, near the crib, stood a lady. She was a small
woman with a lovely face, dressed in what seemed World
War 1 clothes and hairstyle. The dress was pale lavender
trimmed with black braid and filigree buttons. It had a lace
bodice and jabot and a hobble skirt in the manner of the
turn -of -the -century clothes.
Far from being terrified by the stranger, Mrs. C.
stepped closer. When she approached the crib, the lady
smiled and stepped to one side to let her pass so that she
might tend the baby. When she looked up again, the lady
was gone. The visitor's presence was no longer required;
the mother had come to look after her own.
After that first time, she saw the lady several times —
sometimes in the baby’s room, sometimes going up and
down the third-floor stairs. Later Mrs. C. had another
baby, and the stranger also occupied herself with the new
arrival, as if tending babies were something very natural
and dear to her. But who could she possibly be?
When Mrs. C.’s five-year-old son was sick in the fall
of 1967, he once asked his mother who the strange lady
was who had come and sung to him, and he proceeded to
describe her. Mrs. C. had never discussed her own experi-
ences with the boy, but she knew at once that he too had
seen the lady upstairs.
By this time it began to dawn on her that perhaps
this lady was not a "resident ghost” but a deceased relative
continuing an interest in her family. But she could not be
sure one way or the other, and there the matter stood when
her oldest son Lonnie and his wife Sally came to spend
their Christmas weekend with her in 1967. Sally is a regis-
tered nurse by profession and scientifically minded. For
that reason Mrs. C. had not seen fit to discuss psychic
experiences with her or to tell her of the unusual goings-on
on the third floor of the house.
It so happened that the young couple were put into
the third -floor bedroom for the weekend. Because they
were both tired from the trip, Mrs. C. thought it best to
put them up there, as far removed from street noises as
possible. The room is rather large, with one bed on each
side and a dormer window between the two beds. The
daughter-in-law took one bed, the son the other. They
were soon fast asleep.
On Saturday morning Lonnie, the son, came down
first for breakfast. He and his mother were having coffee in
the kitchen when Sally arrived. She looked rather pale and
haggard. After Mrs. C. had poured her a cup of coffee,
Sally looked at her mother-in-law.
Ghosts That Aren’t
721
"Mom, did you come up to the room for any reason
during the night?”
“Of course not,” Mrs. C. replied.
“Did you get up during the night, Lonnie?” Sally
turned to her husband. He assured her that he had not
budged all night.
"Well,” the girl said, swallowing hard, "then I have
something strange to tell you.”
She had been awakened in the middle of the night by
a voice calling her name. Fully awake, she saw a lady
standing beside her bed. She was not sure how the appari-
tion disappeared, but eventually she went back to sleep,
being very tired. Nothing further happened. What she had
seen, she was sure of. That it was not a dream — that, too,
she knew for a fact. But who was the stranger? The two
young people left a couple of days later, and nothing fur-
ther was said about the incident.
About three weeks after Christmas, Mrs. C. went to
North Carolina to spend a week at her mother’s home.
During a conversation, Mrs. C.’s mother mentioned that
she had recently been going through some things in an old
trunk in the attic. Among many other items, she had found
a small photograph of her grandmother that she did not
know she had. If Mrs. C. wanted it she would be happy to
give it to her, especially as Grandmother L. had always
shown a special interest in her family.
Mrs. C. thanked her mother and took the little pho-
tograph home with her to Pennsylvania. In her own home
she propped it up on the dresser in her room, until she
could find a proper frame for it. But after it had stood
there for a couple of days, Mrs. C. thought that the old
photograph might become soiled and decided to put it
away in the top dresser drawer.
That night Mrs. C. was almost asleep when she
became aware of a humming sound in the room. She
opened her eyes and noticed that the air in her room was
as thick as fog and she could scarcely see the opposite side
of the room. In a moment, her grandmother walked in
from the hall and stood beside her bed. Mrs. C., now fully
awake, raised herself up on one elbow so that the appari-
tion would know she was awake and observing her. Imme-
diately the figure turned and put one hand on Mrs. C.’s
dresser, on exactly the spot where the picture had been
until two days ago. Then she turned her head and looked
directly at Mrs. C. Somehow Mrs. C. understood what her
grandmother wanted. She got out of bed and took the pic-
ture from the drawer and put it back on top of the dresser
again. With that the apparition smiled and walked out of
the room. The air cleared, and the humming stopped.
Mrs. C. had been “aware” of her grandmother’s pres-
ence in the house for some time but never in so definite a
way. She knew that Grandmother L. still considered herself
one of the family and took a keen interest in the living.
That is why she had appeared to Mrs. C.’s daughter-in-law
Sally, not to frighten her or even to ask for anything or
because of any unfinished business, but merely to let her
know she cared.
As a member of the household, Grandmother L. had
naturally felt a bit hemmed in when her picture was rele-
gated to a stuffy drawer. Especially as she had probably
instigated its rediscovery to begin with! Until the picture
turned up, Mrs. C. could not have been sure who the lady
was. But now that she realized she had her own grand-
mother to protect her family, Mrs. C. did not mind at all.
With help being scarce these days, and expensive and
unreliable, it was rather comforting to know that an unpaid
relative was around to look for the well-being of the family.
But the lady did not show up after the incident with
the photograph. Could it be that, like Lohengrin, once she
was recognized her usefulness to the C.s had come to an
end?
Mrs. Betty S., a California housewife, has not the
slightest interest in the psychic. When her father passed
away in 1957 she mourned him, but since he left his wife
well provided for, she did not worry unduly about her
mother, even though they lived in different cities. Shortly
after, she had a vision of her late father so real that she felt
it could not have been a dream. Dream or vision, there
stood her father wearing a white shirt and blue pants. He
looked radiant and alive.
“Is mother all right?” he asked.
Mrs. S. assured her father everything was just fine.
The apparition went away. But a few days later Mrs. S.’s
mother was on the telephone. She was in great distress.
Someone had been in her bank deposit box, and two valu-
able deeds had disappeared without a trace! In addition,
money and bonds had also been taken, making her position
anything but financially secure.
All at once Mrs. S. realized why her late father had
been concerned. Evidently he knew or sensed something
she had not yet become aware of.
Her father never reappeared to her. But the missing
two deeds mysteriously returned to the deposit box about
three months later. To this day this is a puzzle Mrs. S. has
not been able to solve. But it was comforting to know that
her late father had continued to care for her mother.
It is well known that often grandparents get very
attached to the offspring of their children. When death
separates a grandparent from the third generation, a desire
to look in on them can be very strong. Consider the case of
Mrs. Carol S. of Massachusetts.
In 1963 her first son was born. On one of the first
nights after her return from the hospital, she awoke in the
night to see a misty light near the ceiling of her room. It
hovered between the baby’s bassinet and the foot of the
bed. A moment later the light took the form of her late
grandfather’s face and continued to glow. At the same
time, Mrs. S. had the impression her grandfather had come
to see his first great-grandchild.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
722
She herself had been a first grandchild, and her
mother had been the grandfather's firstborn; the interest
would have been understandable. For a moment the face
remained, then it drifted into a fog and soon disappeared
altogether.
In 1969, Mrs. S.’s other grandfather — on her father’s
side of the family — also passed away. A little later her
grandmother gave his bed to Mrs. S. The first night her
six-year-old son slept in it, he reported a strange "dream.”
His great-grandfather had come to him and told him
he lived in heaven and was happy and could look down
and see him. This “dream” was strange because the boy
had no knowledge that the bed he slept in had any connec-
tion with the great-grandfather.
Mrs. Joseph B., a housewife living in a medium-sized
eastern city, a member of the Girl Scout council, a Sunday
school teacher, and a busy, average person with a good,
healthy mind, has no time for fantasies or daydreaming. Of
Pennsylvania Dutch background, she is married to a steel-
worker of Italian antecedents. Her hobbies are bowling and
reading, not psychic research.
She and her husband and son shared a house, while
her mother lived across town by herself. But every ten days
or so her mother would visit them. The mother was famil-
iar with the house and would always let herself in by the
front door. These visits became a normal routine, and the
years went by peacefully until the mother died. She was
not forgotten, but neither did the B. family go into deep
mourning. Her death was simply accepted as a natural
occurrence, and life went on.
One year after her passing, Mr. and Mrs. B. were
getting ready for bed upstairs in their house. Their son was
fast asleep in his room. The time was 1 A.M. Mr. B. was in
the bathroom, and Mrs. B. had just gotten into bed, look-
ing forward to a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow was Satur-
day, and they could sleep longer.
At this moment she heard the downstairs front door
of the house open. Her husband, who had evidently heard
it also, came to the bathroom door and said: "I thought I
heard someone come in.”
“So did I,” replied Mrs. B., and she called down-
stairs: “Who’s down there?”
Her mother’s voice came back. “It’s only me; don’t
come down — I’m not staying!” Then they heard her famil-
iar steps resounding through the house as she walked about
and finally left by the back door.
As if it were the most ordinary thing in the world for
her mother to visit them at 1 A.M., the husband returned
to the bathroom, and Mrs. B. went back to bed. The
power of the routine they had grown accustomed to over
the years had left them immune to Mother’s visits as being
anything but routine. They were both tired and fell asleep
soon afterward. In the morning, Mr. B. looked at the
doors, both the front and the rear doors. They were locked
from the inside, just as he had left them the previous night
before retiring! As Mrs. B. came down for breakfast he
silently pointed at the door. It was then that it hit them
with sudden impact that the mother had been dead for just
a year.
They talked it over. Both agreed that the voice they
had heard had been the mother’s voice and that it had
sounded the same as it used to. Evidently this was
Mother’s way of saying she was still visiting them. Nothing
more was heard from her for a long time. Perhaps she had
other things to do or found her new world more intriguing.
But on January 9, 1967, Mrs. B.’s older sister woke
up to hear her mother calling her urgently. She immedi-
ately got out of bed to answer her mother, completely for-
getting for the moment that her mother had been dead for
all those years. Three times the voice called, and the tone
was one of great distress. Was she trying to tell her some-
thing, and if so, what? The following night, Mrs. B.’s sister
found out. Her husband died quite suddenly. Perhaps her
mother had tried to soften the blow by forewarning her.
Not every communication from the dead is welcomed
by the living. A certain percentage of superstitious people
might even consider such contacts evil or devil -inspired or
dangerous. Otherwise rational people refuse the proffered
hand from beyond the grave. They don’t doubt that their
loved ones continue to exist in another world. They just
don’t want those loved ones around in theirs.
A Mrs. Marge C. in New Jersey has had trouble with
her grandfather for years. It all started when he was dying
in the local hospital and asked to see her. Although she
had not been really close to him, it was his dying wish; yet
her mother did not grant it. Soon after, she felt a strange
chill. Later she realized that it had occurred at the very
moment of his passing, but she did not know it at the
time.
Still a little girl, Marge was present when her uncle
and aunt brought their new baby home with them. She
happened to look up, and there at the back door stood her
grandfather, watching. As he noticed her look, he reached
out to her. But instead of compassion for the old man, she
only felt terror at the thought.
A little later, one evening as she was getting ready for
bed she heard someone calling her. This was peculiar
because she was home alone. But she went downstairs to
the kitchen. There was her grandfather, gazing at her. She
yelled in fright, and he vanished.
The next time the unwelcome visitor made an
appearance she was sixteen. This time she was at a girl-
friend’s house and happened to glance out the window at
a quiet moment. There was grandfather again, looking at
her from outside. She still did not want any part of the
manifestations.
Just before she met her husband in 1965 she saw her
grandfather again. He reached for her and tried to speak,
but she yelled and fainted. Perhaps the grandfather got the
message that appearing in all his celestial glory was fright -
Ghosts That Aren’t
723
ening to his granddaughter; at any rate he did not come
back again. But the problem was by no means solved. Fre-
quently Marge could sense him around and hear him call
out to her. Even her husband heard the voice and of course
could understand it. Finally, Marge took her problem to
her mother to find out why her grandfather was so insis-
tent. Fler mother had been his favorite child, it seems, and
Marge, ever since she was born, had grown into the image
of her mother. Was that the reason her grandfather wanted
to communicate with her?
I explained the possible reasons to Mrs. C. and asked
her to be understanding toward her grandfather. I never
heard anything further from her, so perhaps grandfather
has given up.
Dr. Lucia B., a medical doctor specializing in cancer
research and a graduate of a leading European university,
has had a distinguished medical career as a chest specialist.
A vivacious lady, she speaks several languages. Fler parents
moved from her native Vienna to Prague, where her father
was editor and published a group of magazines. Later her
father lived in Berlin, where he ran a successful publishing
house.
Dr. B. is married to a retired Italian army general
and lives in an apartment on New York’s West Side. She
has lived in the United States on and off since 1932. Prior
to that, she was a physician with the Health Department of
Puerto Rico. Her major contribution to medicine, she feels,
was the discovery of the enzyme that inhibits the cancer
cells of the respiratory system. Unfortunately the New
York climate did not agree with her, and when I met her
she was ready to pull up stakes again and return to Italy.
Dr. B. came to my study in New York to talk about
some unusual psychic experiences she wanted explained.
As a medical doctor, she had a certain reluctance to accept
these events at face value, and yet, as an observant and
brilliantly logical individual, she knew that what had hap-
pened to her was perfectly real and not the result of an
overactive hallucinatory imagination.
In 1940, when the first of these astounding events
took place, Lucia B. lived at the famous Villa Horace in
Tivoli, Italy. World War II was on, and her husband was
on active duty as a major in the Italian army. They had
just been transferred to Tivoli and lived at the villa, which
was then the property of an Englishwoman whom the Fas-
cists did not touch because she had lived among the Ital-
ians for a very long time. Dr. B. was and is a U.S. citizen,
and there was some concern felt for her status. But for the
moment no overt move had been made against her, and as
the wife of an Italian officer she seemed safe for the time
being, especially since the United States had not yet
entered the war.
In May of that year, the Englishwoman left for two
days to visit friends. Major B. had gone off to Civitavec-
chia to get some briefings at the military academy, leaving
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
724
Dr. B. all alone for a day. She decided to make good use of
her ‘ freedom” to go to nearby Rome the next morning for
a full day’s visit. It was a beautiful, warm evening, and
there was one of those marvelous early summer sunsets
Italy is famous for. Dr. B. stood by her windows and
looked out into the landscape, unusually happy despite the
heavy clouds of war all around her.
They had a pet turkey, which she went to visit in the
downstairs portion of the villa. The house, built upon the
original Roman foundations and incorporating much of the
ancient house, is one of the great historical attractions of
the area and is listed in most guidebooks. After a brief visit
with the bird, she returned to her quarters and went to bed
in a serene frame of mind.
She had left word to be awakened at 7 A.M. This was
to be the duty of Gino, her husband’s young aide-de-camp.
But she was aroused from deep sleep at 6 A.M. not by
Gino but by Oscar, Gino’s orderly.
“Wake up — it’s 6 o’clock,” he said, and shook her.
Dr. Barrett was upset at this unusual treatment. “But
it’s supposed to be at seven,” she countered, "and not you,
but Gino’s supposed to wake me. What are you doing in
here? Get out!”
With that, the orderly fled, and Dr. B. tried to go
back to sleep. But she could not. She got up and opened
the shutters that let in the light of the already bright day.
Then she opened the door that led to a long, spacious
room called the mensa that was used as a mess hall. There
was a chapel within the walls of the villa, and a row of
benches formerly in the chapel had been placed along the
walls of this long room so that people might sit there and
pray, or just rest. Dr. B. stepped into the mess hall. On
one of the first bench seats she saw a man sitting. It was
her father, and then she realized why the orderly had
awakened her out of turn: to let her know that her father
had arrived.
“So you’re not dead after all," she said, and went
over to greet him.
Her father had left New York in October 1938 and
gone back to Prague. In February of the following year she
received a telegram from her father’s mistress advising her
briefly that her father had died and had been buried. There
were some suspicious circumstances surrounding his death,
Dr. B. learned later when she went to Prague to investi-
gate. It was not a natural death, and there were witnesses
who said he was afraid that he was being poisoned. But
there was nothing she could do. Prague was already
German-occupied, and it was difficult to open old wounds.
She could not locate the ashes, but she did find the man
who had signed her late father’s death certificate. He freely
admitted that he had not examined the body, but the death
had occurred on the day the Nazis took over Czechoslova-
kia, so he took it for granted that it was suicide as he had
“been told.” Dr. B. has always suspected her father was
“done in” through a plot involving a mistress, but she can-
not prove it. She left Prague again, sure only that her
father was indeed no longer alive.
But there he was, exactly as he used to look in the
happy days when they went hiking into the mountains
together. He was dressed in a brown tweed suit, a suit her
mother had loathed because it was so old. His head was
bent down, and at first she did not see his face. He wore a
wide-brimmed hat.
"You’re here,” Dr. B. exclaimed. “I knew you
weren’t dead!”
For the moment she had forgotten all about her trip
to Prague and the certainty of his demise. But she was oth-
erwise awake and alert, and the day was already very
bright.
She knelt down to look into his face and noticed how
worn his suit was. He was as solid a man as ever, nothing
transparent or vague about him. She started to talk to him
in a voice filled with joy. He lifted his head somewhat, and
the hat moved back up on his head a little. Now she could
see his forehead and face more clearly, and she noticed that
his skin was greenish.
“You must have been ill,” she said, puzzled by this
strange color. “Or have you been a prisoner?”
He answered her in a voice that came from his lips
with great difficulty. “Yes,” he said, “they let me sit in the
sun so you would not get so scared.”
(A materialization in full daylight requires a great
deal of power and preparation, I thought, and is not at all
common. But evidently the people arranging this strange
encounter had seen a way to bring it off successfully.)
Dr. B. did not grasp the meaning of his remark.
“You’ve been sick,” she repeated. “Who brought you?”
Her father pointed to the rear of the huge room. Dr.
B. looked in that direction. There were six other benches
behind the one her father sat on, and then there was a buf-
fet where the soldiers quartered in the house would eat,
and beyond that, next to a wide open door, she saw stand-
ing Dr. K., a friend of both her father and herself. At the
time she saw this man, he was living in New York, but as
it dawned upon her that her father was a visitor from the
other side, she asked him whether Dr. K. was also dead.
His reply came in a faltering voice. "No. They
brought me.”
Dr. B. looked again and saw behind the erect figure
of Dr. K. five yellow-skinned people of small stature,
apparently East Indians. They stood at a short distance
from the doctor in a respectful position and were dressed in
dark clothes.
"Who are these men?” she asked.
“They are from Java,” her father replied. “They
brought me here.”
This did not make any sense whatever. She took her
father's hand into her own now. It felt like ice. Now she
realized that her intuitive feeling a moment before had
been right.
“You are ?”
He nodded.
“Why did you come? There must be a reason for it.”
“Yes, there is.”
“Am I in danger?”
“Yes,” he replied, “you are. You must join the
mountaineers."
“I must what?”
“Go over the mountains,” her father admonished.
“You must get guides.”
This made very little sense, but before she could
question her dead father further, he added: "When you’re
on the ship, these Javanese will look after you.”
“But I don’t need to be looked after.”
“They’ll watch you during the sea voyage,” he
repeated in a tired, faraway tone of voice.
At this moment, Gino the aide-de-camp who was
supposed to wake her at 7 A.M., burst through the door.
Seeing her already up and about, he became agitated.
“Who are all these people?” he demanded. Evidently
he too could see them! “Who opened the gates for them?”
As Gino thundered into the mess hall, Dr. B.’s atten-
tion was momentarily distracted by him. When she looked
back to her father, he had vanished! She glanced toward
the other end of the room and found the Javanese and Dr.
K. had also disappeared.
She explained that Oscar had awakened her an hour
earlier. Gino swore he would punish the orderly for doing
this and left immediately. Fifteen minutes later Gino
returned rather sheepishly. It seemed that Oscar was sup-
posed to get up at 5 A.M. but did not. No matter how the
soldiers tried to rouse him, he would not wake up but
seemed to be in a strange stupor. He was still asleep when
Gino saw him, and there was no question that he had
never set foot into the mensa room that morning!
Evidently Oscar was a physical medium, and it was
his "substance” those in charge of “arrangements” had bor-
rowed to make the materialization of Dr. B.’s father
possible.
An additional proof that it was not the real Oscar but
only a projection or simulation of the orderly that had
awakened her at 6 A.M. could be seen in the fact that the
keys to the outer gates were still in Gino’s possession. No
one else had a set of keys, and yet the doors were open
when Gino arrived! They could not be opened from the
inside; only with a key put into the lock from outside the
gates could they be opened.
A long succession of soldiers testified that Oscar had
never left his bed. At 7:10 A.M. he was still unconscious,
and awoke only much later in the day.
When questioned by his superiors and Dr. B., Oscar
was as mystified as they were. He recalled absolutely noth-
ing and had never had a similar experience before.
“I should have known something was odd when he
touched me and shook me violently to awaken me,” Dr. B.
Ghosts That Aren’t
725
said as an afterthought. “In Italy that sort of thing just
isn’t done — you don’t touch the Signora.”
The real Oscar, of course, would never have dared to,
but apparently the astrally- projected Oscar, perhaps under
the control of another will, had to awaken her in order for
her to receive the message her father had brought. It
seemed to me like a wonderfully well-organized psychic
plot.
With all the commotion, Dr. B. had completely for-
gotten she had to catch the 8 o’clock train to Rome. Get-
ting hold of her emotions, she made the train just in time.
When her husband returned two days later, she did not tell
him about the incident. It wasn’t the sort of thing an Ital-
ian officer would accept, she felt, and she thought it best to
put it aside. Time would tell if there was something to all
this.
Two months later her husband left for the war in
earnest. This left her alone at the villa, and as the Germans
took over more and more in Italy she was advised by the
U.S. consul to leave the country. But just as she was ready
to leave for Switzerland, the Italian government confiscated
her passport. Marriages between Italian officers and for-
eigners were dissolved, leaving her in even greater
difficulties.
All this time her husband was fighting somewhere in
Greece, and she had very little news of him. There was a
hint she might wind up in a detention camp. She decided
to leave while she could.
“Go over the mountains,” a friend suggested, and
suddenly it hit her what her father had meant.
Twice she was unsuccessful. The third time she suc-
ceeded and wound up in a French prison for two months.
As she was a good skier, she had crossed the Little St.
Bernard pass on skis. However, in order not to get caught
and sent back again she had taken a guide. Just as her dead
father had predicted she would!
Her mother in New York arranged for her to come
back and got her to Lisbon, where she was to take a boat.
Through a highly placed acquaintance in Washington her
mother arranged for passage aboard a tiny vessel never
meant for the Atlantic passage. The boat belonged to a
Portuguese industrialist, and there were just twelve cabins
aboard.
The yacht was named the Cavalho Arrujo, or Red
Horse, and it took twenty-one days to cross the ocean.
When the ship reached the Azores, a Dutch radioman and
five Javanese crewmen from a torpedoed Dutch ship were
taken aboard. Evidently they had been torpedoed by the
Germans and taken blindfolded to the Azores, then neu-
tral. In a rare gesture of humanitarianism the Germans left
them there to be rescued and sent home.
From the very first, the five Javanese attached them-
selves to Dr. B., watching over her just as her father had
told her they would. They looked exactly as they had
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
appeared to her in the glimpse into the future her father
had given at the villa in Tivoli!
After she landed in New York and joined her mother,
she never saw the Javanese crewmen again. They vanished
as quickly and quietly as they had entered her life.
Just as soon as she could, she looked up Dr. K. She
was sure he would not believe her, but she was determined
to tell him what she had seen.
To her amazement Dr. K., a celebrated biochemist,
did not scoff. They compared the time differential to deter-
mine where he had been at the time she had seen him in
Tivoli. He had been at work in his New York lab and had
felt nothing special at the time.
Since there was no close connection between Dr. B.
and Dr. K., she was puzzled as to why her father had
"shown” him to her at the time of his visit. But Dr. K.
represented New York to her father, and perhaps this was
his way of saying: “You’ll get to New York.”
Since Dr. K. did not project his image to Italy, I can
only assume that what Dr. B. saw was a simulation — that
is, a materialization created by the same powers that
arranged for her father’s temporary return. Ectoplasm can
be molded in many ways, and as Dr. B. did not actually
speak to the Javanese and to the Dr. K. she saw in Tivoli.,
they might also have been merely projections or visions.
Whatever the technique of their amazing appearances, the
purpose was clear: to give her a glimpse into the future.
Her father never contacted her again after her safe
return to the United States.
Dr. B.’s encounters with the supernormal have been
rare and far between, but whatever experiences she has had
were unusually vivid. Shortly after her marriage she was
spending some time alone in a summer resort not far from
Venice, where she and her husband were living at the time.
Two days before she was to rejoin her husband in the city,
she was dressing for dinner. It was the last Sunday, and
she was putting on her fanciest evening gown for the occa-
sion. It was a warm June evening. She was sitting in front
of the dresser, and as she bent forward to put on her lip-
stick, she suddenly saw in the mirror that two candles were
burning behind her. She turned around, but there were no
candles in back of her. She looked back into the mirror,
and there were the two candles again! Back and forth her
head went, and the candles were still there — but only in
the mirror.
"It must be some kind of reflection,” she said to her-
self aloud and rose to look for the original candles. She
examined first the windows, then the doors and walls, but
there was no possible way in which two burning candles
could appear in her mirror. Disquieted, she sat down again
and looked. Perhaps it was only her imagination. But the
two candles were back again! Only this time one of the
candles flickered, and the flame moved a little.
It was 7 o’clock. She was hungry and thought: “I’ve
got to go down. I don’t care, candles or no candles.”
726
No sooner had she thought this than she heard a
voice behind her — a woman’s voice, speaking in Italian.
"Promise me never to abandon him!”
“Of course not,” she replied, without thinking how a
disembodied voice could suddenly sound in her room. She
turned around. There was no one there!
She wondered: Who was she never to abandon? It
could only be her husband, Alberto.
She decided she had had enough unusual experiences
for one day and left the room. Coming down the stairs, she
was met on the second floor by her husband, racing up to
meet her. He seemed upset.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Mother died. I've just come from her funeral.”
Tears streamed down his face. He had not wished to alarm
her or to allow his grief to interfere with their vacation. His
mother had been buried the day before, and he thought
it best to come and tell her personally rather than to tele-
phone.
The voice Dr. B. had heard had been her mother-in-
law's.
Years later the request made strange sense to her.
Between 1941 and 1945, when she was in New York, her
husband was a prisoner of the Germans. She had no con-
tact with him and knew nothing about his fate. The Red
Cross told her that he had died, so legally she could
remarry after five years. But the voice of a mother from
beyond the grave stuck in her mind, and she realized what
the voice had meant; she never abandoned her husband,
and eventually she was reunited with him.
Loved ones or known members of one’s family are
not the only ones who communicate with the living. Some-
times a total stranger may do so.
Before the war, Dr. B. spent some time vacationing
in Arosa, Switzerland. She stayed at a modest pension at
the time, as it was toward the end of her vacation and she
was beginning to run low on funds. Her room was on one
of the upper floors.
She had just rung for her breakfast, which the maid
would very shortly bring her. But before this happened, the
door was flung open, and a woman burst into her room.
She wore a kind of negligee, and her black hair was flying
behind her in disorder. Out of breath, the woman
demanded: “You must tell him. It is very important! Please
tell him!”
Her hands moved with great agitation. Dr. B. was
annoyed by the intrusion. She eyed the woman coolly and
asked her to leave the room, assuming the woman had
stepped into her room in error. The woman had spoken
German.
“ Raus!" Dr. B. said, and the girl tried once again to
implore her to "tell him.” Then she backed out of the room
by sliding backward.
The next moment the maid came into the room car-
rying the breakfast tray. “Who was that crazy woman who
just came in?” Dr. B. demanded.
“What woman? There is no one else on this floor.”
“But she was just here this minute.”
“Impossible. You’re the only one on this floor. There
is no one left. After all, this is the end of the season.” The
maid shook her head and left, wondering about the good
doctor.
It was late, so Dr. B. did not bother to make
inquiries at the desk downstairs about the strange visitor.
She took her skis and went out to the slope. She had a
favorite spot on the mountain where she could enjoy a
marvelous view of the surrounding countryside. She could
not get up there fast enough this morning. As she
approached the spot, she suddenly saw a man coming
toward her from behind some trees.
"May I join you?” he said. He looked like a nice
young man and she was not afraid, but she told the young
man as gracefully as she could that she was a married
woman.
“No, no, it’s nothing like that,” he assured her. “I
just want to talk to you for moment.”
He was a physician from Zurich whose first practice
had been here in Arosa. At that time he had treated a
young woman for advanced tuberculosis. When he first
saw the patient, she was a great beauty. They were almost
instantly in love, but to his horror he realized that she had
only a short time to live. The woman was only eighteen at
the time, and he was a young doctor just starting out. But
he would not accept this verdict and decided he could
somehow change her fate.
"I’m going to die,” the girl said. But the young doc-
tor asked for her hand in marriage and, despite her parents’
objection, insisted on marrying her. Since both the doctor’s
family and the girl’s people were well off financially, he
gladly signed the waiver as to her fortune and promised in
addition to take care of her, no matter what.
Dr. B. listened to the story with keen interest. He
asked her to accompany him a bit farther and showed her a
small chalet where he and his bride had spent their honey-
moon. Everything had been brand-new. He had bought the
chalet for her, and it looked for a while as though the dire
predictions about her death would not come true. Months
went by, and her condition, far from worsening, gradually
improved.
The doctor spent every moment of his time with her,
completely putting aside his career and never leaving her.
But when she seemed to be improving so much, he decided
he should see a few of his patients again. He thought it
safe and did not think she would die now.
One day there was an emergency in the village. An
accident occurred, and he was called. While he was gone,
something strange must have happened to the woman.
Suddenly she left the chalet and came running down the
winding road to the village in sheer terror. Whether it was
a sudden realization that her protector was not by her side
Ghosts That Aren’t
727
for a few hours or because of some inexplicable worsening
of her condition, no one knew. She came running down the
hill after him. When she got to the little pension, her
physical strength gave out. Her disease-ridden lungs could
not stand the great strain of running. Collapsing in the
pension, she was carried to one of the rooms upstairs,
where she died without ever seeing her husband again.
“One of the rooms?” Dr. B. asked. "On the third
floor?”
The young man nodded.
She then described her experience of that morning to
him.
“That’s she, all right,” the young man acknowledged
sadly. "Wasn’t she beautiful?”
Every year the young physician would come to Arosa
on the anniversary of her death, always hoping to find out
why she had run out of their chalet.
Today was that day.
After a moment of reflection, Dr. B. told the young
man that she too was a physician. It pleased him to know
this, and he asked her whether she had read anything in
the wraith’s face that might have indicated the nature of
her fears. Had she seen death approaching, and did she not
want to go without her husband by her side? Or was it
something else, something they might never know, that
drove her to undertake her fatal dash?
Dr. B. conjectured that perhaps the girl discovered
she was pregnant and wanted her husband to know right
away. But there was a telephone in the chalet, and the doc-
tor had told his wife where he was going. She could have
reached him at the scene of the accident, or she might have
waited for his return.
Two days later, Dr. B. left Arosa and never returned
to the little pension. But the young man probably contin-
ues to come back on the anniversary of the day when his
loved one was taken from him. And on the third floor of
the pension a tragedy will be enacted once a year, a tragedy
involving a beautiful girl with flying black hair, until the
two lovers meet for good in the land beyond the veil.
» 159
Vivien Leigh’s Post-Mortem
Photograph
Although Sybil Leek, the British author, trance
medium, and psychic, had done extraordinary things in my
presence, notably fine trance work and clairvoyance, she
never considered herself a photographic medium. On one
or two occasions strange objects did appear on photographs
taken of her or in her presence, but she had never pursued
the matter.
On a Friday morning in July 1967, Sybil telephoned
me in great agitation. She had just had a very vivid dream,
or at any rate fallen into a state similar to the dream state.
Someone named Vivien had communicated with her and
remarked that she was now going on a holiday. Did I know
any Vivien? Why me, I asked. Because this communicator
wanted Sybil Leek to call me and tell me. Was there any-
thing more? No, just that much. I pondered the matter.
The only Vivien I ever knew personally was a young
woman not likely to be on the other side as yet. But, of
course, one never knows. I was still pondering the matter
when the Saturday newspaper headlines proclaimed the
death of Vivien Leigh. It appeared that she had just been
discovered dead in her London apartment, but death might
have come to her any time before Saturday, most likely on
Friday. Suddenly I saw the connection and called Sybil.
Did she know Vivien Leigh at all? She did indeed,
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
728
Psychic photo of Sybil Leek with the
just-passed Vivien Leigh
although she had not seen her for some time. Years ago
Vivien Leigh would consult Sybil Leek in personal matters,
for Sybil was pretty good at sorting things out for her
friends.
There was definitely a relationship. Nobody in the
world knew that Vivien Leigh had died on Friday. The dis-
covery was made on Saturday. And yet Sybil had her com-
munication during Thursday night. The date? June 30,
1967. 1 felt it was the actress’ way of saying goodbye and
at the same time letting the world know that life continued.
That was on Saturday. On Monday Sybil had a visitor at
the Stewart Studios, where she usually stays when in New
York. Her visitor, Edmond Hanrahan, was so impressed
with the unusual decor of the studio that he decided to
take some color pictures with his camera, which he hap-
pened to have with him at the time. The date was July 3,
1967. Several pictures were of Sybil Leek. There was noth-
ing remarkable about any of them, except one. Partially
obstructing Sybil is the face of a dark-haired woman with
an unmistakable profile — that of Vivien Leigh!
Both Sybil and the photographer remember clearly
that there was nobody else with them at the time, nor was
there anything wrong with either film or camera. The psy-
chic extra seems soft and out of focus, as if the figure had
stepped between the camera and Sybil, but too close to be
fully in focus.
I questioned Mr. Hanrahan about the incident. He
admitted that this was not the first time something or
someone other than the person he was photographing
showed up on a negative. On one particularly chilling occa-
sion he had been photographing the widow of a man who
had been murdered. On the negative the murdered man
appeared next to his widow! Hanrahan used a Honeywell
Pentax 35mm camera and Ektachrome film when he caught
Vivien Leigh on film. He did not employ a flashgun but
used all the available room light. He was relieved to hear
that there was nothing wrong with his ability as a photog-
rapher or his camera, and he could not very well be held
accountable for unseen models.
» 160
How the Dead Teacher
Said Good-bye
EVELYN England, A BUSY professional portrait photogra-
pher in Los Angeles, California, had always known of her
psychic gift but paid no attention to it. To her, this was
simply part of life, and the supernatural was farthest from
her mind.
Even as a youngster, England had ESP experiences,
especially of the gift of finding lost objects under strange
circumstances, as if driven by some inner voice. But
despite these leanings she had no particular interest in the
subject itself and merely took it for granted that others also
had ESP.
One of England’s jobs was photographing high-
school yearbook pictures. So it was merely a routine assign-
ment when she was called on to take the picture of Mr. G.,
a mathematics teacher. The date was Saturday, April 3,
1965. He was the last of the faculty to come in for his por-
trait. Her studio was closed on Sunday. On Monday Eng-
land developed and retouched the print, and Tuesday
morning she mailed it to the school. A few hours later she
received a phone call from the school principal. Had Mr.
G. come in for his sitting? Yes, Miss England answered,
and informed the principal that the print was already in the
mail. At this there was a slight pause. Then the principal
explained that Mr. G. had died unexpectedly on Sunday.
In May a Mr. H. came into her studio who remarked
that he felt she had a good deal of ESP, being himself inter-
ested in such matters. Miss England took his portrait. He
then came in to pick his choice from the proofs. When she
placed the print into the developer, to her amazement, it
was not Mr. H.’s face that came up — but Mr. G.’s, the
dead mathematics teacher’s face. A moment later, while she
was still staring in disbelief, the portrait of her client Mr.
H. came upon the same print, stronger than the first por-
trait and facing the opposite way from it.
Miss England was a very meticulous photographer.
She never left an undeveloped print around. She always
developed each print fully, never leaving half-finished
prints behind. No one but she used the studio. There was
no “rational” explanation for what had happened. The
smiling face of the late mathematics teacher was there to
remind her that life was not over for him — or perhaps a
token of gratitude for having been the last person to have
seen him “alive.” Hastily, Miss England printed another
picture of Mr. H., and it was just a normal photograph.
Other “dead” persons later used her skills to manifest
themselves, but this incident was the most remarkable one
in her psychic life.
BILOCATION OR THE ETHERIC DOUBLE OF
A LIVING PERSON
Bilocation is a phenomenon closely allied with astral travel,
but it is a manifestation of its own with certain distinct fea-
tures that set it apart from astral travel or out-of-body
experiences per se. In bilocation a living person is projected
to another site and observed there by one or more wit-
nesses while at the same time continuing to function fully
and normally in the physical body at the original place. In
this respect it differs greatly from astral projection since the
astral traveler cannot be seen in two places at once, espe-
cially as the physical body of the astral traveler usually
rests in bed, or, if it concerns a daytime projection, is con-
tinuing to do whatever the person is doing rather automati-
cally and without consciousness. With bilocation there is
How the Dead Teacher Said Good-bye
729
full consciousness and unawareness that one is in fact being
seen at a distance as well.
Bilocation occurs mostly in mentally active people,
people whose minds are filled with a variety of ideas, per-
haps to the point of distraction. They may be doing one
thing while thinking of another. That is not to say that
people without imagination cannot be seen in two places at
once, but the majority of cases known to me do indeed fall
into the first category. A good case in point is a close
friend of mine by the name of Mina Lauterer of California.
I have written of her previously in ESP and You. Miss
Lauterer has pronounced ESP talents. In addition, however,
she is a well-balanced and very keen observer, since she is
a professional writer. She has had several experiences of
being seen in a distant place while not actually being there
in the flesh.
In one such case she was walking down the street in
Greenwich Village, New York, when she saw a gentleman
whom she knew from Chicago. Surprised to find this per-
son out of his usual element, she crossed the street in order
to greet him. She tried to reach out toward him and he
evaporated before her eyes. The incident so disturbed her
that she wrote to the man in Chicago and found out that
he had been in Chicago at the time she had observed him
in New York. However, he had just then been thinking of
her. Whether his thought projection was seen by Mina
Lauterer or whether a part of himself was actually pro-
jected to appear is a moot question. What is even more
interesting is the fact that he, too, saw Miss Lauterer at the
same time he was thinking about her in Chicago. This, of
course, is a case of double bilocation, something that does
not happen very often.
In another instance, Miss Lauterer reported a case to
me that had overtones of precognition in addition to bilo-
cation. “One night not long ago, in New York, as I was in
bed, halfway between sleep and being fully awake,” she
said, "I saw a face as clearly as one sees a picture projected
on a screen. I saw it with the mind’s eye, for my eyes were
closed. This was the first experience that I can recall,
where I saw, in my mind, a face I had never seen before.
“About six weeks later, I received an invitation to go
to Colombia, South America. I stayed on a banana planta-
tion in Turbo, which is a primitive little town on the Gulf
of Uraba. Most of the people who live there are the
descendants of runaway slaves and Indian tribes. Trans-
portation is by launch or canoe from the mainland to the
tiny cluster of nearby islands. The plantation was located
near the airport on the mainland, as was the customs office.
The village of Turbo is on a peninsula.
“One Sunday afternoon I went into town with my
host, an American, and my Colombian friend. As we
walked through the dirty streets bordered with sewage
drains and looked around at the tin-roofed hovels and the
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
730
populace of the place, I thought, this is the edge of the
world.
“Sunday seemed to be the market day; the streets
were crowded with people mostly of two hues, black and
red-skinned. As we passed a drugstore, walking single file,
a tall, handsome, well-dressed young man caught my atten-
tion. He seemed as out of place as I and my companions
did. He did not look at me, even as I passed directly in
front of him. It struck me as strange. South American men
always look at women in the most frank manner. Also, he
looked familiar, and I realized that this was the face that I
had seen in my mind, weeks before in New York!
"The following day we were invited to cocktails by
our neighbor, the Captain of Customs. He told us that a
young flyer arrived every month around the same time,
stopped in Turbo overnight, and then continued on his
regular route to other villages. He always bunked in with
his soldiers, instead of staying at the filthy hotel in the vil-
lage. He mentioned that the young man was the son of the
governor of one of the Colombian states, and that he had
just arrived from Cartagena, the main office of his small
airline.
“He brought the young man out and introduced him
to us. It was the young man that I had seen in the village!
I asked him if he had really arrived Monday morning and
he later proved beyond all doubt that he had not been in
Turbo on Sunday afternoon when I saw him. He was
dressed in the same clothes on Monday as those that I had
seen him wearing on Sunday in my vision.
"I do not know why I saw him when he wasn’t there.
Later he asked me to marry him, but I did not.
“When I and my companions went to Cartagena later
on we checked and again confirmed the facts — he was
miles away when I had seen him!”
* * *
I am indebted to Herbert Schaefer of Savannah,
Georgia, for the account of a case of bilocation that
occurred some time ago to two elderly friends of his.
Carl Pfau was awakened one night by the feeling that
he was not alone. Turning over in bed, he saw his good
friend Morton Deutsch standing by his bedside. “How did
you get in here?” he asked, since the door had been
securely locked. Deutsch made no reply but merely smiled,
then, turning, walked to the door, where he disappeared.
On checking the matter, it was discovered that Mr.
Deutsch had been sitting in a large comfortable chair at the
time of his appearance at this friend’s bedside and had just
wondered how his friend Carl was doing. Suddenly he had
felt himself lifted from the chair and to Carl’s bedside.
There was a distance of about two miles between their
houses.
* * *
Bilocation cannot be artificially induced the way astral
projection can, but if you are bent on being seen in two
places at once, you may encourage the condition through
certain steps. For one thing, being in a relaxed and com-
fortable position in a quiet place, whether indoors or out-
doors, and allowing your thoughts to drift might induce
the condition. The more you concentrate, the less likely it
is to happen. It is very difficult to produce that certain
state of dissociation that is conducive to bilocation experi-
ences. The only thing I can suggest is that such a condition
may occur if you set up the favorable conditions often
enough. It should be remembered that the majority of bilo-
cation incidents is not known to the projected individual
until after it has occurred and been confirmed on the other
end.
ASTRAL PROJECTIONS OR
OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES
One of the terms frequently met with in the discussions of
paranormal phenomena is the word "astral.” Although
vaguely reminiscent of stars and celestial conditions, it
actually means the same as etheric, at least to me it does.
By astral or etheric dimension, I mean that world outside
the physical world which contains all spiritual phenomena
and ESP manifestations. This dimension is made up of very
fine particles and is certainly not intangible. The inner
body, which in my opinion represents the true personality
in humans, is made up of the same type of substance; con-
sequently, it is able to exist freely in the astral or etheric
dimension upon dissolution of the physical body at physi-
cal death. According to theosophy and, to a lesser degree,
the ancient Egyptian religion, a human being has five bod-
ies of which the astral body is but one, the astral world
being the second lowest of seven worlds, characterized by
emotions, desires, and passions. This, of course, is a philo-
sophical concept. It is as valid or invalid as one chooses it
to be. By relating to the astral world as merely the “other
side of life,” I may be simplifying things and perhaps run
counter to certain philosophical assumptions, but it appears
to me that to prove one nonphysical sphere is enough at
this stage of the game in parapsychology. If there be other,
finer layers — and I do not doubt in the least that there are
— let that be the task at a time when the existence of the
nonphysical world is no longer being doubted by the
majority of scientists.
* * *
In speaking of “astral projection,” we are in fact
speaking of projection into the astral world; what is pro-
jected seems to be the inner layer of the body, referred to
as the astral or etheric body. By projecting it outward into
the world outside the physical body, it is capable of a
degree of freedom that it does not enjoy while encased in
the physical body. As long as the person is alive in the
physical world, however, the astral body remains attached
to the physical counterpart by a thin connecting link called
the “silver cord.” If the cord is severed, death results. At
the time of physical death, the cord is indeed severed and
the astral body freely floats upward into the next dimen-
sion. Nowadays we tend to call such projections “out-of-
body experiences.” Robert Monroe, a communications
engineer by profession and a medium by accident, has
written a knowledgeable book about his own experiences
with out-of-body sensations, and a few years before him,
Dr. Hereward Carrington, together with Sylvan Muldoon,
authored a book, considered a classic nowadays, on the
subject of astral projection. The reason that out-of-body
experience is a more accurate term to describe the phenom-
ena is to be found in the fact that projection, that is to say
a willful outward movement out of the physical body, is
rarely the method by which the phenomena occur. Rather
it is a sensation of dissociation between physical and
etheric body, a floating sensation during which the inner
self seems to be leaving its physical counterpart and travel-
ing away from it. The movement toward the outside is by
no means rapid or projectionlike; it is a slow gradual dis-
engagement most of the time and with most witnesses.
Occasionally there are dramatic instances where astral pro-
jection occurs spontaneously and rather suddenly. But in
such cases some form of shock or artificial trauma is usu-
ally present such as during surgery and the use of an anes-
thetizing agent or in cases of sudden grief, sudden joy, or
states of great fatigue.
Out-of-the-body experiences can be classified rough-
ly into two main categories: the spontaneous cases, where it
occurs without being induced in any way and is usually as
a surprise, and experimental cases, where the state of disso-
ciation is deliberately induced by various means. In the lat-
ter category certain controlled experiments are of course
possible, and I will go into this toward the end of this
chapter.
* * *
The crux of all astral projection, whether involuntary
or voluntary, is the question whether the traveler makes an
impact on the other end of the line, so to speak. If the
travel is observed, preferably in some detail, by the recipi-
ent of the projection, and if that information is obtained
after the event itself, it constitutes a valuable piece of evi-
dence for the reality of this particular ESP phenomenon.
There is the case of a Japanese- American lady, Mrs.
Y., who lived in New York and had a sister in California.
One day she found herself projected through space from
her New York home to her sister’s place on the West
Coast. She had not been there for many years and had no
idea what it looked like inasmuch as her sister had
informed her that considerable alterations had taken place
about the house. As she swooped down onto her sister’s
home, Mrs. Y. noticed the changes in the house and saw
her sister, wearing a green dress, standing on the front
lawn. She tried to attract her sister’s attention but was
How the Dead Teacher Said Good-bye
731
unable to do so. Worried about her unusual state of being,
that is, floating above the ground and seemingly being
unable to be observed, Mrs. Y. became anxious. That
moment she found herself yanked back to her New York
home and bed. As she returned to her own body, she expe-
rienced a sensation of falling from great heights. This sen-
sation accompanies most, if not all, incidents of astral
travel. The feeling of spinning down from great heights is,
however, a reverse reaction to the slowing down in speed of
the etheric body as it reaches the physical body and pre-
pares to return into it. Many people complain of dreams in
which they fall from great heights only to awaken to a sen-
sation of a dizzying fall and resulting anxiety. The majority
of such experiences are due to astral travel, with most of it
not remembered. In the case of Mrs. Y., however, all of it
was remembered. The following day she wrote her sister a
letter, setting down what she had seen and asking her to
confirm or deny the details on the house and of herself. To
Mrs. Y.’s surprise, a letter arrived from her sister a few
days later confirming everything she had seen during her
astral flight.
* * *
Ruth E. Knuths, a former schoolteacher who cur-
rently works as a legal secretary in California, has had
many ESP experiences, and like many others, she filed a
report in conformity with a suggestion made by me in an
earlier book concerning any ESP experiences people wished
to register with me.
In the spring of 1941 when I lived in San Diego,
where I had moved from Del Rio, Texas, I was riding
to work on a streetcar. I had nothing on my mind in
particular; I was not thinking of my friends in Texas
and the time was 8 A.M. Suddenly I found myself stand-
ing on the front porch of Jo Comstock’s house in Del
Rio. Jo and I have been friends for many years. The
same dusty green mesquite and cat claw covered the
vacant lot across the road, which we called Caliche Flat.
People were driving up and parking their cars at the
edge of the unfenced yard. They were coming to express
sympathy to Jo because of the death of her mother. Jo
was inside the house. I knew this although I did not see
her. I was greeting the friends for her. The funeral was
to be that afternoon. Then as suddenly as I had gone to
Del Rio, I was back in the streetcar, still two or three
blocks away from my stop.
Two weeks later Joe wrote, telling me that on a cer-
tain date, which was the same date I had this vision on,
her mother had been found by neighbors unconscious
from a stroke, which they estimated had occurred about
10 o’clock in the morning. Jo was notified at 10:30. She
said that she badly wished me to be there with her.
Allowing for the difference in time, two hours, I had
had this experience at the time of the stroke, but the
vision itself was projected ahead of that two days, to the
day of the funeral.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
732
On May 28, 1955, she had another experience of
astral projection, which she was able to note in detail and
report to me:
My husband and I had dinner with Velva and Jess
McDougle and I had seen Jess one time downtown,
afterward, and we spoke and passed. I had not seen
Velva. Then on June 1 1 , a Saturday, I was cleaning
house, monotonously pushing the vacuum sweeper
brush under the dresser in the bedroom, when suddenly
I was standing at the door of a hospital room, looking
in. To the left, white curtains blew gently from a breeze
coming from a window. The room was bright with sun-
light; directly opposite the door and in front of me was
a bed with a man propped up on pillows; on the left
side of the bed stood Velva. The man was Jess. No
word was spoken, but I knew that Jess was dead,
although as I saw him he was alive though ill. I "came
back” and was still cleaning under the dresser. I didn’t
contact Velva, nor did 1 hear from her. However, about
a week later my sister, Mary Hatfield, told me that she
was shocked to hear of Mr. McDougle’s death. That
was the first confirmation I had. I immediately went to
see Velva, and she told me that he had suffered a heart
attack on Thursday before the Saturday of my vision,
and had died the following Sunday, the day after the
vision occurred.
* * *
Richard Smith is a self-employed landscape service
contractor, in his thirties, married and living in Georgia.
He has had many ESP experiences involving both living
people and the dead. Sometimes he is not sure whether he
has visions of events at a distance or is actually traveling to
them. In his report to me he states:
On one very unusual occasion, just before sleep
came, I found myself floating through the air across the
country to my wife’s parents’ home in Michigan where I
moved about the house. I saw Karen's father as he read
the newspaper, his movements through the rooms, and
drinking a cup of coffee. I could not find her mother in
the house. She was apparently working at the hospital. I
was floating at a point near the ceiling and looking
down. Mr. Voelker, her father, happened to look up
from his coffee and seemed to be frightened. He looked
all around the room in a state of great uneasiness as if
he could sense me in the room. He would look up
toward me but his eyes would pass by as though I were
invisible. I left him, as I did not wish to frighten him by
my presence.
This latter experience I seem almost able to do at
will when the conditions are right, and travel anywheres.
Sometimes, involuntarily, I find myself looking upon a
scene that is taking place miles away and of which I
have no personal knowledge. These experiences have
taken place since my childhood, although I have kept
them to myself with the exception of my wife.
* * *
From a scientific control point of view, astral projec-
tion is mainly a subjective experience and only the large
volume of parallel testimony can give clues to its opera-
tional setup. However, there are a number of verified cases
on record where the astral traveler was actually seen, heard,
or felt by those at the other end of the trip, thus corrobo-
rating a subjective experience by objective observation.
That time is truly a convention and not an indepen-
dent dimension at all can be seen from the fact that differ-
ences in regional observation times in such cases are always
adjusted to coincide with the proper local time: if an
astrally projected person is seen in his etheric or non-
physical state at 3 P.M. in Los Angeles, and the traveler
himself recalls his experience in New York to have taken
place at exactly 6 P.M., we know that the time differential
between California and the Eastern Seaboard is three hours
and thus practically no measurable time seems to have
elapsed between the commencement and the completion of
the astral trip.
That a tiny amount of what we call time does elapse
I am sure, for the speed of astral travel cannot be greater
than the speed of thought, the ultimate according to Ein-
stein (and not the speed of light, as formerly thought).
Even thought takes time to travel, although it can cover
huge distances in fractions of a second. But thought — and
astral projection — are electric impulses and cannot travel
entirely without some loss of the time element, no matter
how tiny this loss is. Some day, when we have built appa-
ratus to measure these occurrences, it will no doubt be
found that a tiny delay factor does exist between the two
ends of the astral road.
The duration of astral flight varies according to the
relaxed state of the projected person, A very nervous, fear-
ful individual need only panic and desire to be in his own
bed — and pronto, he is pulled back, nay, snapped back,
into his body with rubber-band-like impact and some sub-
sequent unpleasantness.
The sensation, according to many who have experi-
enced this, is like falling from great heights or spinning
down in a mad spiral and waking up suddenly in one’s bed
as if from a bad dream, which in a way it is.
I am convinced that the falling sensation is not due to
any actual physical fall at all, but merely represents the
sudden deceleration of the vibratory speed of the person.
Astral travel, like all psychic life, is at a much higher rate
of speed than is physical life. Thus when the personality is
suddenly yanked off the road, so to speak, and forcibly
slowed down very quickly, a shock -like condition results.
The denser atmosphere in which our physical bodies move
requires a slower rate of pulsation. Normally, in astral pro-
jection, the person returns gradually to his body and the
process is orderly and gradual, so no ill effects result. But
when the return is too sudden there is no time for this, and
the screaching coming to a stop of the bodily vehicle is the
result.
Psychiatrists have tried to explain the very common
sensation of falling from great heights in one’s dream as an
expression of fear. The trouble with this explanation is that
the experience is so common that it could not possibly
cover all the people who have had it; many of them do not
have unexpressed fears or fear complexes. Also, some astral
travelers have had this while partially or fully awake.
I think it is a purely mechanical symptom in which
the etheric body is forced to snap back into the physical
body at too fast a rate of speed. No permanent injury
results, to be sure. The moments of confusion that follow
are no worse than the mental fogginess that one often feels
on awaking after a vivid dream, without astral projection
involved. However, many travelers find themselves
strangely tired, as if physical energies had been used up,
which indeed they have!
One such person, perhaps a typical case, is Dorothy
W., who is a young grandmother in her fifties. She is a
mentally and physically alert and well-adjusted person who
works as an executive secretary for a large community cen-
ter. Dorothy has had many psychic experiences involving
premonitions of impending death, and has been visited by
the shades of the departed on several occasions. She takes
these things in her stride and is neither alarmed nor unduly
concerned over them.
Frequently she finds that her dream-state is a very
tiring one. She visits places known and unknown, and
meets people she knows and others she does not know.
Those that she recognizes she knows are dead in the con-
ventional sense. She cannot prevent these nocturnal excur-
sions and she has learned to live with them. What is
annoying to her, however, is that on awakening she finds
her feet physically tired, as if she had been walking for
miles and miles!
A typical case where corroboration is available from
the other end of the trip is in the files of the American
Society for Psychic Research, which made it available to
True magazine for a report on ESP published two years ago.
The case involves a young lady whom the Society calls
Betsy, who traveled astrally to her mother’s house over a
thousand miles away. In what the report described as a
kind of vivid dream state, Betsy saw herself projected to
her mother’s house.
After I entered, I leaned against the dish cupboard
with folded arms, a post I often assume. I looked at my
mother, who was bending over something white and
doing something with her hands. She did not appear to
see me at first, but she finally looked up. 1 had a sort of
pleased feeling, and then after standing a second more, I
turned and walked about four steps.
At this point, Betsy awoke. The clock of her bedside
showed the time as 2:10 A. M. The impression that she had
actually just seen (and been seen by) her mother a thou-
sand miles away was so overwhelming that the next morn-
How the Dead Teacher Said Good-bye
733
ing Betsy wrote her parent asking whether she had experi-
enced anything unusual that night.
The mother’s reply in part follows: "Why don’t you
stay home and not go gallivanting so far from home when
you sleep? Did you know you were here for a few sec-
onds?’’ The mother said it was 1 : 1 0 A. M. on the night in
question. Her letter continued: "It would have been 10
after 2 your time. I was pressing a blouse here in the
kitchen — I couldn’t sleep either. I looked up and there you
were by the cupboard, just standing smiling at me. I
started to speak and saw you were gone.” The woman,
according to the mother (who saw her only from the waist
up), wore the light blouse of her dream.
Finally, there is a kind of semi -voluntary astral pro-
jection, where a person wills himself or herself to visit a
distant place, without, however, knowing anything about
the place itself or its appearance. When such a visit yields
verified details, no matter how seemingly small or insignifi-
cant, we can judge the verity of the experiment so much
more accurately.
Some researchers refer to this particular phase also as
"traveling clairvoyance.” Others maintain that really only a
part of the personality doing the projecting is visiting dis-
tant places and that the essential portion of oneself does
not move. To me, this is harder to believe than the more
natural explanation of duality — the physical body stays
behind and the etheric body travels. Not a part of the
etheric body, but all of it.
What about thought projections, then? There are
known cases where an apparition of a living person has
suddenly and momentarily appeared to others in the flesh
great distances away. Usually, there are emotional situa-
tions involved in this type of phenomenon. Either the
apparition of the living is to warn of impending disaster or
danger, or the sender himself is in trouble and seeks help.
But the projection is sudden and momentary in all cases
and does not compare to the lingering qualities of a true
ghost or an apparition of a person who is deceased.
I am inclined to think that these thought projections
in which a living person appears to another living person
are extremely fast astral projections, so fast, in fact, that
the etheric body is back home again before the traveler
realizes it, and that, therefore, there is no need to be in a
prone position in bed — a sudden sense of absence, of being
not all there, at the most.
» 161
The Monks of Winchester Cathedral
My WIFE AND I were on a journey to Southampton to
appear there on television and then go on to Beaulieu,
where I wanted to investigate hauntings at the ancient
abbey. Winchester Cathedral is in direct line with this des-
tination, and so I decided to stop over briefly at the famed
cathedral. I had heard that a number of witnesses had
observed ghostly monks walking in the aisles of this
church, where no monks have actually walked since the
1 500s. During the dissolution of the monasteries upon
orders of Henry VIII, monks and abbots were abused and
occasionally executed or murdered, especially when they
resisted the orders driving them from their customary
places. Here at Winchester, so close to the capital, the
order was strictly enforced and the ghostly monks seen by
a number of witnesses may indeed have had some unfin-
ished “business”! On researching the matter, I discovered
that I was not the first man to obtain psychic photographs
in this place. According to a dispatch of the Newark
Evening News of September 9, 1958, an amateur photogra-
pher by the name of T. L. Taylor was visiting the ancient
cathedral with his family. Taylor, who was then forty-two
years old, an electrical engineer by profession, was on a
The Monks of Winchester: still walking?
sightseeing trip as a tourist without the slightest interest in
or knowledge of the supernormal. He took a number of
pictures in the choir area — the same area where my ghostly
monks appeared — in late 1957. With him at the time was
Mrs. Taylor and his then sixteen-year-old daughter
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
734
i J
##•
y
1
1
\
The haunted pews
Close-up of the monks who were driven out by
Henry VIII
Valerie. Incidentally, none of them observed any ghostly
goings-on whatever.
The first exposure turned out to be a normal view of
the choir chairs, but on the following picture — perhaps
taken from a slightly different angle — there appeared in
these same empty chairs thirteen human figures dressed in
what appeared to be medieval costumes. When the film
and prints came back from the lab, Taylor was aghast. As
The monks in the aisle
a technician he knew that his camera could not take double
exposures accidentally — just as mine can’t — because of a
locking mechanism, and the manufacturer of the film con-
firmed to him upon inquiry that the film was in no way
faulty and the “ghosts” could not be explained through
some form of error in manufacture of film or developing.
Satisfied that he had somehow obtained some supernormal
material, Taylor turned the results over to the Lewisham
Psychic Research Society, where they presumably still are.
As soon as we had dashed from the car through the
heavy rainfall into the cathedral, Catherine and I walked
up to the choir chair area and I began to take black-and-
white photographs, exposing two seconds for each picture.
The high content of moisture in the atmosphere may have
had some bearing on the supernormal results. On other
occasions I have found that moist air is a better psychic
conductor than dry air. After I had exposed the entire roll
of eleven pictures in various directions, but from the same
area, we returned to our car, still of course totally ignorant
as to whether anything unusual would show on the nega-
tives. Since all of my psychic photography is unexpected
and purely accidental, no thoughts of what might turn up
filled my mind at the time. I was merely taking pho-
tographs of the cathedral because people had observed
ghosts in it. Only later did I discover that someone else
had also obtained photographs of ghosts there.
Upon developing and printing it became immediately
clear that I had caught the cowled, hooded figures of three
monks walking in the aisle. On close inspection it is clear
that we are dealing here not with one identical picture of a
monk exposed somehow three times as he moved about but
The Monks of Winchester Cathedral
735
with three slightly different figures, one of which looks
sideways, while the other two are caught from the rear. I
was puzzled by the apparent lack of height on the part of
these figures and wondered if sixteenth -century men were
that much smaller than we are. But on examination of the
» 162
The Secret of Ballinguile
“You MAY LIKE TO follow up the enclosed,” wrote Patrick
Byrne of the Dublin Herald, who had been running pieces
about our impending return to Ireland in search of haunted
houses. The enclosure turned out to be a letter written in
longhand, dated April 2, 1966, from a Mrs. O’Ferrall, who
had a sister living near Dartry, a suburb of Dublin, said
sister having but recently removed there from a haunted
house on Eglington Road, Donnybrook.
After a consultation about the matter — talking about
ghosts is not taken lightly by the Irish — Mrs. O’Ferrall got
her sister’s approval, and, more important, address. Thus it
was that I addressed myself to Mrs. Mary Healy of Tem-
ple Road, so that I might learn of her adventures in the
house firsthand.
The house in question, it turned out, was still stand-
ing, but had lately been falling into disrepair, since the new
owners were bent on eventual demolition. Mrs. Healy had
sold it in 1963. Part of the sprawling gray stone house is
eighteenth century and part is nineteenth, but the site has
been ihhabited continuously since at least the fifteenth cen-
tury. A high wall that surrounds the property gives it the
appearance of a country house rather than a city residence,
which it is, for Donnybrook is really a part of Dublin. The
word Donnybrook, incidentally, is derived from St. Broc, a
local patron, and there is on the grounds of this house,
called Ballinguile, a natural well of great antiquity, dedi-
cated to St. Broc.
Thus it is that the house may have given the whole
district its name. The well, situated towards the rear wall
of the garden, is greatly overgrown with lush vegetation,
for everything grows well in moist Ireland. The house itself
is set back a bit from the road — a busy road it is — thus
affording a degree of privacy. In back of the main house
are a now totally rundown flower and vegetable garden,
and the extensive stables, long fallen into disuse or partially
used as garages. There is farther back a small, compact
gatehouse, still occupied by a tenant who also vaguely
looks after the empty house itself.
There are large sitting rooms downstairs fore and aft,
attesting to the somewhat haphazard fashion in which the
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
736
records I discovered that the stone floor of the cathedral
was raised a hundred years after the last monks had been
driven out from Winchester. Thus the figures caught here
are walking on what to them must be the original floor!
house was altered and added to over the years. The house
consists of three portions, with the middle portion the
highest; there is a second story, and above it an attic to
which one gains access only by a metal ladder. Set down in
front of the sidewall of Ballinguile is a greenhouse which a
previous owner had made into a kind of verandah. Now it
lay in shambles, just as most of the ground-floor windows
had long been shattered by neighborhood youngsters in a
peculiar spirit of defiance common to all young people
wherever unbroken — and unattended — windows stare!
"The principal unusual happenings,” Mrs. Healy
explained, "were the sound of footsteps, mostly on the
stairs. They were so natural that one did not at once realize
that all the household were present. They occurred during
the daytime and most frequently during July and August.
In fact, August was the time the two strangest things hap-
pened. The year I moved there, my youngest son was liv-
ing with me and he was still a student and a bit lively.
When he had friends in I usually retired and went to bed.
One night he had just one friend downstairs, and
about 9 P.M. came to me and said they were going out for
a while, and so they went. Shortly after I woke from a doze
to hear a lot of people downstairs; they were laughing and
joking, and talking, and I could hear them moving about.
They seemed very happy and really enjoying themselves. I
was very angry and thought to get up and tell them that
was no time to be having an unprepared party, but I
didn’t.
"After quite a while there was silence, and shortly
after, the hall door opened and my son came in. He had
gone to see his friend home and stayed with him a while.
There had been no party!
"Two years later, also in August, my daughter, who
lived with her husband and little girl in half the house, and
I were standing in my dining room, an old converted
kitchen. Suddenly we saw the little girl of three and a half
talking to someone in the enclosed yard. She would say
something and wait for the answer. There was no one that
we could see anywhere, but we distinctly heard her say,
‘but you are my friend!’ We asked her who she was speak-
ing to and she said casually, ‘the tall dark man,’ and gave
us the impression she knew him well.
‘ Just before we left, one evening after we had all
retired to bed about 1 1 P.M., we were aroused by the door-
bell. My son-in-law went down to find two policemen
inquiring if all was well. Passing, they had heard a lot of
The Secret of Ballinguile —
an old argument that won’t
go away
violent noise in the house, and seeing all dark, came to
investigate.
“We had heard nothing!
“To me the strangest thing was that one did not feel
frightened, everything seemed so completely natural. It was
only afterwards one realized it was strange. At no time was
there any ‘creepy’ feeling.
"The only person who was frightened at night was
the little girl, who would not stay in bed at night saying
something frightened her. But children often do that. We
did not tell her anything about our own experiences, for
children are quick to elaborate."
So much for Mrs. Healy’s experiences. I reported
none of this to Sybil, of course, and as we were on the
lookout for a house to buy in Ireland, it was simply still
another house to inspect for that reason.
On arrival in Dublin I arranged a date to meet Mrs.
Healy at her new home, after we had been to the former
Healy home in Donnybrook. To get permission and keys, I
telephoned the present owner, Arthur Lurie, who was most
cooperative although I never told him about any potential
ghost. But then I doubt it would have impressed him. Mr.
Lurie sounded to me like a man who was all business. The
price he asked for the house was unfortunately too high for
us, but we did like the house and might have bought it
otherwise.
Keys in pocket, we set out for Ballinguile on a very
warm July afternoon. The driver obligingly opened the
rusty gates for us and the car drove into the grounds. At
that moment, a little lady practically flew past us in pursuit
of two small dogs, explaining on the run — "They used to
play in here, you know. Mind if I give them a run?”
Before we could answer she was past us and inside.
Five minutes later I had her out again, dogs and all.
Now we started our exploration, carefully avoiding
the many broken windows that had let in a veritable
avalanche of birds, to whom some rooms had become
home, judging from their evidences.
We were still standing outside, while the driver was
napping in the sun. I was busy putting my tape recording
equipment and cameras into operating condition, while
Catherine explored the wider reaches of the lush garden.
Sybil and I found ourselves directly outside the rear sitting
room.
Suddenly, I heard muffled voices coming from the
room and my first thought was, oh, there are some other
people here also; how inconsiderate of the landlord to send
them at the same time! Sybil turned her head to me and
there was one big question mark written all over her face.
She, too had heard the voices. It was over in a matter of
perhaps two or three seconds, and the voices, one of which
was male and deep, sounded as if coming from under
water, but they certainly were human voices in
conversation. . .such as at a party! We entered the room
immediately, but of course there wasn’t a soul in it.
I decided it was time to enter the house and see what
Sybil’s psychic sense would “get" us.
“Funny thing," Sybil remarked as we started up the
path towards the house, “I feel as if I’d been here before.
The Secret of Ballinguile
737
I’ve ‘seen’ this house many times over the years. This
house had a lot of unwarranted hatred directed towards it.
When we got out of the car, I thought I saw a man. . .in
one of the upper rooms. . .1 thought I heard a voice. . .
something beginning with S, like Sure, or Sean. . .the cen-
tral portion, upper window, there seemed to be a man
reading a paper....”
Since Sybil did not get any strong impressions in the
downstairs part of the house, we ascended the stairs and
soon found ourselves on the second floor, in the very room
in which most of the psychic occurrences had taken place.
“There is plotting here. . .in this particular room I
have the feeling of somebody very sick, worried, very
excitable, a man — not too far back, the grounds seem to
have an older influence but not this room. About 300 years
on the grounds, but in the house, perhaps fifty years.
There is a foreign influence here. Another language.”
“Can you get any names?” I asked as Sybil leaned
against the wall of the empty room. There was no chair to
sit down in, so we had to do our trance work in this awk-
ward fashion.
"Wyman,” Sybil mumbled now, and gradually she
became more and more entranced, although at no time was
she in full trance.
“French influence. . . Wyban, Vyvern. . .don’t know
what it means,” she added, “he is here now. Not too long
ago. He’s the one who brought us here.”
“What does he want us to do?”
I too had felt that this case was more than routine,
that we were drawn to this house in some mysterious way.
What was the secret of Ballinguile?
“It seems ridiculous, but the man looks like Abraham
Lincoln, Sybil finally stated, “thin, gaunt, stooping shoul-
ders. . .it’s his house, fifty years ago. . . Whibern. . .he has
papers. . .something to be careful about. . .the land. . .the
deed, there is trouble. . .the house and the land are not
completely together.”
I discovered later that the house was built on ground
that belonged to different owners and that there were great
legal problems involved in this. Sybil had no knowledge of
this fact.
“Another man knows this,” Sybil continued. “There
is some trouble about the land. That’s the conflict of two
families. He wants us to settle the land. Samly, Seamly. . .
that was the name that was spelled when I came into the
house. It’s a family name.”
“Did he die here?”
There was a moment of silence as Sybil queried the
ghost.
“Reading the papers carefully,” she finally mumbled
instead, “check the papers, Miss Seamly. . .check the
papers carefully. . .the money was wrong. . .Simmely
(Seamly) made a mistake about the ground. . .sort it
out...”
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ghosts That Aren’t
738
Sybil was almost in trance now and her voice became
weak and irregular. “Twenty-four,” she whispered under
the influence of the ghost, "1924... year. ...”
“Is there any other problem?” I inquired matter-of-
factly. Might as well clean out the lot.
“The woman,” Sybil said, “where did she go? He
says the woman left!”
I assured him there was nobody here now but us
ghost hunters. Did he want us to buy the house perhaps?
Not that it would help with the landlord.
Good people,” he mumbled, “people from overseas
live here. . .now. . .not for the Irish. . .traitors. . .stolen the
land. . .the land to the Institute. . .Institute for sick peo-
ple....”
“Did you leave the land to the Institute?” I asked.
“Took it. . .the Institute. ...”
“And who should have gotten it instead?”
Wyman. . . Wynan.” The name still was not quite
clear, but I promised we would try and look into the mat-
ter of the land if we could.
“He knows. . . ” Sybil murmured, and a moment or
two later she came out of the state bordering on trance.
We were still upstairs.
Sybil remembered absolutely nothing, but “her eyes
did not feel right” for a moment.
We went downstairs and closed the house, got into
the car and drove to the nearby house where Mrs. Healy
and her married daughter now reside.
Suddenly it struck me that Sybil had talked about a
man named White ever since we had met again in Dublin.
Did I know any Mr. White? I did not. Would we be meet-
ing such a person in one of our investigations? No, I said,
we would not as far as I could tell.
But then Mary Healy cleared up the mystery for us.
A Mr. Ban try White used to live in the house we
had just left. Since this name was unknown to me prior to
that moment, Sybil of course could not have gotten it from
my unconscious mind prior to visiting the Donnybrook
house. Were Wynan and White the same person, I
wondered.
Another thing that struck me as peculiar was Sybil’s
insistence on going to a house with an iron gate. No such
house was on my list but Sybil kept asking for it. When we
arrived at Ballinguile, however, there was no iron gate
within view; still, Sybil demanded to see it, sure it was part
of this house.
I then learned from Mrs. Healy that she had had
such an iron gate removed when she bought the house, and
moved the entrance to where it is now, away from where
the old iron gate once stood. Sybil again could not have
known this consciously.
The new home of the Healy family was neat and
functional, and Mrs. Healy a charming lady gifted with
elaborate speech and a sense of proportion.
"There lived a Mr. Kerrigan there, a lawyer also,”
she said. I think he is dead. We bought it from a Dr.
Graham who died quite recently. But nobody has ever
lived in that house very long. We left it for purely personal
reasons, not because of any ghost, however.”
“What about the cottage?”
"That was built by Dr. Graham for his gardener.
That is of no age at all. A Mr. Barron is living in it now.”
“Which staircase did you hear the footsteps on?” I
asked.
“There are two, as there are two of everything in the
house. My son-in-law and I bought it together, you see,
and it was on the little staircase that I heard the footsteps.
In the back of the house. The party sounds I heard, that
was in the older house, too, in the back.”
Where Sybil and I had heard the voices, I thought!
Same spot, actually, and I did not realize it until now.
“Did you find any traces of older buildings on the
spot?” I asked Mrs. ffealy.
“There is supposed to have been a monastery on
these grounds at one time,” she explained; “only the well
in the garden is left now. We still used the clear water
from it, incidentally.”
Later, Mrs. ffealy ’s brother came and joined us. He
listened quietly as I explained about the land business and
the complaint of the ghost.
Both tenants prior to the Doctor had been lawyers, it
turned out, and the difficulty about the land ownership
underneath the house was quite real. If there had been
some mistake, however, nothing could be done about it
now. At least not without costly and extended search and
litigation. And that, you will admit, even a ghost wouldn’t
want. Especially not a lawyer-ghost who is getting no fee
out of it! I am sure that my explanation, that time had
gone on, must have given the ghostly owner a chance to let
go of it all, and since Mr. Lurie, the present owner, fore-
sees that an apartment structure will soon replace the old
house, there really is no point in worrying about a bit of
land. Caveat emptor!
The Secret of Ballinguile
739
CHAPTER TWELVE
Psychic Photography
the Visual Proof
COMMUNICATIONS FROM BEYOND THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY:
TRACK RECORD AND TEST CONDITIONS
For the past 100 years, psychic research has painstakingly assembled proof for the continuance of life
and has gradually emerged from a metaphysical mantle into the full glare of scientific inquiry.
Although various researchers interpret the results of these investigations according to their own atti-
tudes toward survival of human personality, it is no longer possible to bury the evidence itself, as
some materialistically inclined scientists in other fields have attempted to do over the years. The chal-
lenge is always present: does man have a soul, scientifically speaking, and if so, how can we prove it?
Material on communications with the so-called dead is very large and, to me, often convincing,
though not necessarily all of it in the way it is sometimes presented by partisans of the spiritualist reli-
gion. But additional proof that man does continue an existence in what Dr. Joseph Rhine, then of
Duke University, has called “the world of the mind” was always wanted, especially the kind of proof
that could be viewed objectively without the need for subjective observation through psychic experi-
ences, either spontaneous or induced in the laboratory. One of the greatest potential tools was given to
us when photography was invented: for if we could photograph the dead under conditions that care-
fully exclude trickery, we would surely be so much the wiser — and the argument for survival would
indeed be stronger.
Photography itself goes back to the 1840s, when the technique evolved gradually from very crude
light-and-shadow pictures, through daguerreotypes and tintypes to photography as we now know it.
Major Tom Patterson, a British psychic researcher, in a booklet entitled Spirit Photography, has
dealt with the beginnings of photographic mediumship in Britain, where it has produced the largest
amount of experimental material in the century since.
But the initial experiment took place in 1862, in Boston, not Britain; 23 years after photography
itself came into being. William H. Mumler, an
engraver, who was neither interested in nor a Psychic Photography— the Visual Proof
741
believer in spiritualism or any other form of psychic
research, had been busy in his off-hours experimenting
with a camera. At that time the photographic camera was
still a novelty. The engraver liked to take snapshots of his
family and friends to learn more about his camera. Imagine
Mumler’s surprise and dismay when some of his negatives
showed faces that were not supposed to be on them. In
addition to the living people he had so carefully posed and
photographed, Mumler discovered the portraits of dead rel-
atives alongside the “normal” portraits.
This was the beginning of psychic photography. It
happened accidentally — if there is such a thing as an acci-
dent in our well-organized universe — and the news of
Mumler’s unsought achievements spread across the world.
Other photographers, both professionals and amateurs, dis-
covered talents similar to Mumler’s, and the psychic
research societies in Britain and America began to take
notice of this amazing development.
Since then a great many changes have taken place in
the technology and we have greater knowledge of its pit-
falls. But the basic principle of photography is still the
same: film covered with silver salts is exposed to the radia-
tion called light and reacts to it. This reaction results in
certain areas of the emulsion being eaten away, leaving an
exact replica of the image seen by the camera lens on the
photographic film. Depending on the intensity with which
light hits the various portions of the film, the eating away
of silver salts will vary, thus rendering the tones and shad-
ings of the resulting negative on light-sensitive photo-
graphic paper and hence the positive print, which is a
mechanical reproduction of the negative’s light and shadow
areas, but in reverse.
To make a print, the operator merely inserts the fin-
ished negative into a printer, places the light-sensitive
paper underneath the negative and exposes it through the
negative with an electric light. Nothing new can be added
in this manner, nor can anything already on the negative
be taken away, but the skill of the craftsman operating the
printer will determine how well balanced the resulting posi-
tive print will be, depending on the duration and intensity
of the printing lamp.
Most people who are photographers know these sim-
ple facts, but there are many who are not, and for whom
this information might be useful.
The obtaining of any sort of images on photographic
paper, especially recognizable pictures such as faces or fig-
ures, without having first made a negative in the usual
manner is, of course, a scientific impossibility — except in
psychic photography.
Until the arrival on the scene of Polaroid cameras and
Polaroid film, this was certainly 100% true. The Polaroid
method, with its instant result and development of film
within a matter of a few seconds after exposure, adds the
CHAPTER TWELVE: Psychic Photography —
the Visual Proof
742
valuable element of close supervision to an experiment. It
also allows an even more direct contact between psychic
radiation and sensitive surface. The disadvantage of
Polaroid photography is its ephemeral character. Even the
improved film does not promise to stay unspoiled forever,
and it is wise to protect unusual Polaroid photographs by
obtaining slide copies. Actually, Polaroid photography uses
a combination of both film and sensitive paper simultane-
ously, one being peeled off the other after the instant
development process inside the camera.
Fakery with the ordinary type of photography would
depend on double exposure or double printing by
unscrupulous operators, in which case no authentic nega-
tive could be produced that would stand up to experienced
scrutiny. Fakery with Polaroid equipment is impossible if
camera, film, and operator are closely watched. Because of
the great light sensitivity of Polaroid film, double exposure,
if intended, is not a simple matter, as one exposure would
severely cancel out the other and certainly leave traces of
double exposure. And the film, of course, would have to be
switched in the presence of the observer, something not
even a trained conjurer is likely to do to an experienced
psychic investigator. A psychic researcher must also be
familiar with magic and sleight-of-hand tricks, in order to
qualify for that title.
The important thing to remember about psychic pho-
tography is that the bulk of it occurred unexpectedly and
often embarrassingly to amateur photographers not the
least bit interested in parapsychology or any form of
occultism. The extras on the negatives were not placed
there by these people to confuse themselves. They were the
portraits of dead relatives or friends that could be recog-
nized. The literature on this phase of psychic photography,
notably in Britain, is impressive; and I particularly recom-
mended the scholarly work by F. W. Warrick, the cele-
brated British parapsychologist, called Experiments in
Psychics, in which hundreds of experimental photographs
are reproduced. Warrick’s work published in 1939 by E. P.
Dutton, deals primarily with the photographic mediumship
of Emma Deane, although other examples are included.
Warrick points out that he and his colleagues, having spent
some 30 years working with and closely supervising their
subjects, knew their personal habits and quirks. Any kind
of trickery was therefore out of the question, unless one
wanted to call a researcher who propounded unusual ideas
self-deluded or incompetent, as some latter-day critics have
done to Harry Price and Sir William Crookes, respected
British psychic researchers now dead.
Any person who is not present when the original
experiments or investigations take place and who does not
possess firsthand knowledge of the conditions and processes
of that investigation is no more qualified to judge its results
than an armchair strategist trying to rewrite history.
Although Patterson’s booklet frankly uses the scientific evi-
dence at hand to support the spiritualistic view, it also
serves as a useful source of factual information. Mumler’s
record as the “first” spirit photographer is upheld by U.S.
Court of Appeals Judge John Edmond, who investigated
Mumler personally and obtained photographs under test
conditions of people known only to him who were dead.
Originally, Judge Edmond had gone into the investigation
thinking it was all a deception. In a letter published by the
New York Herald on August 6, 1853, however, the judge
spoke not only of Mumler 's experiments but also of his
subsequent sittings with well-known mediums of his day.
These investigations convinced him that spiritualism had a
valid base, and he became a confirmed believer from then
on, displaying some psychic abilities of his own as time
went by.
In England, the craft of psychic photography devel-
oped slowly from the 1870s onward. The first person in
Britain to show successful results in this field was Frederick
Hudson, who in 1872 produced a number of authentic like-
nesses of the dead under conditions excluding fraud. Sev-
eral experiments were undertaken under the careful
scrutiny of Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, a famed naturalist
in his day. Wallace attested to the genuineness of the
observed phenomena. Since then several dozen talented
psychic photographers have appeared on the scene, produc-
ing for a few pennies genuine likenesses of persons known
to have died previously, in the presence of "sitters” (or
portrait subjects) they had never before met in their lives.
As the craft became better known and men of science
wondered about it, researchers devised more and more
rigid test conditions for this type of experimental psychic
photography. Film, paper, cameras, developing fluid — in
short, all implements necessary to produce photographs of
any kind — were furnished, controlled, and held by uncom-
mitted researchers. The medium was not allowed to touch
anything and was kept at a distance from the camera and
film. In many cases he was not even present in the room
itself. Nevertheless psychic "extras” kept appearing on the
properly exposed film and were duly recognized as the
portraits of dead persons, often of obscure identity, but
traceable as relatives or friends of someone present. Occa-
sionally, as with John Myers, America’s leading psychic
photographer, in his early days the portraits thus obtained
by the photographic medium were strangers to all con-
cerned until the pictures were first published in Psychic
News, a leading spiritualist newspaper of the day. Only
then did the “owners” of the psychic "extras” write in to
the editor to claim their dead relatives!
Despite the overwhelming evidence that these pho-
tographs were genuine — in almost all cases even the motive
for fraud was totally absent — some researchers kept reject-
ing then — and indeed they do now — the possibility that
the results were nothing but fraudulently manufactured
double exposures. Even so brilliant a person as Eileen Gar-
rett, president of Parapsychology Foundation, insisted for
many years that all psychic photographs had to be fraudu-
lent, having been so informed by a pair of self-styled
experts. It was only when I myself produced the pho-
tographs of ghosts, and acquainted Mrs. Garrett with the
camera, film, and other details of how the pictures were
obtained, that she reluctantly agreed that we had indeed
“made a breakthrough” in the field of psychic photogra-
phy. Prejudice against anything involving a major shift in
one's thinking, philosophy of life, and general training is
much stronger than we dare admit to ourselves sometimes.
Often psychic photography also occurs at so-called
home circles where neither money nor notoriety is involved
and where certainly no need exists for self-delusion by
those taking the pictures. They are, presumably, already
convinced of survival of personality after death, otherwise
they would not be members of the circle.
Photographs of ghosts or haunted areas are much
rarer because of the great element of chance in obtaining
any results at all. Whereas psychic photography in the
experimental sense is subject to schedules and human
plans, the taking of ghost pictures is not. Even I had nei-
ther advance knowledge nor control over the ones I man-
aged to obtain, and I could not do it again that way if I
tried.
We still don’t know all of the conditions that make
these extraordinary photographs possible and, until we do,
obtaining them will be a hit-and-miss affair at best. But
the fact that genuine photographs of what are commonly
called ghosts have been taken by a number of people,
under conditions excluding fraud or faulty equipment, of
course, is food for serious thought.
An example in recent years is the photograph of a
Danish sailor fighting for his life at Ballyheigue Castle, Ire-
land, taken by a vacationing army officer named Captain P.
D. O’Donnell, on June 4, 1962. Unbeknownst to O’Don-
nell, that was the anniversary of the sailor’s death during
the so-called silver raid, in which the silver stored at the
castle was stolen by local bandits and fighting ensued.
O’Donnell took this snapshot without thought or knowl-
edge of ghosts, while inspecting the ruins of the once-
proud castle. The picture was later lost in transit and
could not be located by the post office.
Many newspapers the world over, including The Peo-
ple of July 3, 1966, reported and published a ghost photo-
graph taken by 18-year-old Gordon Carroll in St. Mary the
Virgin Church, Woodford, Northhamptonshire, England.
The picture clearly shows a monk kneeling before the altar,
but at the time he took it Carroll was the only person
inside the church. Fortunately, he found an understanding
ear in the person of Canon John Pearce-Higgins, Provost of
Southwark Cathedral and a member of the Church’s Fel-
lowship of Psychical and Physical Research. Pearce-
Higgins, after inspecting camera and film and questioning
the young man, was satisfied that the phenomenon was
authentic. Carroll used a tripod and a brand-new Ilford
Sportsman Rangefinder camera. He loaded it with Agfa
C.T. 18 film, which he often used to photograph stained -
Psychic Photography — the Visual Proof
743
glass windows in churches, a hobby of his. The Agfa Com-
pany, on examining the film, confirmed that trick photog-
raphy had not been used and that neither film nor
developing showed any faults. As for the ghost, no one
seems to have bothered to find out who he was. The
church itself is a very ancient place, mentioned in the
Domesday Book, a list of important properties compiled
under William the Conqueror. A church stood on that spot
even before the Norman conquest of Britain, so it is quite
possible that at one time or other a monk died there, tragi-
cally becoming the ghost that Carroll’s camera accidentally
saw and recorded.
Joe Hyams, writer- husband of actress Elke Sommer,
shared a haunted house with her for some time in Holly-
wood, only to give up to the ghost in the end. During the
last stages of their occupancy, photographer Allan Grant,
strictly a nonbeliever, took some pictures in the aftermath
of a fire of mysterious origin. The pictures, published in
The Saturday Evening Post of June 3, 1967, clearly show
manifestations not compatible with ordinary photographic
results.
The very latest development in the area of psychic
photography, although not concerned with images of
ghosts, is still germane to the entire question. Thought
forms registering on photographic film or other light-
sensitive surfaces are the result of years of hard work by
Colorado University Professor Jule Eisenbud, a well-known
psychiatrist interested in parapsychology as well, with
Chicago photographic medium Ted Serios. These amazing
pictures were published in 1989 by Eisenbud in an impres-
sive volume called The World of Ted Serios. In addition,
more material has become available as the experiments con-
tinued, thanks to the efforts of a number of universities
and study groups who have belatedly recognized the
importance of this type of experiment.
Serios has the ability of projecting images of objects
and scenes often at great distances in space, or even time
onto film or a TV tube. This includes places he has never
visited or seen before. Eisenbud does not suggest that there
are spirit forces at work here. He merely points out, quite
rightly, that we do not as yet realize some of the areas in
which the human mind can operate. Without having been
present at the many sessions in which Eisenbud and a host
of other scientists subjected Serios to every conceivable test,
I cannot judge the results. But it appears to me from what
I have read in the book, and from other Serios photographs
shown to me privately, that Serios is capable of astral pro-
jection. In these out-of-body states he does visit distant
places in a flash, then almost instantly returns to his physi-
cal body and records the impressions received by his
etheric eyes onto Polaroid film. Above all, I feel that Serios
is one of an impressive line of photography mediums.
CHAPTER TWELVE: Psychic Photography —
the Visual Proof
There may be differences of opinion concerning the
implications of psychic photography, with some quarters
taking the attitude that it merely represents a record of past
events that somehow got left behind in the atmosphere
during the event itself. This is undoubtedly possible in a
number of cases. But there are also an impressive number
of other instances where this view does not fit and where
only the unpopular theory (scientifically speaking) of sur-
vival of human personality in a thought world will satisfy
as an explanation. Either way, psychic photography, like it
or not, is the very threshold of a new science.
THE MEDIUMSHIP OF JOHN MYERS
The possibility of fraud is always present when planned
experiments take place. But the possibility of an explosion
is also always present when munitions are being manufac-
tured, and nobody stops making them. One simply pro-
ceeds with great care in both cases. Magicians and other
conjurers have assaulted psychic photography as patently
fake, since they could fake it. This, of course, is a neat
trick. By suggesting the possibility as the probability, these
limited individuals (spiritually speaking) miss the point of
scientifically controlled experiments in psychic photogra-
phy: it is not what could be that matters, but what actually
does happen.
I have no valid reason to doubt the majority of the
older psychic photographs I have examined but, since I
was not present when they were taken and have no way of
knowing how rigid the controls were at the time, I will not
personally vouch for them. This does not mean that they
are not genuine. It does mean that anything I vouch for
has occurred in my presence and/or under my control and
with persons known to me under conditions generally con-
sidered appropriate by professional parapsychologists.
When I studied the literature on this subject, notably War-
rick’s work on Experiments in Psychics, I was impressed by
the sincerity of Warrick’s approach and by his sensible
controls through which he made sure that his subjects
could not obtain their amazing results by trickery of any
kind. Warrick’s work deals to a large extent with the medi-
umship of Emma Deane, a British psychic famed for her
ability to produce photographs of the dead under condi-
tions excluding fraud. It was the same Mrs. Deane, who
was once visited by John Myers, then a novice in the field.
He came merely to have a “sitting,” like everybody else
who sought out the elderly lady, and, for a few pennies,
was photographed in her presence. Frequently Myers was
to discover afterward the portrait of a dead loved one near
him on the plate! To his surprise Mrs. Deane told him that
some day soon he would be taking her place. Myers smiled
incredulously and walked out. But when Mrs. Deane’s
health failed some time later, Myers, who had since discov-
ered his own psychic and photographic powers, did indeed
take over her studio.
744
In these pictures, Hans Holzer is supervising the
experiment of John Meyers’ psychic photography
I met John Myers in New York in 1959 because I
had heard of his special psychic talents and was anxious to
test him. Myers, at that point, was a man of independent
means, a successful industrialist and well-known philan-
thropist who could not possibly gain anything from expos-
ing himself to psychic research. But he also felt he owed
something to his benefactors on “the other side of life,” as
the spiritualists call it, and for that reason he agreed to
meet me. This indebtedness went back many years to when
he was a dental surgeon in London, already aware of his
psychic abilities and practicing two of his special crafts as
sidelines. These were psychic photography — later a full-
time occupation — and psychic healing. As a healer, he
managed to help Laurence Parish, a wealthy American
businessman, regain his eyesight where orthodox doctors
had failed. In gratitude Parish offered Myers a position in
his company in New York. At the time Myers was not
making too much money, since he charged only a few pen-
nies for each psychic photograph he took, and nothing for
his healing work. He felt that the opportunity to go to
America was being sent his way so that he might be useful
in his new career and as a psychic, so he accepted.
In New York Myers proved himself a good asset to
the company and eventually he rose to become its vice
president, second only to the head of the company. Because
of his new duties Myers now pursued his psychic work on
only a sporadic basis, but behind the scenes he often
backed other psychics or sponsored spiritualistic meetings
that could not have found a hall were it not for Myers’
financial support. He himself continued his activities as a
psychic healer, however. Occasionally Myers agreed to
tests, but only when important scientists or newspaper
reporters were to be present. What Myers could no longer
do in amount of work he made up for by the sheer power
of observers’ rosters.
I tested Myers’ abilities as a psychic photographer on
several occasions. At no time did he try to influence me in
any way, or suggest anything, except that he was a sensi-
tive man who resents being insulted. On one occasion I
managed to persuade him to give a second public demon-
stration of his psychic photography on television. Since the
first TV test in 1961 was, to my mind, very impressive, I
felt another such test might prove valuable also. The pro-
gram that had requested this test was the American Broad-
casting Company’s late night show emceed by Les Crane.
This brash young man had on a previous occasion proved
himself to me to be without sympathy toward psychic
research, but I was there to protect Myers from any
unpleasant remarks. We had brought the usual chemicals,
all open to examination, and the program’s producer had
provided the photographic paper to be exposed; that is,
they had it ready. But the moment never came. They had
booked too many “acts” on this particular occasion, and
Pans for developer and fixative
Hans Holzer opening a bag of chemicals
Psychic Photography — the Visual Proof
745
time ran out before Myers and I could undertake the test.
For over two hours Myers sat waiting quietly in the wings.
But the little people who were in charge failed to under-
stand the significance of Myers’ willingness to do this
experiment, and so he went home.
My first meeting with Myers in 1959 was followed by
a sitting which was arranged for the purpose of demon-
strating his abilities as a psychic photographer. This was in
late July, and I set up the following test conditions: Myers
was to accompany me on the afternoon of the planned sit-
ting to a photographic supply store of my choice, where I
would select and purchase the light-sensitive paper he
required. Myers asked the clerk for ordinary developing
paper. There are many types, of varying light-sensitivity,
and Myers picked a medium-fast paper. The clerk brought
the package of paper and I satisfied myself that it was from
a fresh batch of materials, properly sealed and in no way
damaged or tampered with. I then placed my signature
across all corners of the outer envelope, and Myers did the
same. The reason for Myers’ insistence that he too should
be allowed to place his own safeguards on the package goes
back many years. When still a young man in England
gaining a reputation as a psychic photographer, Myers was
challenged to a test by a journalist named Lord Donegal.
Not content to look for possible fraud by Myers, Donegal
wanted to make sure he would be able to find some. Rather
than take his chance that Myers might be honest, Donegal
switched plates on him and thus produced a foolproof
“fraud” — marked plates he himself had supplied. Natu-
rally, Myers was accused publicly, and it took years of hard
work to undo the damage. In the end, tiring of the joke,
Donegal admitted his deeds. But the incident had turned
Myers from a friendly, openhearted man into a cautious,
suspicious person, who never quite trusted any experi-
menter fully.
For this reason, Myers wanted his signature on the
package next to mine, so that he too could be sure I had
not been tampering with the package. As soon as the bill
for the paper was paid, I took the package and put it safely
into my pocket. At no time did Myers hold it in his hands.
We parted company and I went home, the package still in
my possession. After dinner I went to Myers’ apartment,
where he and five other witnesses were already present.
One of these was a photographer named Charles Hage-
dorn, a skeptic, and one was Myers’ legal advisor, Jacob
Gerstein, an attorney well known in business circles for his
integrity and keen observation. Also present was the late
Danton Walker, Broadway columnist of the Daily News,
himself psychic and keenly interested in the subject, but by
no means sure of its implications. None of the observers
were “believers” as the term is usually used, but rather all
were enlightened witnesses who were willing to accept
unusual facts if they could be proven to them.
CHAPTER TWELVE: Psychic Photography —
the Visual Proof
We entered a medium-sized room in which there was
a table surrounded by four chairs, with additional chairs in
the four corners. The only illumination came from a yellow
overhead bulb, but the light was strong enough to read by
without difficulty. The corners of the room were somewhat
darker. Myers sat down on a chair in the left-hand corner,
placed his hands over his eyes and went into a trance. I
took the photographic paper out of my pocket, where it
had been all this time, and placed it on the table in plain
view of everyone present. At no time had Myers or anyone
else among the guests “brushed past” me, or jostled me — a
typical means of switching packages. Whenever I have the
misfortune of sharing a microphone with a professional
conjurer, this is one of his “explanations” of how the psy-
chic phenomena must have been accomplished. I am, of
course, familiar with many tricks of magic and always look
out for them, but nothing of the sort was attempted. The
package was still sealed, exactly as it had been all after-
noon. After about five minutes Myers breathed deeply and
opened his eyes, saying with a somewhat tired voice, "The
paper is now exposed. You can open the package.” With
that, Walker and I proceeded to tear open the outer enve-
lope, then the package of light-sensitive paper itself, and
quickly threw the 20 sheets contained in it into the devel-
oping liquid we had also brought along. As soon as the
sheets hit the liquid, various things happened to them that
really should not have, if this had not been a psychic
experiment.
Unexposed photographic paper should show uniform
results when exposed to a 60-watt yellow light and then
developed. But here different things happened with each
and every sheet! Some were totally blank. Others had
forms on them, and some showed human faces. A few
showed symbols, such as a tombstone, a tablet, a cross. As
rapidly as we could we worked over the whole pack.
Walker pulled out the sheets and threw them into the
developer. I pulled them from the latter and into the fixa-
tive solution and out into clear water. Myers was still on
his chair in the corner. We then put all the papers on a big
towel to dry, and turned on all the lights in the room.
Without touching any of the prints, we started to examine
the results of Myers’ psychic mediumship.
Clearly, if faces or figures appeared on these papers,
fraud could not be the cause. One of the intriguing aspects
of such an experiment is to hope for a likeness of someone
one knew in physical life. Of course you never know who
might turn up. Those who experiment or investigate psy-
chic channels of various kinds, and anxiously hope for a
specific loved one to make an entrance, are almost invari-
ably disappointed. The genuine result of these experiments
is quite unpredictable, as well it should be. So it was with
considerable glee that I discovered among the faces a famil-
iar one. As soon as the paper was completely dry I took it
over to a strong light to make sure I was not guilty of
wishful thinking. No, there was no mistake about it. Before
me was a portrait of an aunt of mine, not particularly close,
746
Hans Holzer’s Aunt Irma,
right, as a young girl
but someone I once knew well. Her name was Irma D. She
had lived in Czechoslovakia and had fallen victim to the
war. Exactly where or when she died we still do not know,
for she, along with thousands of others, just disappeared
under the Nazi occupation of her homeland. I found out
about her sad end in 1945, when communications were
restored with Europe. But this was 1959, and I really had
not thought of her for many years. So it was with surprise
that 1 found this sign of life, if you will, from a relative. Of
course I went to my family album on returning home, to
make sure it was she. I did not have the identical picture,
but I had a group photograph taken more or less about the
same period of her life. In this group shot, Irma is the girl
on the right. The one on the left is my later mother, and
the one in the middle a mutual school friend of both girls.
This was taken when both sisters were still single; the psy-
chic face, however, dates to her early years of marriage, a
period one might think she would have considered her best
and happiest years.
I took the psychic likeness and presented it to my
father, a total skeptic at that time, without telling him any-
thing about it. Instantly he recognized his late sister-in-law.
I tested various other relatives, and the results were the
same. I was so intrigued with all this that I implored
Myers to give us another sitting immediately. He acceded
to my request and on August 6, 1959, we met again at
Myers' apartment. This time photographic film rather than
paper was to be used, and a camera was brought into the
room. The camera itself was a bellows type using 120-size
film, and there was nothing unusual about its appearance.
Myers used cut film rather than roll film, and the bellows
seemed to be in perfect condition when I examined the
camera. But there is romance connected with the history of
this old camera. It used to belong to the celebrated British
psychic photographers William Hope and, later, Mrs.
Deane, and passed into Myers’ hands in 1930, coming with
him to America five years later.
Again present were the photographer Hagedorn and
attorney Gerstein, along with two ladies, Gail Benedict, a
publicist, and Mrs. Riccardi, an astrologer and artist.
Hagedorn and Gerstein had bought the film at Kodak in
New York, and the materials were in Hagedorn’s posses-
sion until the moment when he and Gerstein loaded the
camera in full view of the two ladies and myself. Farther
back in the apartment, a group of about ten other persons
watched the entire experiment, without taking part in it. It
took somewhat longer to develop the exposed film than the
paper of the first experiment, but again strange “extras”
appeared on the film. In addition, the paper experiment
was repeated and several faces appeared on the sheets, none
of them, however, known to me or identified. This is not
surprising, as psychic photography mediums are rare and
the number of persons wishing to communicate from “over
there” is presumably very great. For what is more vital
than to let those left behind know that life does go on? I
kept in touch with Myers after this experiment, but we did
not try our hands again at it for some time.
One day in 1960 I visited his office and he told me of
some pictures he had recently taken by himself. I realized
that these were not as valid as those taken under my eyes,
Phychic Photography — the Visual Proof
747
Hans Holzer’s Aunt
Irma in the psychic
photograph
but it seemed to me rather ludicrous to assume that Myers
would spend an evening trying to defraud himself! So I
asked to be shown the pictures. Strangely, Myers felt com-
pelled to show me but one of the pictures. I blanched when
I looked at it. Though not as sharp as an “ordinary” pho-
tograph, the portrait was clearly that of a dear young friend
of mine who had died unhappily not long before. At no
time had I discussed her with Myers, nor had Myers ever
met her in life. To be doubly sure I showed the picture to
the young lady’s mother and found her agreeing with me.
At various seances and sittings this girl had made her pres-
ence known to me, often through strange mediums who
did not even know my name or who had never met me
until then. So it did not exactly come as a shock to see this
further proof of continued desire to communicate.
It was not until the summer of 1961 that Myers and
I again discussed a major experiment. PM East, produced
then by channel 5 New York, came to me with a request to
put together a “package” of psychic experiments. I decided
to include Myers and his psychic photography promi-
nently. It was not easy to convince him to step into this
kind of limelight, with all its limitations and pressures, but
in the end he agreed to come. We made our conditions
known, and Mike Wallace accepted them on behalf of the
show. Wallace, a total skeptic, was to purchase ordinary
photographic paper in a shop of his own choice and keep it
on his person until air time. This he did, and the sealed,
untampered-with paper was produced by him when the
three of us went on camera. The developing and fixation
liquids as well as the bowls were also supplied by the stu-
dio. Myers waited patiently in the wings while other seg-
ments of the program were telecast. All this time Wallace
had the paper and liquids under his control. Finally we
proceeded to take our seats onstage, with Myers on my left
and Wallace on my right, perched on wooden stools with-
out backs. The sole source of light now was an overhead
yellow bulb, 60 watts in strength, and all the studio lights
were turned off.
CHAPTER TWELVE: Psychic Photography —
the Visual Proof
Immediately upon being on camera, the experiment
began. When Wallace opened the package of sealed papers,
and threw them one by one into the first liquid, immedi-
ately forms started to appear where no forms should
appear, as we were dealing with totally virgin photographic
paper. If by some freak condition these papers could have
been exposed, then they should at the very least have
appeared identical. This, however, was not the case. Several
were totally blank, while others showed amorphous shapes
and figures, one a human arm, one a head and one an as
yet indistinct face. At this point a commercial made con-
tinuation of the experiment impossible, and the results
were less than conclusive as far as the television audience
was concerned. Something had, of course, appeared on the
unexposed papers, but what? After the show I examined
the dried prints carefully. One of them clearly showed a
very fine portrait of my late mother, who had died exactly
four years before the experiment took place. Now I had not
thought of having my late mother put in an appearance, so
to speak, to convince the skeptics of survival, nor had
Myers any access to my family album. In fact Myers did
not know that my mother had passed away.
Certainly Wallace did not manufacture this picture,
for he was a firm nonbeliever in the possibility of personal
survival. And I, as the researcher, certainly would know
better than to produce a fake picture of my own mother if
I intended to put over a trick. If anyone’s mother, then
Wallace’s or Myers’, certainly not my own, when I was the
one person who did have access to a likeness of my mother!
The fact that the portrait which thus appeared is that of
my late mother is less important than the fact that any face
appeared at all, for even that is paranormal. Even if Myers
had wanted to forge this psychic photograph, he would not
have been able to do so. The picture of my mother in the
family album is not accessible and had to be searched out
from storage by me in order to match it up with the psy-
chic image. I also had the negative stored away. The simi-
larity is striking, notably the form of the nose and the
parting of the hair; but there is a certain glow about the
psychic photograph that is not present in the portrait made
during her lifetime. The white, cottonlike substance sur-
rounding the face is what I call a “matrix,” made up from
substance drawn from Myers’ body in some fashion and, in
my opinion, superimposed on the light-sensitive paper,
thus making it, in addition, physically sensitive. On this
film upon a film,” then a thought form of my later mother
was imbedded, very much like a wire photo, except that
the machine that made this possible was Myers’ body.
Controlled experiments of this kind have established
that communications from the so-called dead can indeed be
received under conditions excluding any form of fraud,
delusion, or self-delusion. Needless, perhaps, to add that
no financial rewards whatever were involved for Myers in
this experiment.
748
My next session with Myers came about as a result
of United Press reporter Pat Davis' interest in the subject.
I asked Myers that we try another experiment, and he
agreed to do so on April 25, 1964. On this occasion the
photographic paper was purchased by a trio of outsiders,
Dr. S. A. Bell, a dentist, a female associate of the doctor’s,
and Miss Lee Perkins of New York City. They accompa-
nied Myers to a store of their own selection, where the
paper was bought and initialed by them in the usual man-
ner. Myers never touched the package. Three packages had
been bought from a batch of photographic paper, presumed
to be identical in all respects. The initialed three packages
were then placed in a large envelope and the envelope
sealed and stapled in the presence of attorney Gerstein.
Gerstein then took charge of the paper and kept it with
him until that evening when he brought it to the Myers
apartment for the experiment.
In full view of all those present — about a dozen
observers unfamiliar with the subject matter, plus Miss
Davis and myself — Gerstein placed the three packages on
the table and brought out three basins filled with develop-
ing and fixation liquids and water. Pat Davis, who had
never met Myers until then, now stepped forward and, on
Myers’ suggestion, picked one of the three packages, which
again was examined by Gerstein and me carefully as to
possible violations. There were none. Miss Davis then
opened the package and, one by one, placed the photo-
graphic paper sheets contained in it onto the first pan. All
this was in full electric light, with the observers standing
close by around the table.
As soon as the sheets touched the first liquid, forms
and faces began to appear on them, varying from sheet to
sheet. Among them was a clear likeness of the late Frank
Navroth, immediately identified by Gerstein, who knew
this man before his death. Another photograph was that of
a young girl who had passed on five or six years ago and
was identified by one of the observers present, Dan Kriger,
an oil executive. Several people recognized the likeness of
the late Congressman Adolph Sabath also. Pat Davis then
requested that Myers leave the room so that we could
determine whether his bodily nearness had any influence
on the outcome of the experiment. Myers agreed and went
to another part of the apartment. Pat Davis then took the
second of the packages and opened it and again submerged
the sheets in it exactly as she had done with the first pack-
age. Nothing happened. All sheets were blank and exactly
alike, a little fogged from the exposure to the strong room
light, but without any distinguishing marks whatever. She
then opened the third and last package and did the same.
Again nothing appeared on the sheets. Finally we used a
few sheets still remaining in the first package, and again
the results were negative as long as Myers was not within
the same room.
AUTHENTIC “SPIRIT PICTURES”
TAKEN AT SEANCES
Myers was not the only reputable psychic photography
medium. For many years I worked with New Yorker Betty
Ritter in cases involving her major talents as a clairvoyant.
She is a medium who supplies valid information from the
so-called dead and predicts events before they become
objective reality. In this area Betty Ritter was excellent. She
also developed her psychic photography to a point where it
deserves to be taken very seriously.
Miss Ritter was a middle-aged woman of Italian
descent, a pensioner who lived quietly and occasionally saw
friends of friends who wanted professional “readings” or
psychic consultations. She was a sincere spiritualist and
also a devoted Catholic. Any thought of fraud or commer-
cialism was completely alien to her character, and she
remained a person of very modest circumstances. On the
occasions when I requested photographic prints of her neg-
atives she would not even ask for her own expenses.
From about 1955 on, Betty Ritter obtained unusual
photographs with her old-fashioned bellows camera, results
that came as much as a surprise to her as to the people she
photographed. She was guided by an intuitive feeling that
she should photograph the audiences where psychic ener-
gies might be present, perhaps as a result of large-scale
production of thought forms, prayers, and other man-made
force fields. She took her camera with her whenever going
to a spiritualist church or meeting, or when sitting pri-
vately with people whom she knew well enough to be
relaxed with. I often examined her camera and found it in
perfect working order. She used standard film and average
developing laboratories. Many years later, she finally
learned to print from her negatives, although she did not
develop them herself. By no means was Betty Ritter a pho-
tographic technician. Some of the many pictures I have in
my files that were taken by her, were snapped in my pres-
ence, others under conditions I consider satisfactory. I have
selected four outstanding photographs from them, although
each photograph is merely one of several similar ones
obtained on the same roll of film and under similar condi-
tions.
Both the medium and I considered the white lines to
the left and the round ball to be concentrations of psychic
energy. They cannot be explained by any kind of faulty
equipment or materials. Pictures of this type are not too
rare, and there seems to be a connection between the num-
ber of persons present in the room and the intensity of the
phenomena. If ectoplasm is a substance drawn from the
bodies of emotionally stimulated sitters, and I think it is,
then this substance must assemble in some form or shape
before it can be utilized via thought direction to perform
some intelligent task. I think these streaks, known as
"rods,” are the raw materials that are used also in material-
Psychic Photography — the Visual Proof
749
CHAPTER TWELVE: Psychic Photography —
the Visual Proof
750
Psychic photographs of Betty Ritter
during a seance
izations of the dead, when these are genuine phenomena,
and in poltergeist cases, when objects seemingly move of
their own volition. This material, isolated some years ago
in London and found to be a moist, smelly whitish sub-
stance related to albumen, undoubtedly comes from the
body glands of the medium and her sitters or helpers. It is
later returned to the sources, or that portion of it not used
up at the end of the seance. It can be molded like wax into
any form or shape. Strange as this may sound, it is thought
direction that does the molding.
In the case of the spiritualist seance picture, no such
molding took place, and what we see on the picture is
merely the free ectoplasm as it is manufactured and assem-
bled. The naked eye does not normally see this, of course.
But then the human eye does not register much of the
spectrum, either. The combination of sensitive camera and
sensitive photographer or operator seems to be the catalyst
to put this material onto photographic film. Just how this
works we do not know fully, but it happens frequently
under similar conditions and in all such cases faulty mate-
rials or cameras have been ruled out.
One of those present at this small gathering in Rev-
erend Boyd’s church was Helen M., whose father had died
seven years before. He had lost a leg in his physical life.
The communicator, through the medium, wanted to prove
his identity in some form and proposed to show his severed
leg as a kind of signature, while at the same time making a
point of his having two good legs once more in his world.
On the print (which matches the negative which I
have seen) the white substance of the "new” leg is super-
imposed on the leg of the sitter. There appear to be two
extra hands in the picture, while the rest of the photograph
is sharp, pointing to supernormal origin of the extras rather
than conventional double exposure — the rest of the picture
is sharply defined. It is my opinion that ectoplasm was
molded through thought into the desired shapes and the
latter then made capable of being photographed.
As the psychic photographer develops his or her skill,
the extras become more sophisticated until they eventually
are faces or entire figures. With Betty Ritter it started with
concentrations of power or ectoplasm, and later included
such higher forms of imagery as hands, a cross symbol
and, eventually, writing. In 1965 I had recommended a
young lady named Trudy S. to Betty. I had unsuccessfully
tried to break the hold a dead person evidently had on her.
This was probably due to the fact that Trudy herself is psy-
chic and therefore supplies the desired entrance way.
The attentions of this young man, who died in a car acci-
dent and had been a friend of the young woman’s during
his lifetime, were not welcomed by Miss S. after his death.
I thought that perhaps Betty Ritter, being a strong medium
(which I decidedly am not), might be able to “outdraw”
Reverend Boyd during a
spiritualist seance — notice
the psychic energy
the unwelcome intruder and, as it turned out, I was right
in my suggestion.
During the time when Trudy S. went to see Betty
Ritter to break the hold of the dead man, she also had a
boyfriend in her physical world. But the intruder from
beyond the veil kept interfering until the couple broke up,
largely because of the situation. On March 3, 1965, Trudy
S. had a sitting with Betty during which Betty took some
photographs. On one of them, imbedded in the well-known
"cotton wool” of psychic photography, there appears the
word ROME in black letters. Nothing in the negative, the
camera, the film or the paper can account for this writing.
Why ROME? At the time of the sitting Trudy’s boyfriend
was in Italy and on his way to Rome.
SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY AT A CAMP
Spiritualist camps have been the subject of much contro-
versy and investigation as to their honesty, and are at best
a mixed bag of evidence. Years ago the late Eileen Garrett
commissioned me to look into fake materializations at some
of the camps. I found many of the resident psychic readers
at these camps to be honest and the number of fraudulent
cases small. Nevertheless, they do happen and one must
guard against being too trusting when visiting these places.
Maggy Conn was a well-known newspaper columnist
for a string of Eastern newspapers. In February 1982 she
asked me to examine a picture taken in 1947 at Camp Sil-
verbelle, in Ephrata, Pennsylvania.
While neither Maggy nor I know who the mani-
festing spirit in the photograph is, it does appear to match
in texture and general appearance the kind of spirit pic-
tures taken under test conditions, so I have no reason to
doubt it.
SOME UNEXPECTED SPIRIT FACES
Mary Krauss of Boston, Massachusetts, contacted me in
late September 1972 because of an odd spirit picture she
had taken.
The little boy holding the cat in this picture, taken in
October 1965 in Pearl River, New York, is apparently
quite unaware of any “presence,” but the cat evidently is
not, as she stares, not into the camera or at the photogra-
pher, but at "something” she can see to the left of the boy,
which neither he nor the photographer could see.
The swirling white mass on the lower right of the
picture contains two faintly visible faces, which Mrs.
Krauss circled. At the time, only the little boy, Krauss’
brother, and Mrs. Krauss herself were in the room with the
cat. But whose face or faces is it?
Shortly after Mrs. Krauss’ family moved into the
house, it became clear that they were not alone though they
could not actually see a presence. On cleaning out the attic,
however, they noticed that objects had been moved about,
and sensed a strong presence in the area. It was in the attic
that the picture was taken. Could it be the previous occu-
pant wanted to manifest his or her continued presence in
the house?
PHOTOGRAPHING MATERIALIZATIONS
Born in Westphalia in 1 9 1 1 , Hanna Hamilton was always
"unusual” to her family. She had an uncanny (but uncon-
trollable) ability to produce psychic photographs.
In early August 1977 Miss Hamilton attempted to
take a photograph of her living room toward her outdoor
garden (see the following page). Only Hanna and her cats
were in the room at the time. Picture her surprise when a
whitish female body (Hamilton called her “the streaker”)
Psychic Photography — the Visual Proof
751
■
Hanna Hamilton’s materialization picture
appeared in the picture. But what appears to be a nude is
really a white materialization made of ectoplasm.
Hamilton had no idea who the visitor was, but with
so many “spirit friends" in her earthly life, it might have
been anyone’s guess.
Dixie Tomkins, a very religious lady in Troy, Michi-
gan, contacted me regarding a series of unusual pho-
tographs taken in December 1968 during the christening of
one of her children (opposite page). Mrs. Tomkins had
been psychic all her life, and the picture did not surprise
her, but she turned to me for an explanation.
A materialized male figure appears in the picture,
close to the baby, evidently watching the ceremony.
This also seems to show that such ectoplastic figures
can be invisible to the naked eye but not to the camera.
That is, if and when a psychic catalyst is present in close
vicinity.
THE PHYSICIAN, CATHERINE THE GREAT,
AND POLAROID SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY
Dr. Andrew von Salza, a West Coast physician originally
without any interest in psychic matters, began to realize
that he had a strange gift for psychic photography. He was
a jolly and successful man with medical degrees from the
Universities of Berlin and Tartu (Estonia). A leading reju-
venation specialist in California, he was nothing more than
an amateur shutterbug without the slightest interest in any-
thing supernormal or psychic. Unexpected and totally
unwarranted “extras” have appeared on his photographs,
CHAPTER TWELVE: Psychic Photography —
the Visual Proof
Hanna Hamilton — psychic photographer
both those taken with regular cameras and with the speedy
Polaroid type. He had known of my interest in psychic
research through a mutual friend, Gail Benedict, the
public-relations director of the Savoy-Hilton, where he
usually stayed. Although I had heard about his strange
encounters with this subject, my only previous meeting
with the doctor was on a social occasion, where others were
present and when the chance to discuss the matter deeply
did not present itself. At that time, too, von Salza met my
ex-wife, Catherine, and was told that she was of Russian
descent, to which he remarked that he was a Balt himself.
But neither the doctor nor my wife went into any detailed
history of her background.
Finally, in March 1966, von Salza arrived in New
York on business and unexpectedly telephoned me, offering
to experiment in my presence, as I had so long desired him
to do. We arranged for a get-together at our house on Sun-
day, March 13, and I asked Gail Benedict to bring the doc-
tor over. In addition, a friend of Miss Benedict’s, Mrs.
Marsha Slansky, a designer and not particularly experi-
enced in matters of psychic research, joined us as an addi-
tional observer. Shortly after their arrival, the doctor
suddenly requested that my wife seat herself in an armchair
at the far end of the living room, because he felt the urge
to take a picture of her. It was at this point that I exam-
ined the camera and film and satisfied myself that no fraud
could have taken place.
The first picture taken showed a clear superimposi-
tion, next to my wife, of a female figure, made up of a
white, semitransparent substance (see page 754). As a
trained historian I immediately recognized that as an
attempted portrait of Catherine the Great. The sash of her
752
Materialization photographs by Dixie Tomkins
of Troy, Michigan
order, which she liked to wear in many of her official por-
traits, stood out quite clearly on this print. We continued
to expose the rest of the pack, and still another pack which
I purchased at a corner drugstore a little later that evening,
but the results were negative except for some strange light
streaks which could not be accounted for normally. The
doctor handed me the original picture, and the following
day I had a laboratory try to make me a duplicate which I
was to send him for the record. Unfortunately the results
were poor, the sash did not show at all in the reproduction,
and I was told that this was the best they could do because
the original was a Polaroid picture and not as easily copied
as an ordinary print. At any rate I mailed this poor copy to
Andrew von Salza in San Francisco with my explanation
and regrets. To my surprise we received a letter from him,
dated March 25, 1966, in which he enclosed two pictures
of the same subject. Only this time the figure of Catherine
the Great was sharp and detailed, much more so than in
the original picture and, in fact, superimposed on the
whitish outline of the first photograph. The whole thing
looked so patently fraudulent at first glance that I
requested exact data on how this second “round” was
taken. Not that I suspected the doctor of malpractice, but I
am a researcher and cannot afford to be noble.
Von Salza obliged. When he had received my poor
copy of his fine psychic picture, he had tacked it to a blank
wall in a comer of his San Francisco apartment in order to
rephotograph it. Why he did this he cannot explain, except
that he felt "an urge” to do so. He used a Crown Graphic
camera with Polaroid back, size 4 x 5, an enlarging lens
opening of F/32, with the camera mounted on a tropod
about a yard or less away from the subject. His exposure
for the rephotographing experiment was one second by
daylight plus one 150-watt lamp.
Furthermore, Dr. von Salza offered to repeat the
experiment in my presence whenever I came to San Fran-
cisco. What struck me as remarkable about the whole busi-
ness was of course the fact, unknown to the doctor, that
my ex-wife Catherine is a direct sixth -generation descen-
dant of Catherine the Great. This was not discussed with
him until after the first picture was obtained. Nevertheless
Gail Benedict reported that on the way over to our apart-
ment, von Salza suddenly and cryptically asked, “Why do I
keep thinking of Catherine the Great?” Now had he
wanted to defraud us, surely he would not have tipped his
hand in this manner. The two rephotographed pictures sent
to me by the doctor are not identical; on one of them a
crown appears over my ex-wife’s head! Several psychics
with whom my ex-wife and I have “sat,” who knew noth-
ing whatever about my ex-wife or her background, have
remarked that they “saw” a royal personality protecting my
wife. New York medium Betty Ritter even described her
by name as Catherine. It is true also that my ex-wife has a
strong interest in the historical Catherine, and finds herself
drawn frequently to books dealing with the life of the
Empress. Although her sisters and brothers are equally
close in descent to the Russian ruler, they do not show any
particular affinity toward her.
The whole matter of these pictures was so outlandish
that I felt either they were clever frauds and that I was
being duped (although I did not see how this was possible
under my stringent conditions) or that the material had to
be factual, appearances to the contrary. Circumstantial evi-
dence can be very misleading in so controversial a subject
as psychic photography and I was determined not to allow
opinions, pro or con, to influence my findings in this case.
Psychic Photography — the Visual Proof
753
Psychic photograph of Catherine the Great
appearing with her descendant
Contemporary print of Catherine the Great
under identical light and exposure conditions in my
presence. At this point I confess I became somewhat impa-
tient and said aloud, "I wish Catherine would give us a
message. What is she trying to tell us?” As if I had com-
mitted lese majest'e, the psychic camera fell silent; the next
picture showed nothing further than the whitish outline.
We discontinued the experiment at this point. I inspected
the camera once more and then left the doctor.
Before we parted I once more inspected the camera.
It looked just like any ordinary Crown Graphic does,
except for the Polaroid back. The enlarging lens was still
set at F/32; the exposure, I knew, had been just one sec-
ond, using ordinary daylight reinforced by one 150-watt
lamp. Dr. von Salza later sent me a cheerful note in which
he said, “Seeing is believing, but even seeing, so many can-
not believe, including myself.” He found the whole situa-
tion very amusing and made no serious effort to do much
about it scientifically, except that he did cooperate with me
whenever I asked him to.
Von Salza’s first encounter with the uncanny was in
1963, when the widow of a colleague of his, Dr. Benjamin
Sweetland, asked him to do a photo portrait of her. Von
Salza obliged, but imagine their surprise when the face of
the late husband appeared superimposed on a lampshade in
the room. No double exposure, no fraud, no rational expla-
nation for this phenomenon could be found, although von
Salza, with his worldly training, insisted that "there had to
be some other explanation!” To test this situation, he
decided to photograph the widow Sweetland again, but
with another camera and outdoors. Using a Leica and color
film, and making sure that all was in order he found to his
Clearer psychic picture of Catherine the Great
Consequently, I went to San Francisco in May 1966,
to test the good doctor. In my presence he took the original
picture and mounted it on the wall, then placed film into
his Crown Graphic camera with a Polaroid back. I
inspected camera and film and nothing had been tampered
with. The first two pictures yielded results; again a clear
imprint of Catherine the Great was superimposed on the
whitish outline of the original. But this time Catherine
extended an arm toward her descendant! In her extended
right hand the Empress tendered a crown to my ex-wife,
but the two pictures are otherwise somewhat different in
detail and intensity, although taken one after the other
CHAPTER TWELVE: Psychic Photography —
the Visual Proof
754
Experimental seance with
Dr. von Salza
amazement that one of the 20 exposures showed the late
doctor’s face against the sky.
Dismissing the whole incident for want of an expla-
nation and trying his best to forget it, he was again sur-
prised when another incident took place. This time he was
merely using up the last picture in his roll, shooting at ran-
dom against the wall of his own room. When the roll was
developed, there appeared on the wall the face of a young
girl that had not been there when he took the picture. He
was upset by this and found himself discussing the matter
with a friend and patient of his by the name of Mrs. Pier-
son. She asked to be shown the picture. On inspection, she
blanched. Andrew von Salza had somehow photographed
the face of her “dead” young daughter. Although the doc-
tor knew of the girl’s untimely death, he had never seen
her in life.
Several more incidents of this nature convinced the
doctor that he had somehow stumbled onto a very special
talent, like it or not. He began to investigate the subject to
find out if others also had his kind of "problems.” Among
the people interested in psychic phenomena in the San
Francisco area was Evelyn Nielsen, with whom von Salza
later shared a number of experiments. He soon discovered
that her presence increased the incidence rate of psychic
“extras” on his exposures, although Miss Nielsen herself
never took a psychic photograph without von Salza’s pres-
ence, proving that it was he who was the mainspring of the
phenomenon.
I have examined these photographs and am satisfied
that fraud is out of the question for a number of reasons,
chiefly technical, since most of them were taken with
Polaroid cameras and developed on the spot before compe-
tent witnesses, including myself.
In early May 1965 I went to San Francisco to observe
Dr. von Salza at work — psychic photography work, that is,
not his regular occupation, which is never open to anyone
but the subjects! I fortified myself with the company of
two “outsiders,” my sister-in-law, Countess Marie Rose
Buxhoeveden, and a friend, social worker Lori Wyn, who
came with me to von Salza’s apartment. There we met the
doctor, Evelyn Nielsen, and Mrs. Sweetland, as well as two
other ladies, friends of the doctor’s, who had been sympa-
thetic to the subject at hand. It was late afternoon, and we
all had dinner engagements, so we decided to get started
right away.
With a sweeping gesture the doctor invited me to
inspect the camera, already on its tripod facing the wall, or,
as he called it, his “ghost corner,” for he had always had
best results by shooting away from the bright windows
toward the darker portion of his big living room. The walls
were bare except for an Indian wall decoration and a por-
trait of the doctor. In a way, they reminded me of motion-
picture screens in their smoothness and blue-gray texture.
But there was absolutely nothing on those walls that could
be blamed for what eventually appeared “on” them.
I stepped up to the camera and looked inside, satisfy-
ing myself that nothing had been pasted in the bellows or
gizmo, or on the lens. Then I looked at the film, which was
an ordinary Polaroid film pack, black-and-white, and there
was no evidence of its having been tampered with. The
only way to do this, by the way, would have been to slit
open the pack and insert extraneous matter into the indi-
vidual pieces of film, something requiring great skill, total
darkness and time. Even then traces of the cuttings would
Psychic Photography — the Visual Proof
755
*
Psychic photograph taken by Mae Burrows
have to appear . The pack Dr. von Salza used was fresh and
untouched.
The room was bright enough, as light streamed in
from the windows opposite the L-shaped couch which
lined the walls. The seven of us now sat down on the
couch. Von Salza set the camera and exposed the first piece
of film. Within sight of all of us, he developed the film in
the usual fast Polaroid manner and then showed it to me.
Over our heads there appear clearly four extra portraits,
and the wall can be seen through them. I did not recognize
any of the four in this instance. The doctor continued, this
time including himself in the picture by presetting the
camera and then taking his place next to Evelyn Nielsen on
the couch.
The second picture, when developed, evoked some
gasps of recognition from the audience. Four faces of vari-
ous sizes appeared and a light-shaft (of psychic energy?)
also was now evident on the left side of the photograph.
But the gasp of recognition was due to the likeness of the
late John D. Rockefeller, Sr. I might add here that this
gentleman must have an avid interest in communicating
with the world he left in 1937 at age 90. His face has
appeared in other instances of psychic photography, espe-
cially in Britain with John Myers.
MAE BURROWS’ GHOSTLY FAMILY PICTURE
Mae Burrows has long since joined her family on “the
other side of life.” But for many years she was the undis-
puted premier medium in Cincinnati, Ohio, and her repu-
Cecilia Hood’s psychic photograph
tation as such, and a devout spiritualist, was similar to the
celebrated mediums of turn-of-the-century England.
In 1930 a photographer friend visited Mrs. Burrows,
and asked to photograph her with a plate camera, then the
best way of taking photographs. She readily agreed to sit
for him, and the result was indeed startling, though not so
much to the medium as to the photographer.
Instead of getting just a nice portrait of his friend,
the photographer captured images of a lot of “extras.”
First of all, there is the picture of Mrs. Burrows’
Indian guide, and while investigators may have differing
opinions about the prevalence of Indians among spirit
guides (controls), the fact is, most professional mediums do
have them, perhaps because Indian shamans were so close
to being spiritualist mediums.
I saw Mrs. Burrows in 1970 and again in 1971, when
she described the others in the remarkable photograph.
There are three women in the picture, which she identified
as her great-grandmother who died seventy-five years prior,
her aunt who had been gone for seventy -three years, and
her sister, who died sixty-four years before our meeting. As
for the men, they were two medical doctors named Crow-
ley and Ramey, and the man who turns his head sideways
in the picture was a friend of the family who had taken his
own life seventy-six years before.
Group spirit pictures like this are not so rare and
CHAPTER TWELVE: Psychic Photography —
the Visual Proof
756
Psychic photographs taken by Ron and
Nancy Stallings
have been obtained under strictest test conditions. There is
no question as to the authenticity of this one.
A GHOSTLY APPARITION IN THE SKY
Reports of miraculous apparitions of the Virgin Mary, even
of Jesus, and of various angels and saints, come to public
attention from time to time. Invariably, the believers
immediately flock to such sites mainly to obtain miraculous
cures, or at least be spiritually enriched.
Since ancient times, people have reported these
events, usually interpreting them as the spirit visitations of
heavenly personalities. Rarely has anyone who actually
observed such an apparition considered the visions to be
spiritual beings of lesser stature, such as relatives or friends
of worshippers, or simply people who have passed on to
the next stage of existence, and for one or the other reason,
decided to manifest in this manner and place.
An interesting and unsought photograph was taken
by Cecilia Hood, a very spiritual lady from upstate New
York. Rev. Hood is an ordained spiritual minister and has
practiced as such for many years. On October 14, 1975,
she shared with me an extraordinary original photograph
which falls into this category. The picture was actually
taken in 1971 during a terrible storm in rural Pennsylvania
by Rev. Hood’s friend and associate Margie Brooks. There
was a terrible flood and the sky was very dark. Suddenly
Miss Brooks observed a figure in white in the sky and took
this picture. Was it a way those from the other side wanted
to reassure her of her safety?
THE PARISH HOUSE GHOSTS
Ron and Nancy Stallings head the Maryland Committee
for Psychical Research, a body of researchers I helped cre-
ate some years ago. The Stallings are dedicated, scientifi-
cally-oriented people. When I first met this couple, they
lived with their children in a haunted house near Balti-
more, which I investigated and we eventually put down as
a solved case.
Since then, the Stallings have taken their camera to
many haunted places and come up with positive results of
photographs taken under test conditions. Nancy is
undoubtedly the catalyst as she is a strong medium.
Three pictures taken by Ron and Nancy at a haunted
parish house in Baltimore County, are presented here for
the first time in print.
Photo A shows Nancy, the dark woman on the right.
There appear to be three figures in the doorway, one of
which is indeed very clear. When the photo was taken,
there wasn’t anyone in that doorway.
Photo B shows three people standing in an empty
Psychic Photography — the Visual Proof
757
c
doorway — it appeared empty when Ron took this picture!
Photo C shows Nancy standing on the right, being
hugged by what she described as a little girl, and two
standing figures again in the same doorway. Nancy
reported that they recorded a child’s voice at the same
time, calling out for "Mommy” and literally following the
investigators around as they made their way about the
premises of the old parish house.
Hans Holzer with ghost of Pennsylvania Boatsman
at the Black Bass Inn— photographed by
Rosemary Khalil
CHAPTER TWELVE: Psychic Photography —
the Visual Proof
758
Books Previously
Published by
Hans Holzer
NON-FICTION
Witches
Hans Holzer’s Travel Guide to Haunted Houses
The Secret of Healing: The power of the healer Ze’ev Kolman
Healing Beyond Medicine: Alternative paths to wellness
Prophecies: Truth, Possibilities, or Fallacies?
The Directory of Psychics
Life Beyond
Hans Holzer’s Haunted America
Great American Ghost Stories
Real Hauntings
The Power of Hypnosis
Tales at Midnight
The Psychic Side of Dreams
The Ghosts of Old Europe
Hans Holzer’s Haunted House Album
Where the Ghosts Are
True Ghost Stories
Yankee Ghosts
Dixie Ghosts
Ghosts of New England
The Lively Ghosts of Ireland
Are You Psychic? ESP and you and the truth about ESP
Window to the Past
Books Previously Published by Hans Holzer
759
In Quest of Ghosts
Ghost Hunter
Ghosts I’ve Met
Gothic Ghosts
The Ghosts that Walk in Washinton
Westghosts
The Spirits of ‘76
In Search of Ghosts
some of My Best Friends are Ghosts
The Truth About Witchcraft
The New Pagans
The Witchcraft Report
Star in the East
The UFOnauts: New Facts on Extraterrestrial landings
The Habsburg Curse
Word Play
Murder in Amityville: Amityville II The Possession
America's Mysterious Places
America’s Haunted Houses
America’s Restless Ghosts: Psychic photography
Elvis Speaks From Beyond
Ghostly Lovers: True cases of love beyond the grave
Born Again
Life After Death: The challenge and the evidence
The Handbook of Parapsychology
The Great British Ghost Hunt
Patterns of Destiny
The Truth About ESP
ESP and You
Predictions — Fact or Fallacy?
The Prophets Speak
Psychic Investigator
Best True Ghost Stories
The Powers of the New Age
Possessed
The Psychic World of Bishop Pike
The Directory of the Occult
The Psydhic World of Plants
The Human Dynamo
Charismatics: How to make things happen for you
Books Previously Published by Hans Holzer
760
How to Cope with Problems
Speed Thinking
How to Win at Life
Astrology: What it can do for you
The Vegetarian Way of Life
The Aquarian Age
Psycho-Ecstasy
FICTION
The Alchemist
Heather, Confessions of a Witch
The Clairvoyant
The Entry
The Amity ville Curse
The Secret Amityville
The Zodiac Affairs
Circle of Love
The Randy Knowles Adventure Series:
The Red Chindvit Conspiracy
The Alchemy Deception
The Unicorn
Books Previously Published by Hans Holzer
761
1
\
Take a journey to the world beyond ...
Visit hundreds of haunted places around the world.
Learn how to make contact with “the other side."
Read about ghostly manifestations of all kinds, from phantoms to
poltergeists — and learn about the scientific investigations that have
uncovered and authenticated them.
See rare, genuine photographs of ghosts and spirits, and find out
how these apparitions were captured on film.
Travel to all corners of the world in search of ghosts with Dr. Hans
Holzer, one of the world's foremost experts on the subject and the
author of more than 100 books on parapsychology, the supernatural,
and paranormal phenomena. Not only does Dr. Holzer introduce
us to those who visit from the next dimension, he explains why they
seek contact with our world and he offers expert advice on how to
interpret sights, sounds, activities, visions, and other experiences that
signal the presence of someone from the other side. Ghosts is a must-
read for all would-be ghost hunters and fans of the otherworldly.
Cover design by Martin Lubin
Printed in the U.S.A.
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